Furniture and Baby Goods 
Our goal is to provide expensive goods such as furniture and baby gear to clients in the Merrimack Valley, MA that could not otherwise afford them. Donated cribs, furniture, backpacks and more - help to make low income apartments into warm homes. Our weekly E-Newsletter lets the public know exactly what is needed each week for us to fill more than 18,000 wishes per year for more than 100 social service agencies.
 | In 2007 we filled more than 600 homes with furniture, kitchen bed and bath goods for families moving permanently from shelters into low income apartments. By providing complete homes full of furniture at no charge to them we: provide a leg up, help the public find a home for no longer needed goods, and improve the environment by reducing bulky waste. Your goods are saving our needy clients more than $700,000 a year while reducing waste in landfills. |
The efforts of the Wish Project begain in 2003. The Project became a 501c3 in 2005 and moved into the current location a 13,000 sq ft warehouse in 2006. We provide a central place for the public to help the local needy and know that their time and goods are going out for free to the neediest clients from more than 100 social service agencies.
The founder, Donna Hunnewell, spent several years investigating how to best help the homeless in her town. She volunteered and visited with leaders from many shelters, pantries and other agencies and compiled an Excel spreadsheet of "what goods are needed during what time of year". With a minivan and a cell phone she began answering calls from caseworkers . for clients that urgently needed goods. Over the five years it took to raise two babies to school age, she kept responding to Wish Cell calls while seeking a permant warehouse home for the Project.
In 2005 with the help of a Jerich Road volunteer, she created an online public matching service called the "Wish List". The idea was to make it easy for the public to find an agency that needed that donated item. But it soon became clear that few agencies had the trucks, space or staff to receive donations the way the public wanted to donate them. So, based on the food bank model, she began a Goods Bank. Through support of the City of Lowell Hunger/Homeless Commission and a Community Development Block Grant, The Wish Project moved 4 times in 2005 and finally settled into a large warehouse space big enough for a furniture bank in 2006.
This large space allows us to make use of very large corporate donations such as entire hotels full of mattresses. And by accepting off season goods and saving them we work to minimize the emergency needs for goods by anticiapting for them.
We can also accomodate more than 100 volunteers at one time and work nights and weekends to best meet volunteer's scheduling needs.
Many things are needed seasonally for instance backpacks in September and coats during the winter. So we run monthly service projects to increase public awareness of the specific needs while raising awareness of the many subpopulations of needy clients. Our Service Projects generate more than $300,000 worth of new goods each year. Each backpack and newborn kit means one more mother that is a bit more able to buy food or pay a bill that month. Then funnel large quantities of goods to many agencies - right when they need them.
We coordinate the delivery of goods to clients through the case workers that know them best and provide "only what they need, when they need it." We are dedicated to the belief that individual clients in need are best served when served by the system. So we work along side all the agencies to provide goods in the most efficient way possible for the benefit of all; including government, faith-based, and private non-profit organizations.
Most agencies are from the Greater Lowell and Lawrence area although we help out to Newburyport and up to Southern NH. The clients served include families, battered women, children, teens and single adults in shelter, children with AIDs, and new immigrants from more than 14 countries. More than 85% of the 20,000 clients we serve are women and children. Roughly 33% are spousal assualt victims (women and the children).Most wishes are for furniture, home and baby goods. It is the volume of need for basic things each week that is staggering. In this day and age in America, no child should be sleeping on the floor for lack of a bed.
