CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Attention Greater Cleveland nonprofits: You need it, you name it -- they just might have it in stock at the newly opened Goods Bank NEO.
Call it “semi-retirement” for two Shaker Heights residents, who got the keys in mid-August to a 15,000-square-foot warehouse near Gordon Park with the idea of “filling the need, bridging the gap and stretching the impact” for thousands of organizations, schools and faith-based groups in Cuyahoga County.
“We could not be moving any faster,” Goods Bank NEO Founder and Executive Director Judy Payne said in a late September tour of their repurposed automotive industry facility.
The place, which Payne likens to “a food bank of goods,” was already filling up with various and sundry items, often arriving by the truckload and including:
- Personal care and toiletries (“A big item,” Payne noted)
- Cleaning supplies
- School and office supplies
- Clothes
- Housewares and small appliances
- Baby supplies
- Building supplies
- Toys, arts and crafts, recreation supplies
- Furniture
- Electronics
“We’re just starting to sign up members in order to get these items to the nonprofits and then to the people who need them,” said Payne, who sees it as a variation on the earlier venture she co-founded, The Cleveland Kids’ Book Bank, once described as “a food bank for the mind.”
One difference is that Goods Bank NEO seeks unused merchandise -- generally surplus, discontinued or otherwise discarded, much of it by major retailers and still in the box.
“This stuff is new -- we want people to have something beyond ‘secondhand,’” Payne said, adding that some of it is obtained by going directly to the manufacturing sector.
Goods Bank NEO is an independent Community Redistribution Partner of Goods360, “a global leader in product philanthropy and purposeful giving,” according to the website of the 30-year-old organization, based in Virginia with close to 80 local operations across the country.
Another purposeful benefit comes from getting these goods out of the potential waste stream, since most of it can’t be recycled.
“As for about 90 percent of the stuff you see here, if it wasn’t in this warehouse, it would wind up in a landfill,” said Goods Bank NEO Founding Board Chair and fellow Shaker resident Scott Garson.
Garson, a retired real estate broker and former Shaker Heights Development Corp. (SHDC) board president still active with “The Fund” capital campaign, added that the more than 14,000 Greater Cleveland nonprofits “can save a lot of time on their own scouring the internet for these items -- they can come here once a week or twice a month to stretch their dollars and impact.”
It all starts with a nominal $100 annual administrative fee that creates a revolving fund for Goods Bank NEO. From there, member organizations can buy products for their own use -- or give them away. Those are the rules, plain and simple.
“Members need to show to us that they will not monetize these goods, that they will not show up on a marketplace somewhere,” Garson said.
Payne added that “there are no auctions -- nonprofits can get kicked out if they are monetizing anything. They have to give it away, because those were the corporate donors’ expectations.”
That way, there will be no profiteering on baby products, diapers, toys, breast milk pumps or whatever else comes in.
“It can be another ‘adventure in sorting’ every time we open up a new box,” Garson said of the intake area. “We’ve gotten some weird stuff,” some of which might not make it past the “tinker table,” where new goods are tested and evaluated.
The pair recalled recently unloading two trucks in the same day, and then getting asked if they could take another one.
While not geared for individual drop-off’s, Goods Bank NEO continues to look for donations -- product or money -- as well as volunteers to help sort, stock and price inventory.
“Cleveland needs this -- how can we not have a center like this?” Payne said of the early rationale for getting such an operation up and running. “We have foster kids and families, homeless shelters and the Refugee Services Collaborative, just to name a few.”
There is at least one secondhand or slightly used item that Goods Bank NEO would be willing to accept in bulk.
After receiving hundreds of reusable shopping bags through a collection drive sponsored in recent months by the Cleveland Heights Green Team, Payne noted that “we would love for others to do tote bag collections for us.”
CH Green Team co-founder Catalina Wagers agreed that the concept ties in with their local organization’s sustainability theme.
“Instead of going to a landfill, these goods find a new life,” Wagers said. “And as a function of this, they want it to go to the neediest people.”
And their work is not done, as Garson noted.
“A year ago, I retired from a paycheck. But I didn’t retire from life.”
Garson and Payne also expressed gratitude to Dave’s Markets for providing an abundance of shelving and fixtures for storing and displaying their inventory for nonprofits.
For more information about Goods Bank NEO, visit their website at https://goodsbankneo.org/ or email at info@goodsbankneo.org or call (216) 677-2454.
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