Welcome To Housing Home Goods Bank, Bi-Weekly Blog September 4, 2026
Welcome To Housing Home Goods Bank, Bi-Weekly Blog
September 4, 2026
Greetings Everyone,
Things have been moving forward in many ways for our program.
One of the challenges as readers of this blog know, is the constant focus we have on recruiting volunteers to help fill out our ranks for teams and committees as well as the need for additional hands at our warehouse in Old Town during the week.
October 9th from 10:00am to 2:00pm we’re participating in the Heart of Maine United Way’s Volunteer Fair. They’re hosting it at a venue they call “The Hub” at 700 Mount Hope Avenue in Bangor. It’s in the really nice office park that’s nestled in a wooded area. It’s on the opposite end of Mount Hope from Channel 2 on the other side of Hogan Road.
We were also selected as the nonprofit to work with the Circle One Agency which is made up of Husson University and New England School of Communications. They also have support from alumni.
I was given a set of questions to answer that we’re going to go over when I meet with them as the school. I could have waited to address them when I go but I wanted them to have the answers prior to the class.
I dictated the questions and my answers into my A.I. recorder, the Plaud Note Pro thinking it would be easier and, in some ways, it was but I ended up with two different documents, the straightforward transcription and then the A.I. summary.
It took a while to combine them, but it seemed to be okay once I was done. So, where I have been so busy, I thought I would catch up by sharing the results with you:
Overview of your organization
Welcome to Housing is a 100% volunteer-driven 501(c)(3) nonprofit furniture bank serving the entire state of Maine. The organization provides furniture, household essentials, adaptive equipment, and even home decor to individuals and families in need, who may be escaping disasters, domestic violence, homelessness, or
re-entering the community from the correctional system. Their primary challenge is a lack of public awareness and understanding of what a "furniture bank" is, which hampers their ability to secure volunteers and stable funding. They aim to increase brand recognition, particularly among a younger demographic (high school and college students), and establish a reliable, diversified income stream through corporate sponsorships and annual donations, reducing their dependence on grants. The ultimate goal is to build an endowment to ensure long-term sustainability.
The nonprofit that has been operating for 15 years as of October 2026. The organization functions like a food pantry but for furniture and household goods, serving all of Maine from their location in Old Town. In 2024 we served 1,807 people across 903 households and kept an estimated 46.8 tons of items out of landfills. Despite serving clients from over 80 different referral agencies, they receive very little financial or volunteer support from these partners. The organization has no paid staff and runs on an annual budget of approximately $30,000. Our key differentiators are being entirely volunteer-run, having no geographic service restrictions within Maine, and their wide network of partnerships with social service programs.
Overview of the project-what do you want the students to do? what does success look like?
WTH would like to see OCA help bring the organization up to a higher level of recognition in the eyes of the community, particularly in the business community. WTH being a furniture bank is still a “Unicorn” of sorts and because it was started from scratch and is not affiliated with a larger national organization, it would help to illustrate the importance of WTH as a part of the community. When individuals, businesses and organizations number one, have WTH on their radar and number two realize that we are completely run by volunteers (for 15 years as of October 9, 2026) they are more likely to become a resource and support the program.
The awareness needed will help twofold to support WTH. We are not lacking in agencies and their clients who are recipients but rather need to increase stats in two areas. The first is to build up support in terms of volunteer personnel. Volunteers not only with the warehouse, but also with the Board of Trustees and the teams and committees that serve under the board. These include governance, marketing, volunteer development, community outreach and eventually finance.
Secondly, awareness will open more doors financially both with monetary support and also in-kind support, for example services like the two moving companies now provide.
Success would also look like WTH being “top of mind” when a business, club or organization wanted to do a community service project and also would take any opportunity when WTH holds an event, to participate.
Success would also see WTH as a choice when people choose recipients of their planned giving.
What are your short- and long-term marketing goals?
The client expects the student agency to brainstorm and develop marketing strategies to increase brand awareness and understanding.
