From Shelter to Stability
Furniture Bank Awarded Grant
The CARITAS Furniture Bank was recently awarded a $5000 capacity building grant from the UPS Foundation for the purchase of equipment that will form the core of our dresser build operation. Karen O’Brien, Furniture Bank Director of Operations, collaborated with Furniture Bank team member Tom Bannard and Associate Director Ron Stilwell to create a request that successfully met the grant requirements.
Our plan is to create dresser “kits”---precut sections of dressers that can be assembled by groups of volunteers either offsite or onsite at our furniture warehouse. The funds provided by the grant will go towards a large professional cabinet saw for cutting the kits, warehouse equipment used to transport materials, a ramp for unloading materials for the truck, drills for dresser construction, furniture dollies for moving completed dressers, and heavy duty trash cans for saw dust and refuse.
We are in debt to Jane Boze, the UPS employee and River Road United Methodist Church member and CARITAS volunteer who nominated CARITAS as a grant recipient. Jane volunteers alongside Jean Dailey at River Road UMC to host both our Single Adult and Family Focus program annually. As a co-Key Volunteer Jane recognizes how diligently our staff works with clients to help them achieve their goals of stability and housing placement through our shelter programs. We are grateful to Jane for furthering our mission by helping to provide furnishings to our clients and to clients of other Furniture Bank partner agencies. Finally, we thank Phillip Warren, Vice President-Community Relations for shepherding our application through the grant process.
If your employer has an employee-centered grant program please think of CARITAS as a nominee.
Tom Bannard (left) and Ron Stilwell (right)