Our Mission
It’s twofold: to support underserved college-bound students and to advance sustainability. Grad Bag provides a more equitable transition to college by collecting, refreshing, and repackaging lightly used dorm room essentials for redistribution to incoming students in-need.
Our Vision
A world where students enter dorm life with confidence and leave college contributing to a more sustainable planet
Our Story
We’re Liz Gruber and Tara Smith Tyberg. We founded Grad Bag in 2012.
As we moved our kids out of their dorm rooms upon college graduation, we were amazed by the amount of goods that students were throwing into dumpsters. We realized that a lot of items that students no longer have use for were in fine condition. We were also well aware of the expense necessary to outfit a dorm room.
A recycling project was born.
Grad Bag started as a small grassroots effort. We contacted our friends and neighbors—parents of recent college graduates—and gathered items that would otherwise have been thrown away. We cleaned, folded and packaged all of the goods in our basements.
It quickly became clear that the program had legs with immense relevance and potential for growth.
The items were valued, the need was vast and we were contributing to the environment by keeping waste out of landfills. We formalized our work and now Grad Bag, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization, partners with 16 colleges and over 20 grantee organizations in the NY and Boston areas with more to come.