Furniture bank helps pioneer network

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/01/2022 (1376 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Selkirk Avenue furniture bank Oyate Tipi Cumini Yape is partnering with a Toronto-based organization to fast forward its shift from non-profit to social enterprise.

The organization from Toronto, called Furniture Bank, has developed a cloud-based network that helps co-ordinate furniture pickups, evaluate donations, generate tax receipts and even calculate the space a donation will take up in the truck. All this is done using information donors will enter on Oyate Tipi’s website.

That will provide the system Oyate Tipi needed to rebrand itself as a furniture removal social enterprise. It plans to pick up people’s unwanted furniture for a fee, building on revenues from the organization’s existing bed bug eradication service. Furniture will then be distributed to those in need.

“I’m very invigorated by this community and structural-level change,” Oyate Tipi executive director Alexandra Béasse said. “When I started her two years ago, we never even dreamed of being self sufficient. We were on the cusp — what if we can’t get government grants, what do we do. And now we can support ourselves and grow.”

Béasse said tapping into the Furniture Bank Network, as it’s called, provides the organization with resources that set it ahead by 10 years.

In fact, that’s about how long Furniture Bank has been fine-tuning the network.

“About a decade ago, we had to start adding technology and logistics to be able to reach the scale that we’re at, but most charities never have those resources. Most charities don’t have the IT people or marketing people or systems, and they have to find those people to do that,” said Dan Kershaw, executive director of Furniture Bank. “The neat thing about the Furniture Bank Network … is it allows charities like Oyate Tipi to plug in and benefit from the large systems that are at play here in Toronto.”

By plugging into the network, furniture banks across the country will gain access to the services without having to scrape up a budget to maintain the network or spend years developing it, Kershaw said.

Oyate Tipi is the third furniture bank to join the Furniture Bank Network and the first outside of Ontario; although, Kershaw and Béasse said they’d each heard interest from other organizations in Canada.

For Béasse, to become self-sufficient means Oyate Tipi will be freed to focus on what truly matters to its mission.

“The ultimate goal is getting more furniture in the hands of people who need it. Because four walls is not a home until you have the furniture,” Béasse said.

The growth of the network also opens other opportunities, Kershaw said. With the help of an organization called Furniture Link, Furniture Bank is looking to leverage the clout of a national network of non-profits to partner with corporations such as IKEA, Wayfair and Amazon, each of which deal with returned furniture and goods on a huge scale.

Kershaw said IKEA in particular is very interested in seeing how the network develops. If furniture banks can tap into returned goods that now end up destroyed or in landfills, that could make a significant impact, Kershaw said.