Welcome !
A very long time agao food banks became a common place in most large cities. But today, we still have no regional distribution system for donating and doling our our new and used surplus goods to the homeless and needy in our towns. Second Harvest has done a wonderful job of creating a national food sharing network where now even the Food Banks share with the manufacturers and truckers donate time to get the food from where it is produced to where it is needed. Furniture banks and other charities could learn a lot from this model. In fact we did!
Food banks work all year long to procure food from the government and many sources and give it out to the shelters, pantries and other organizations that can disperse it locally from the cenral warehouse. Food banks do not serve the needy directly. They serve the agencies. We think this is an important part of a goods bank's success. First you need to connect to the agencies. This is much easier than you would think.
Imagine if we had a central warehouse for home and baby goods? And what if we could connect the neediest clients from dozens or hundreds of agencies with surgical accuracy to the donated goods the public is thrilled to have out of their homes. Trust us. The caseworkers will find you in short order!
This is what the Wish Project does. We are trying to bring a new level of effieciency to charity. Founded in Lowell, MA in 2005 the Wish Project idea has generated tremendous excitement as a model for charity to get the most amount of goods to the most needy people in the most time and cost efficient way possible. When this is done, so many agencies can do their core missions better and everybody wins. Plus the public has a place to volunteer even nights and weekends and the clients get a constant source of new goods generated by creative marketing and montly regional service projects.
Our founder spent several years volunteering and studying social service agencies. She created a database of goods they needed and took lots of notes about tons of things like when certain items are needed (strollers in the spring for instance) and how they are needed (some programs can only use new others are happy with used).
In additon, she was inspired by the knowledge that 9 out of 10 needy clients are women and children and that almost all are going through a one time life crisis (including fire or flood). The faster we help these clients to get stable and self sufficient again, the faster they become working, voting, tax paying citizens - and happier and healthier ones at that. Everybody wins. The roots of poverty lay in a lack of health care (including mental health care) and child care. Most cases of homelessnes are due to a health crisis of a parent, adult or child. With so many working poor people living on the edge of poverty it only takes a few missed days of work spenmt tending to a sick child to result in losing your job and quickly becoming homeless.
We may never end hunger or homelessness but we can greatly reduce the impact of poverty by providing furniture and home goods for free to families working with the agencies and the system. There are many programs now in our area to provide low income housing. But once in an apartment, buying furniture and goods is the next big financial hurdle. And so many people want to desperately find a home for an unwanted couch. But how to connect the couch with the client in need?
How do you do this?
First, divide all the needs up by how fast items are required:
- Crisis (same day)
- Urgent (same week)
- Seasonal (like Backpacks in September)
- Ongoing (diapers, paper products, cleaning supplies etc).
Then she came up with an approach to best meet each kind of need. Each level of urgency required a slightly different solution. But all of the goods would come from the public by the Project actively procuring what is needed when it is needed primarily through email.
For the complete 4 stage plan click here