The Beginning of Something REAL
Though REAL Nonprofit Inc. is newly formed (registered with the Secretary of the State of Georgia in March 2025 and received a determination letter from the IRS for 501(c)(3) status in late June of 2025), we have already made a huge impact! Our first contribution was on August 12, 2025, when we donated 831 books to Books for Africa (see picture of our founder, Shaan Sancheti, with Bruce Travis, Shipping and Receiving Manager at the BFA warehouse, and James Hall, Production Manager at the BFA warehouse).
We hosted our first food drives in September 2025, and since that time, the student team has collectively gathered 4,685 food items, weighing over 3,147 pounds (or over 1.5 TONS)! The Youth Advisory Council members delivered 1836 pounds of food items to North Fulton Community Charities (NFCC) in October 2025, and 1,311 total pounds of food items to Atlanta Community Food Bank in the months of November and December 2025. Tyler Johnson (Youth Advisory Council VP of Community Engagement and Volunteer Management) and Shaan Sancheti (Youth Advisory Council President) made additional trips to deliver items to Books for Africa in 2025, and the student team has collected and donated over 4,041 books!
The Youth Advisory Council has worked diligently to recruit student ambassadors to help with monthly food and book drives. In just a few short months, REAL has expanded its reach to collect donations across 5 counties in metro Atlanta (Cobb, Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Hall). The REAL Youth Advisory Council members and student ambassadors currently include 15 students who represent 9 schools and 12 neighborhoods across metro Atlanta (but using neighboring communities and extended family members, the team has collected across 15 neighborhoods to date). The total value of all items that REAL Nonprofit Inc. was able to donate in 2025 exceeded $27,235!
In addition to the neighborhood drives, the students have been creative in how they go about soliciting donations. Stella Figueroa (Youth Advisory Council VP of Marketing and Communications) coordinated a food and book drive through her Walton softball team in early October. That same month, Shaan Sancheti partnered with the youth ministry at Perimeter Church to coordinate a food drive. Shaan also coordinated a grade-wide food drive for the juniors at Wesleyan School that ended in December 2025. The students continue to brainstorm ways to extend their reach beyond their neighborhoods and schools into all aspects where they live, learn, and play. We can’t wait to see what the REAL impact from a generation of empowered youth continues to be for metro Atlanta. We expect to have an even greater impact during REAL Nonprofit Inc’s first FULL calendar year of operation in 2026!
