Familiar faces from across the region are set to take a turn ringing bells for The Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Campaign this weekend, part of an annual fundraising push that supports year-round services throughout Mobile and Baldwin counties. The celebrity-and-leader bell shifts have become a signature ritual of the coastal Alabama holiday season, and the lineup scheduled for this weekend puts some of the area’s most recognizable names behind the familiar red kettles at the entrances of area stores.
U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne is scheduled to volunteer at a Sam’s Club location in Daphne, while Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson plans to ring the bell near the entrance of Bel Air Mall in Mobile. The pairing means the weekend’s kettles will be staffed by the region’s congressman and its largest city’s mayor on the same days, giving the campaign a visibility boost that ordinary shifts rarely generate — and giving shoppers a moment of holiday-season surprise at two of the area’s busiest retail spots.
Employees from Infirmary Health System will also staff kettles at four separate stores, including locations in Daphne, Fairhope and Saraland, while the Point Clear Rotary Club and the Gulf Shores Kiwanis Club are each committing volunteers to cover extended shifts at retail locations in Fairhope and Gulf Shores. The participation of the region’s largest health care employer alongside two of Baldwin County’s most active civic clubs illustrates how the campaign is staffed: not by paid workers, but by businesses and service organizations adopting shifts as group projects.
Salvation Army officials said the participation of local leaders and organizations helps draw attention to the campaign and encourages residents to consider volunteering themselves. The logic is straightforward. A kettle staffed by a familiar face stops shoppers who would otherwise walk past, and each well-publicized shift tends to produce a wave of calls from residents asking how they can take their own turn at a kettle stand before the season ends.
Where the Money Goes
The Red Kettle Campaign will continue through Christmas Eve at Walmart, Sam’s Club, Winn-Dixie and Hobby Lobby locations across the two counties, as well as at Bel Air Mall, with proceeds funding the organization’s programs throughout the year. The kettle season is the Salvation Army’s single most important fundraising window, and in coastal Alabama it underwrites services — from emergency assistance to youth programs — that operate long after the bells and kettles are packed away for another year.
Residents interested in becoming a bell ringer, either individually or as part of a group or business, can contact The Salvation Army of Coastal Alabama directly to sign up for a shift. Shifts are typically filled in two-hour blocks at locations across Mobile and Baldwin counties, and the organization relies on volunteers to keep kettle stands covered through the long stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Groups often adopt a full day at a single store, turning a shift into a team event for employees, club members or church congregations.
This year, the organization also expanded its fundraising reach with the launch of an Online Red Kettle program, allowing supporters to set up personal virtual kettles and invite friends, family and coworkers to contribute without needing to carry cash or visit a physical location. The virtual kettles work much like the physical stands: a supporter creates a page, shares it through email or social media, and collects donations that count toward the local campaign total.
Officials said the digital option was designed to meet donors who have grown more comfortable giving online, while ensuring every dollar raised has the same local impact as cash placed in a kettle outside a store. The change reflects a broader shift in holiday giving habits, as fewer shoppers carry cash into stores and more of the season’s philanthropy migrates to phones and keyboards. For the Salvation Army, meeting donors where they already are has become as much a part of the campaign as the kettle stand itself.
The online program also extends the campaign’s reach beyond the shoppers who pass a kettle in person. Former coastal Alabama residents now living elsewhere can direct their holiday giving back to the communities they came from, and businesses can rally employees around a shared virtual kettle without coordinating a single physical shift. Organization officials have framed the digital kettles as a supplement to the traditional stands rather than a replacement for them.
Local Dollars, Local Programs
Funds raised through kettles tied to a Mobile or Baldwin County ZIP code stay within the local Salvation Army chapter, supporting the organization’s programs across the two counties throughout the year. That local-retention model is a central part of the campaign’s pitch to donors: money dropped into a kettle outside a Daphne grocery store funds services in Baldwin County, and money collected at a Mobile kettle stays in Mobile.
The year-round programs behind the kettles touch both counties in different ways. In Mobile, the Salvation Army’s presence centers on emergency assistance, shelter services and youth programming, while in Baldwin County the organization’s work stretches across communities from Bayou La Batre’s fishing villages to the fast-growing suburbs along the Eastern Shore. Kettle season receipts determine how much of that work the local command can sustain through the leaner fundraising months of spring and summer.
The weekend’s volunteer lineup reflects the two-county geography of the effort. Byrne’s shift in Daphne and the Rotary and Kiwanis commitments in Fairhope and Gulf Shores anchor the Baldwin County side, while Stimpson’s Bel Air Mall stand and the Infirmary Health System’s Saraland location carry the flag in Mobile County. Shoppers on either side of the bay will encounter the campaign — and some of the region’s most prominent institutions — while running ordinary holiday errands.
Bel Air Mall, where Stimpson will ring, remains the region’s largest enclosed shopping center and one of the most productive kettle locations in the area, combining heavy holiday foot traffic with a layout that funnels shoppers past the mall entrances. Sam’s Club and Walmart locations, meanwhile, generate steady kettle traffic from bulk shoppers making weekly runs, which is why the campaign’s retail partnerships form the backbone of the fundraising calendar.
The partnerships with national retailers are what make the two-county operation possible. Without access to store entrances at the chains where shoppers already congregate, the Salvation Army would be limited to standalone locations and special events, and the steady daily collection totals that fund year-round programs would be far harder to achieve. The familiar red kettles at store entrances have become such a fixture of the season that the campaign’s opening day is widely treated as the unofficial start of the holiday stretch along the Gulf Coast.
For the leaders taking weekend shifts, the kettle line is also a rare form of retail democracy — a few hours face to face with voters, constituents and shoppers at their most candid. Elected officials from Congress to city hall have historically used their shifts to hear directly from residents about the cost of living, and this year’s lineup is expected to draw exactly that kind of unscripted conversation between the region’s leaders and the people they serve.
The campaign’s final stretch runs through Christmas Eve, the traditional last day of kettle season, when the final shifts are covered and the year’s totals are tallied. Until then, the organization continues to recruit bell ringers for remaining open shifts, and the Online Red Kettle pages stay active for donors who prefer to give digitally. Residents who want to volunteer a shift, set up a virtual kettle or make a direct donation can reach The Salvation Army of Coastal Alabama through its local offices serving Mobile and Baldwin counties.
The kettle campaign’s rhythm follows the retail calendar. Collections build through the first weeks of December, peak in the final shopping days before Christmas, and close out with a final burst of giving on Christmas Eve itself. For the local command, the pattern means budgeting a year of services against a handful of intense weeks, and it is why every uncovered shift matters — a kettle with no bell ringer is a kettle that collects almost nothing, no matter how busy the store behind it may be.
Volunteers who sign up tend to come back. Across the two counties, some bell ringers have claimed the same corner outside the same store for years, greeting regulars by name and keeping a running conversation with shoppers that no fundraising letter could replicate. Organizations that adopt shifts often turn the duty into a holiday tradition of their own, photographing their teams at the kettle and counting the season’s totals as a shared accomplishment when the new year arrives.
With the congressman at one end of the bay, the mayor at the other, and the region’s hospitals, Rotary clubs and Kiwanis clubs filling shifts in between, this weekend’s kettles will collect more than donations — they will put the scope of coastal Alabama’s holiday giving tradition on full display as the season’s final stretch begins.