Specific Goals: The primary goal is for the public to immediately understand what "Welcome to Housing" does when they hear the name, associating "furniture bank" with the same familiarity as "food pantry." They want to create a catchy, positive, and memorable campaign, possibly using humor, that helps the concept stick. A key target audience for this awareness campaign is the younger demographic (high school and college-age) to build a future pipeline of volunteers.
Success Metrics: Success would be a noticeable increase in public understanding, leading to more inbound volunteer inquiries (especially from students) and an increase in unsolicited donations and sponsorship interest from local businesses and civic groups.
Stakeholders: The project involves the students from the One Circle agency at Husson University.
The primary and most significant point is the widespread lack of public awareness and understanding of the term "furniture bank." This core issue creates several cascading problems for the organization.
Problem Statement: Most people, including potential donors, volunteers, and even partners, have a "blank stare" when they hear "furniture bank" and do not grasp the concept or its importance. They often mistakenly assume people leaving crisis situations move into fully furnished homes.
Impact: This lack of recognition directly hinders fundraising efforts, volunteer recruitment, and the ability to build strategic partnerships. It makes it difficult to secure stable, recurring financial support from businesses and individuals. For example, they approached 80 referral agencies but received minimal financial backing, with the largest contribution from an agency being $1,500 from Penquis after a direct appeal.
Current Situation: They constantly have to explain their mission from scratch, using the analogy "like a food pantry, but for furniture." Their current name, "Welcome to Housing," further confuses people, who often assume they are involved with real estate or landlord services.
We would also hope to develop a strategy for creating a sustainable and diversified income stream.
Specific Goals: To build a model where the organization can rely on a steady flow of income from multiple sources, such as annual corporate sponsorships, civic group fundraisers, and individual planned giving. The goal is to get businesses and organizations to commit to simple annual events that raise "four or five hundred dollars annually."
Timeframe: This is a long-term goal, with the ultimate objective of raising funds beyond the $30,000 operational cost to start building an endowment for future security.
Success Metrics: Success would be securing commitments from multiple businesses or groups for annual fundraising events and seeing an increase in recurring annual donations, moving the organization closer to its endowment goal.
How would you describe your brand personality and positioning?
Our brand personality can best be described as low-barrier, inclusive and user-friendly. Many services for people who are struggling requires lots of red tape and “vouchers” to cover costs. Where WTH provides everything at no charge, sometimes people assume because of this fact AND the fact we have no paid staff, they don’t understand we still have expenses approaching $30,000 per year.
We are on 7 WTH specific social media sites (meaning I also promote on my personal platforms) on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Tik Tok, YouTube. We get good coverage from all three TV stations and the two radio station companies that have given us the most coverage are WKIT-FM with live appearances on the morning show. The other is Townsquare Media based in Brewer. Cindy Campbell, who heads their news department, has done several longer interviews through their Maine Concerns show that runs on 5 stations. It’s a great program but generally runs early mornings on the weekends. We have also had a couple of different podcasts. I would LOVE to see a feature story about WTH and other furniture banks in MaineBiz magazine as furniture banks can have a positive effect in the community through working with partner businesses.
Target audience-primary and secondary customers:
We want to be “on the radar” of businesses, agencies and organizations as an important resource in the community that’s worthy of support through regular monetary donations. Helping people who are starting over from a myriad of circumstances is the right thing to do on all levels.
In addition to the obvious of making their lives easier, it also has a positive impact on neighborhoods and the community overall. As you can see from the stats I have included, when people starting over have many of the basic needs covered, their chances of successfully starting over improves. It helps them with their stability and in turn helps them be an asset to their community.
The other demographic to target is young professionals to become involved with WTH serving on the Board of Trustees and/or the different teams and committees that need volunteers. These include Governance, Marketing, Community Outreach, Volunteer Development and Fundraising.
A good example of something I have seen is an annual community day event in Old and New Capehart in Bangor. It brings many people in those neighborhoods together along with their kids. The program was started by Bangor Housing and involved the support of volunteers representing many agencies who serve those neighborhoods. The main facilitator was a man named Tom Grogan who worked for Bangor Housing and is now working for New Ventures Maine (which used to be the Maine Centers for Women, Work and Community and later opened up to help men as well as women).
