Cascade Views Podcast
Cascade Views Podcast
Megan Martin - Turning Houses Into Homes
Megan Martin is “in the house” today. Megan serves as the Executive Director of Furnish Hope, which is a local nonprofit organization that collects, warehouses, redistributes and delivers donated home furnishings and household essentials to individuals and families transitioning into stable, affordable housing.
Furnish Hope operates on a referral basis, working with over 54 community partners consisting of organizations such as churches, school programs, social service agencies and more. Once referred, Furnish Hope connects with the family to better understand their needs; the family pays nothing, and in turn, receives the gift of hope, a sense of belonging and a furnished place to call home. You can learn about the organization at www.furnishhope.com.
Megan is one of our heroes and the story of Furnish Hope is one that will inspire you.
I was in a spot several years ago, like I said, the beginning when I, when I found myself no longer in education and and I think that what encouraged me and got me through that was number one knowing that, that I was not alone, and that I was created for a purpose and that I am loved. And that comes from my faith. And knowing that, that God didn't mess up and putting me here that he put me here on purpose and that, that my life has purpose and meaning. And that faith is what catapulted me into the next day and the next day and and my faith is the belief that there is something better to come and that God does have a plan for me. And that each day, there is something that he has someone that he has intentionally out there for me to encourage for me to love on for me to share my joy and my hope with Welcome to
Narrator:cascade views a discussion with Central Oregon leaders. Your host is Michael SIPE, local business and community leader Best Selling Author of the Nevada principle and candidate for Oregon State Representative for House District 53, which encompasses southern Redmon, sisters tombolo, and Northern bend. The purpose of these discussions is to share the views and insights of local leaders from a variety of community sectors on a range of timely and important regional and state issues. With that now, here is your host, Michael SIPE.
Michael Sipe:Thanks for joining us Sun cascade views. This is Michael SIPE, and I'm excited to welcome my friend Megan Martin to the show today. Megan serves as the executive director of furnish hope, which is a 501 C three nonprofit organization that collects warehouses redistributes and delivers donated home furnishings and household essentials to individuals and families transitioning into stable, affordable housing. Furnish help operates on a referral basis working with over 54 community partners, consisting of organizations such as churches, school programs, social service agencies and more. Once referred furnish help connects with the family to better understand their needs. The family pays nothing and in turn receives the gift of hope, a sense of belonging and a furnished place to call home. You can learn about the organization at furnish hope calm. In order to help raise funds to support its annual operating budget furnish help offers a variety of home services including staging and styling, consulting and coaching and home improvement design and sourcing. Each time you hire furnish hope to stay at home, offer a consultation or provide other home services you contribute to the mission. Donating your gently used furniture houseware kitchen items, linens and other items will help us turn empty houses into homes for families in need throughout Central Oregon. Megan is one of my heroes and the story of furnish hope is one that will inspire you. So with that, it's my pleasure to welcome Megan Martin to the show. Hi, Megan.
Unknown:Mike, thank you so much for having me on today. You bet.
Michael Sipe:Well, Megan, your background is not what one would normally expect for someone doing what you're doing with furnish hope. But it's an integral part of the story. So fill us in a little bit on you and your family.
Unknown:Sure. So my family and I have been in Central Oregon for 22 years. And my background is actually as an educator and I was a school teacher for 10 years and a school principal for 10 years. Until one day I wasn't and I found myself suddenly out of a career. And it was really it really traumatic. It was really painful for our family, my three boys collectively went to the private school that I had been the principal of for 21 years between them. And we just found ourselves in kind of a tumultuous situation and one that we never expected to find ourselves in. We were going along great. And then all of a sudden, boom, life turned upside down. We had to sell our house, cash out retirement and my boys ended up going to a different school. So we, you know, our lives were very uprooted. And it was it was really difficult time for us. And it began my search of asking and wondering, what's next for me and Where's where's the next thing? What's my purpose and all that I ever knew was education. That's all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to change the world, one child at a time, one teacher at a time and really make an influence and that door was no longer a possibility. And so I began searching and praying and just asking, Okay, God, I believe you've done design me and everybody meals for a purpose. So what is it that I'm supposed to do? And I, I received an unexpected answer. About a year into that quest, one that I, I would have never anticipated. I was basically expecting another school opportunity to come my way. And instead, I got a text message from my church about a mom with three kids that was leaving a shelter, and she had nothing and was moving into an apartment. She needed everything. And when I received that text message, I received a vision. And the vision seemed impossible. It seemed just crazy, to be honest, it just seemed like the magnitude of it is was just ridiculous. And it was that vision that catapulted me into what I'm doing now with Photoshop
Michael Sipe:will tell us a story then give us an overview of the short but truly amazing story of furnish hope, how did it get started? And then what were some of the key milestones maybe that you've achieved?
