From 2015-2019 we have distributed 82% of the furniture donations received to families in need. So, what happens with the rest of it?
There may be a multitude of reasons you consider hiring Furniture Bank to remove your gently used items. You may hire us for an altruistic reason: you want to give back to the community and help a family in need. You may just be looking to keep your items out of landfill and leave a smaller carbon footprint. Whatever the reason may be, you can give your items a second life by choosing Furniture Bank. You may wonder, where does the furniture go and who do we serve?
Our mission is to help marginalized and displaced individuals and families escape furniture poverty. We do this by providing essential items needed when starting a home. We’d like to provide our clients with the dignity and security that comes with having a furnished home. We do this by providing them with good, usable furniture pieces. The families we serve reside primarily in small bachelor apartments or basement units, and we need furniture that works within those types of spaces.
We do our best to ensure that the items we receive are in good, usable conditions and meet our expectations in terms of quality. In the event that we do not receive items that we can redistribute to our clients, they will need to go to landfill.
We ask as many qualifying questions as possible to ensure quality is received:
- do you feel comfortable giving a friend or family member the furniture in its present condition?
- are these items free of rips and stains?
- do these items fit our size requirements?
In a perfect world, all items we receive are in great condition that can be transferred to our clients after we receive them. However that is not always the case, and some items will need to be diverted to landfill. We do our best with policies in place to weed out unusable items before we bring them back to our warehouse, but some do slip through the cracks. With this in mind, we ask that you consider the condition of your items you’d like to donate and if they can be transferred to a family in need in their present condition.