A similar program is in its second of third year and is held in the neighborhood near Coe Park. That’s the neighborhood that has Together Place, the YMCA, Shaw House (Youth Shelter) and The Brick Church/The Storehouse. It was organized by Together Place, Wabanaki Mental Heath and Food & Medicine from Brewer.
In BOTH cases there are people participating who have a commitment to making things better in the neighborhood where they live, many are parents, and they’re smart and caring but most often, have NEVER been asked to serve on a board or committee or take on a leadership role, even through they have the smarts and enthusiasm to do so.
Personally, I was never involved on any board or committee until I started attending the public meetings for a program called Partnerships For Healthy Communities. An executive from Eastern Maine Health Care (now Northern Light) turned and pointed to me at one of those large public meetings and simply said: “You have a lot of good ideas; would you like to be on the Board?”
In short, there are a LOT of people out there with the potential to help Welcome To Housing grow as the demand continues to increase for our services and with the help of the One Circle Agency, we should be able to reach more of them.
The other target would be leaders of the many clubs and civic organizations and mission committees at houses of worship to consider supporting Welcome To Housing. This can be done as some already have by making either regular monetary donations, like one church donates $200-$250 twice a year or the agencies like Care and Comfort who did an extended fundraiser with an employee blue jeans or dress down day over several months. They not only collected just under $500, but they also invited WTH to present at their annual staff meeting so there was a huge benefit for us in terms of awareness.
Key differentiators-what makes your brand/product unique?
The fact that we are completely volunteer-driven, meaning in simplest terms, that there are no paid personnel. We contract with a professional accountant to maintain our IRS compliance as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It is the same idea as the insurance coverage we have. In addition to a policy on the building and grounds of the house we own outright, we also have a liability policy that protects our volunteers.
Comparables- could be local, regional, or national:
There are similar programs in Augusta (Project Fresh Start), Westbrook (Furniture Friends has paid staff and only serves people within Cumberland County), and there are two programs in Aroostook County (The Aroostook Veterans Alliance now serves anyone/everyone not just Veterans and their families, and the second one is called County Cares). All of them can be found on Facebook. Other furniture bank example can be found all over the United States and Canada by going to the website: www.furniturebanks.org
The one that we look to as the “Gold Standard” is one in Minnesota called Bridging. Bridging is the largest in North America and my wife and I met one of their volunteers by chance on Cadillac Mountain back in 2014 on the anniversary of our program. We met when the volunteer, Bob Faint redirected a car around ours as we were trying to parallel park and the other car was on my back bumper. Their website is: www.bridging.org
Inspiration-what brands, imagery, or campaigns do you admire or inspire you?
Brands like The American Red Cross, Goodwill and Salvation Army work with us and are good examples of nationally recognized programs that help people who are struggling.
Campaigns that inspire include the social media posts of “Invisible People” which interviews homeless people all over the Country and works to reduce stigma and add humanity to the struggle many people go through. People we help come from a myriad of circumstances and factors that can cause complication and stigma include struggles with income, mental health issues, substance use disorder and any combination of those factors. We also help people reentering the community from corrections. Improvements to build support for people starting over after being incarcerated continue to be made but challenges to get employment and housing still remain and our work helps relieve some of the stress of starting over in a new living setting.
The AI has identified the client's biggest pain point as the widespread lack of public awareness and understanding of what a "furniture bank" is. Here are some possible solutions for your consideration:
Develop a "Tagline & Analogy" Campaign: Since changing the name "Welcome to Housing" is not ideal, create a powerful and ubiquitous tagline that clarifies their mission. Something like: "Welcome to Housing: We furnish empty houses and fill them with hope." This should be paired with the simple, consistent analogy: "It's like a food pantry, but for furniture." This message should be on all marketing materials, social media profiles, and email signatures to drill the concept into public consciousness.
