Redwood is a charity in Barrie, Ontario founded in 2009 to respond to the community’s need for more affordable housing. Since inception, Redwood has operated as a social enterprise, seeking to solve social challenges in the community while optimizing internal operations.
In March 2018 Redwood’s co-founders, Timothy and Rhonda Kent, were contemplating how to provide furniture to their housing clients in Barrie. They were committed to assisting everyone who moves out of Redwood’s furnished supportive housing units to furnish their next place. But staff were spending evenings and weekends trying to source furniture for transitional residents who are moving into permanent housing. Their team is at capacity.
They begin to explore establishing a furniture bank within the organization, not just to meet the needs of their own residents but to address the need in the broader community. But they don’t have any experience doing furniture banking at scale and do not have a capital fund to establish a removal trucking enterprise to create a flow of goods.
Simultaneously, Furniture Bank is exploring how to support other charities outside the GTA without a cash drain on its core operation. Dan Kershaw, Executive Director of Furniture Bank is introduced to Tim and Rhonda and sees this as an opportunity to test some theories that he and Annalee Sawiak, now Chief Sustainability Officer, had. They called it Something From Nothing, based on the Phoebe Gillman children’s book.