Instant Replay

After the buzzer sounded, the confetti flew and a men’s college basketball champion was crowned April 6, 70,000-plus fans filed to the exits reflecting on the game.

Zach Hall sat in the stands that night thinking about the free items thousands of students would soon score from it.

Hall serves as director of Logistics for Teachers’ Treasures, a longtime Regions Bank community partner providing free supplies for under-resourced classrooms across Indianapolis.

This year, the Circle City welcomed the NCAA Men’s Division I, II, III and National Invitational Tournament finals, plus a lineup of related festivals and concerts. Hosting them involves considerable gear, including basketball equipment, banners and signage – even office supplies. Event organizers collaborated with Indy nonprofits to ensure every possible item would be repurposed after the nets were cut down.

We caught up with Hall to learn more about the items Teachers’ Treasures netted and the forward pass they’re making placing them into educators’ hands.

Here’s our conversation Q&A:

What unique equipment and supplies did Teachers’ Treasures pick up?

We knew we would be receiving furniture, including chairs and couches, from the player lounges. What was surprising was some of the television set pieces people may not typically associate with an event, like turf rolls, flooring and custom-built stage pieces. It was really interesting doing a walkthrough with event organizers during the clean-up phase as they pointed out items they wanted to find a home for instead of recycling.

Image with

What did the pick-up and transportation logistics resemble?

Most of the items were staged in the Indiana Convention Center for nonprofits to claim. There were also opportunities for some organizations to coordinate pickups at hotels. We consider ourselves a proverbial “nonprofit cleanup crew” in finding a purpose for everything at Teachers’ Treasures, so we lined up a semi-trailer to collect anything fellow nonprofits couldn’t use. We also worked with a local moving company that’s one of our sponsors to do a pickup on our behalf and did a pickup with our own box truck.

What’s your timeline to get these items into teachers’ hands?

It’s already underway. We began distributing items less than a week after the event, staging pieces across our three store locations. For the especially large pieces, we’ll do a direct distribution to schools since it would be difficult for teachers to transport pieces like a 10-foot-long stone-front table in their car. We’ll also be working with Indianapolis Public Schools to share the basketball goals we received.

You mentioned Teachers’ Treasures ability to find a home for everything. Share a bit more about the organization’s commitment to being eco-friendly.

Teachers’ Treasures strives to be an Indy community leader that provides a space for businesses to work sustainably. This means working with a variety of industries like event planners, office administrators, junk removal companies, warehouse distribution centers, liquidators and more, offering them an opportunity to donate to us instead of landfilling items. Positioning ourselves as a sustainable city is a draw in hosting major events like the Final Four, with Indy event organizers even sharing best practices with future host cities.

Tell us about the impact larger rescues like this make for those Teachers’ Treasures serves.

When cities host events of this scale, there is a sense of community that you can feel. You feel the humanity across all the organizations benefiting from it. Yes, we’re known for providing pencils to teachers who share them with students. That seems small and easy, but life isn’t always easy for the people we serve. We want our teachers and students to know there is a team in Indianapolis working hard to secure supplies for them because they matter, their future matters and we believe in them.