Sunday, December 02, 2007

Habitat helps Homeless and Itself with Food Drive

A clever idea I'd not seen before:

A local Habitat for Humanity Resale store has linked its furniture sales for the holidays with a food drive benefiting a local Homeless Coalition's food bank.

Quite simply, customers of the store are asked to bring in canned goods -- the more goods, the bigger their discount on home furnishings at the Habitat Resale Store.

At the end of the 20-day sale event, Habitat gives the collected food items to the Homeless Coalition.

The idea was the store manager's. I'd not seen anything quite like it -- perhaps others have. But it seems like an exploit that might easily be replicated.

Here's a Craigslist posting about it.

Update: I'm pleased to find that the store manager's idea struck a few other people as worth noting, including Sheila Lennon (Subterranean Homepage News) whom nothing worthy of note escapes, and Phil Cubeta (Gifthub), whose network of philanthropic endeavors is richer in scope, if not in actual dollahs, than any I know of.

Phil: "When you net all this out, though, it looks like the poor helping the poor." Indeed, although not everyone who shops at a Habitat Resale Store is poor. But why shouldn't working people take time out from their mindnumbing tasks to help one another productively?

If anyone has a problem with that, say, the plantation owners, or certain moths who flit about the endless array of philanthropic spectacles, they might wish to fathom why.

2 Comments:

Blogger jonhusband said...

Not completely related, but another project of h for H that I like.

Here and there they have outlets named ReStore that are small versions of home depot or Lowe's .. the goods are donated by people who do not have use for them after a renovation (either excess materials or materials that have been replaced that are in good condition).

I have both used the ReStore in vancouver to obtain renovation materials and I have donated quite a bit of "stuff" ... paint I decided not to use, tiles and flooring, a couple of new sinks, a refrigerator and range in very good condition when we bought new units ...

Here's a web site that provides an example .. a ReStore in Kansas City ... http://www.restorekc.org/

12/02/2007 7:10 PM  
Blogger Tom Matrullo said...

In fact it's completely related - in the US they're usually called ReSale stores.

12/02/2007 7:38 PM  

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