Launch a "A House is Not a Home..." Digital Storytelling Series: Create short, impactful video and photo stories for social media (Instagram Reels, TikTok, Facebook) showcasing the "before" (empty rooms) and "after" (furnished, livable spaces). Feature anonymous testimonials from clients about the impact of a furnished home, reinforcing the statistic that it can reduce the likelihood of returning to a shelter by 50%. This visual, emotional content is highly shareable and effective for younger audiences.
Create a "Furnish a Future" Partner Toolkit: To address the lack of support from the 80+ referral agencies, create a simple digital toolkit for them. It would include: 1) A one-page printable flyer explaining the furniture bank concept. 2) A template email/social media post they can use to ask for donations on behalf of Welcome to Housing. 3) A clear call-to-action for them to contribute $500-$1000 annually, framed as a direct investment in the success of the clients they serve. This makes it easy for partners to support the mission.
Highlight the Environmental "Green" Angle: Target environmentally conscious audiences by creating a campaign around the 46.8 tons of items diverted from landfills. Use slogans like "Donate your sofa, not your planet" or "Maine's Ultimate Upcycler." This positions them not just as a charity, but as a key player in community sustainability, which can attract a different segment of corporate sponsors and individual donors.
Speaking of environmental efforts, as many of you know, our warehouse has a three-unit heat pump system. It is one of the things that we covered with the other half of the $50,000 grant we got years ago from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. $25,000 bought the 6,400 + square foot 1820s house. The house already had a good metal roof, good windows and siding. The other half of the grant covered the heat pumps, adding plumbing using external piping in the form of something know as Pex. It’s not running underneath the floor like traditional plumbing but rather along the wall. It’s not pretty but it gets the job done. We added a nice deep utility sink with a sprayer. Two bathrooms linked up both with their own hot water tanks (small ones).
Earlier this year we saw 24 solar panels added to the roof which will come in handy this winter when we usually get at least one power bill that’s north of $900 for only one month.
So, I have always had the environment in mind but personally didn’t always do as much as I could.
A couple of weeks ago, my beloved, Robin and I were having lunch in our dining room (we both work from home… actually she works, I technically volunteer).
Well as we ate lunch watching the Noon news we recorded from our streaming service, there was a national Toyota advertisement, and they mentioned something that caught Robin’s attention. It mentioned that Camry has models that in addition to be hybrids (that self-charge while driving) also can be ordered with ALL wheel drive. We both reacted with, that’s cool but they’re probably really expensive. Yes, they are but well within what we can afford. So it’s been a wait and I have been so excited. I have a 2012 Sentra Special Edition with about 120,000 miles on it and it has a tiny bit of rust. Rather than trading it in, I am selling it to a great volunteer for a very small sum so the title transfer will look more legitimate. My wife and I have given away a car before to Goodwill and they would put some money into improvements and get it to someone who can really use it.
So again, getting a new car that gets 46 miles per gallon will be a joy.
Today is Saturday September 5th as usual, being busy but the postal service really came through. When I went to pick up the printing for the upcoming “Count Our Blessings Camp-In” (all donated by the UPS Store in Bangor), they also brought out a piece of mail from the Agnes M. Lindsay Trust. We applied for $5,000 to support the adaptive equipment program and things like cribs, The check that came in was actually $6,000 which was a wonderful surprise.
At home my invitation to the annual meeting of Community Health and Counseling later in October at Jeff’s catering. I have been asked to serve as a Corporate Member and serve a three-year term. I was very honored and pulled up email on my phone to respond with “YES” in the subject line. I had to email a second time as the first attempt; I had the address end with dot ERG instead of Org.
Well, I need to head out for now. I still have to proofread this before I ship it off to Joe Lawlor to post on our web page, just in case someone actually reads these.
I want to bid you all a fond adieu or as I like to say, I bid you a cheese fondue!
Sincerely yours,
Christopher K. Olsen
Founder and Board of Trustees President
welcometohousing@ gmail.com
(207) 745-1287
