How Bombas scaled its Giving Program to 4,000+ partners, with Zite

Melina Morris is Senior Impact Manager at Bombas. The company was founded in 2013 when they learned that socks were the #1 most requested clothing item at homeless shelters. Now, they currently donate the top 3 most requested clothing items by their Giving Partners: socks, underwear, and t-shirts. For every item purchased, an essential item is donated to someone at risk of or currently experiencing homelessness. When she started seven years ago, the program supported about 1,500 partners, each receiving one shipment per year. Today, it's over 4,000 partners — many receiving multiple shipments annually — and the team managing all of it has never been larger than four people.

“Most of our partners are small teams doing important work,” Melina says. “We try to make our donation process as simple and efficient as possible, so they can focus on what they do best.”

As the program scaled, the Bombas Giving Team team needed software that fit their operation. Generic form and CRM tools kept falling short.

“We'd explore alternatives, or ‘hey, we already use this, would that work?’ And those always felt like putting a square in a circle. We didn't want to compromise on the experience we brought to Giving Partners.”

Critical program information was scattered across thousands of Gmail threads. Staffing changes at partner orgs meant context got lost. A two-person inbox team was fielding thousands of inquiries a month, many of them transactional — Where's my tracking? What month is my shipment?

The team's operation hinges on two forms per partner, per year: a shipment confirmation and an annual Reorder Request. Fillout by Zite replaced a patchwork of manual workflows with something purpose-built:

• Google Maps address autofill cut down on manual address edits and improved shipping data accuracy.
• Pre-filled responses from the previous year cut the annual reorder form down to a few minutes for partners. “They wrote it into their program feedback this year — ‘You have no idea how helpful this is during a time where we're being asked to do more with less.’”
• Airtable integration pushed shipment confirmations straight into partner records, so the operations team could pull a clean weekly list and place orders without any copy-paste.

With forms running smoothly, Melina tackled something the team had wanted for years: a single portal where partners could check their shipment status, find program details, and self-serve answers instead of waiting on email.

When Zite launched its app-building capabilities, Melina built the portal herself over a couple of weekends.

The portal launched alongside two other shifts: a company-wide transition from calendar year to fiscal year, and partners moving from one annual shipment to up to three. With a lot of new timelines to communicate, the process was made easier by having everything in one place.

The portal also looked like Bombas, not like a generic SaaS tool. “We needed the Bombas Partner Portal to pass our brand standards, and it did just that.”

For Melina, the most useful way to measure Zite's impact isn't just hours saved on forms and email, it's also what the team was able to do instead. In 2025, the time Zite freed up let the Giving Team:

• Visit 30+ Giving Partners in person across Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Minnesota, New Jersey, DC, Florida, and Colorado — deepening their understanding of regional and evolving community needs.
• Expand donation inventory to include newly requested items like baby and toddler socks.
• Coordinate company-wide volunteer events, on track to close the year with roughly 1,500 volunteer hours logged.

“If we can alleviate some of the transactional things — ‘where's my tracking,’ ‘what month is my shipment’ — and spend that time meeting partners, deepening relationships, and implementing their feedback – that's where we want to be.”

Partners have noticed:

Melina isn't a software engineer. She's part of a team that knows their program best — and with Zite, she didn't need to hand that knowledge off to anyone else.

Melina is already planning phase two: automating more of the partner logistics loop, moving partner email notifications onto Zite (escaping Gmail's send limit and the limits of existing mail merge tools), and building a full application portal for the next time Bombas reopens its Giving Program to new partners. Last time, they received over 8,000 applications.

“Having a platform that can support us in vetting organizations, providing applicant status updates, and onboarding our newest Giving Partners is crucial. The next time we reopen our application, these new capabilities will be a game-changer.”