Home Sweet Home started charging a small fee for inside donation pickups in 2018. We still offer free furniture pickups for donations that are left outside (on a porch, on a driveway, etc.). However, following suit with most other furniture banks across the country, we instituted a policy to charge for inside pickup service. Inevitably, we get asked why, as a nonprofit agency, we charge people who are donating furniture to us. In short, we charge a small furniture pickup fee to offset the cost of gas, insurance, and upkeep on our truck and to pay the bills so we can continue to provide donated furniture to marginalized families.
To expand on that answer, unlike other agencies with retail social enterprises that take your used items and sell them to the public to fund their operations, your donated furniture is given directly to the people who need it. The furnishings you no longer need can change the lives of families in our own community within hours of us picking it up from your home. It’s that direct (and that awesome!)
To put it yet another way, furniture pickup fees help Home Sweet Home pay the bills every month and continue to offer donated furniture to families escaping domestic violence, transitioning out of homelessness, living in extreme poverty, and more. Plus, unlike a junk-removal company that would charge you $250 or more to take your unwanted items to the dump, we provide the same furniture removal service but with huge social and environmental impacts!
When you donate furniture and household goods to Home Sweet Home, the pickup fee enables us to:
- Provide furniture and household goods to marginalized members of our community.
- Pay rent and utilities on our warehouse where we:
- Unload donations of gently used furniture.
- House our furniture showroom, in which Home Sweet Home offers clients the dignity of choosing furnishings suited to their personal style and the space restrictions of their new homes.
- Maintain the workshop where we salvage and repair slightly damaged furniture and make them available to families instead of sending them to a landfill.
- Run our modest office, the hub of Home Sweet Home’s operations.
- Maintain, insure, and operate two 16-foot box trucks to pick up donations every morning and deliver to clients every afternoon. That’s a lot of gas!
- Significantly subsidize furniture delivery costs for client families whose deliveries are not covered by their referring agency.
- Actively reduce and reuse your usable, gently used furniture – which means it’s not ending up in landfill.
And, if that’s not reason enough, we also issue charitable tax donation receipts for your furniture donations.
Of course, our pickup service is optional. If you would like to find a new home for your unused furniture and household goods, you can also drop them off at our warehouse in Maplewood at 10 Sunnen Dr. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Our volunteers will gratefully accept your donation and collect your information for your tax receipt.