Unknown:Yeah. So the vision was, was kind of a this beautiful blueprint of how how we could come alongside and love and support our neighbors in need. And so from from the vision came the actual boots to the ground and the action. And the starting point was meeting with habitat and learning that oftentimes when people were working really, really hard and saving to be able to buy a habitat home, they were using every penny for their downpayment and for getting into the home. And oftentimes, you know, they've been staying with relatives or couchsurfing staying with friends. And they were moving into their habitat home with a little more than their, their personal clothes and a few belongings, but really didn't have adequate furnishings, they might, they might be sharing one bed between a family of four, and they might be coming out of a dilapidated place. That was the case with the the first habitat family that we helped, we found out that they were living in a trailer that was leaking, and it had black mold. And so when they were were able to move into their habitat house that they were purchasing with every penny that the single mom worked really hard for, she didn't have the resource to be able to buy beds for her kids to be able to buy a couch or kitchen table. So furnish help began with with a vision of furnishing homes for Habitat families and coming alongside and being able to offer just the basics that we take for granted each day. I mean, I think it you know, it's, it's pretty easy for for days to go by and to not really consider that there's people all around our community that are tucking their kids in at night. And they actually aren't in a bed that that they're sleeping in an empty place that that they call their home. But they haven't been able to make it a home yet, because every penny that they're earning from working hard is just going towards paying for the rent, and paying for their bills and paying for the food on it. So furnish help began with with furnishing Habitat homes, and in year one, we committed to furnishing 22 Habitat homes. That seems just kind of unimaginable impossible. Because when you start something like this, there's really, there's not enough word of mouth or knowledge about the organization. And so we started just by purchasing and giving away what we had in our own home and going out and buying things that we could give away to other people. And we saw a turning point about six months, and all of a sudden, some miraculous things started happening and people started donating. And with that came our response of saying, Gosh, you know, habitat, families are actually purchasing a home, there's probably a whole demographic of people that that are struggling, that are struggling just to get into a rental. And so we widened our net and reached out to every nonprofit that that we could find and said, Hey, here's who we are and what our mission is, and we'd like to support you. And since since that time in 2019, when we committed to furnishing 22 Habitat homes, our growth has just been exponential in 2020. We went on to furnish 191 homes, so it was like a 786% increase. And then in 2021, we went on to furnish 373 homes. So around a 90% increase in that year, and this year 2022. The referrals just keep coming in at a higher and higher rates each month. I think we're averaging close to 50 referrals a month and home furnishings. So if I do my math, Mike, I think that's probably anywhere from five to 600 Homes. that will be furnishing in 2022.
Michael Sipe:That's incredible. So who are your clients? So maybe in actually, maybe you can just give us a couple of anonymous client success stories?
Unknown:Yeah, absolutely. So just in general terms, we we help people that are coming out of difficult situations. So it could be a mom that's fleeing domestic violence with her kids, it could be a family that's taking in foster kids, it could be somebody that's lost their home to a fire or another natural disaster. It could be somebody that's being relocated by the FBI. It's also folks that are coming out of recovery, or even starting life again, after coming out of incarceration. So there's just a whole gamut, a whole whole set of reasons why somebody is kind of starting my phone over and opening that new chapter and why they need our support. So just a really fresh story. Last week, we were able to furnish a home for this, this young mom, she's She's very smart, she's well educated, and she served on the frontlines for our country, she was a combat vet. And she currently works full time as a vet tech, and has two kids. And she never in a million years imagined that she would find herself in a position of being afraid to leave, afraid to leave an abusive relationship. This girl is tough. And she, you know, she served on the frontlines for our country. But that's what abuse does. And it's what physical and mental abuse does. It sort of messes with your mind. And this beautiful, brilliant young girl was in a in a dangerous relationship with her her ex. And it took a long time for her to muster up the courage to leave. And a lot of it was because she knew that when she left, she'd be leaving everything behind. She'd be walking away from a home from a life where she had what she needed. And one day she made that decision. She hopped in the car with her kids, they grabbed just a few small bags of clothes. And that was it. And they took off. Thankfully, she got connected right away with saving grace and was able to be put into a safe house. And within a short period of time, she was able to get into a rental home. And that's where we got to come alongside and hear her story. Find out her need. And last week, team of volunteers joined us and we went out and we brought hope to her. So when we got to meet her, oh my goodness, she was just so full of appreciation and gratitude. We showed up with a trailer full of everything she would need. We brought beds, bedding, pillows, towels, couch, coffee table, area rug, everything that goes into the kitchen plates, dishes, microwave, and then a kitchen table and chairs. You know when you think about it, when you're when you're starting off, and we you can remember being there Mike, I can remember being there when when you get out of college or you're starting off your business. Every penny is just it's going towards just probably putting the roof over your head. And when somebody is leaving a situation like she was leaving, every penny of hers is going towards rebuilding her life. And she didn't have the extra funds to be able to purchase the things that would make her place a home for her kids. Her kids are starting over again, with school with with new people. And she basically felt like a stranger, you know, in this area, and now she knows that she not only has what she needs for her kids to give them a good night's sleep and the dignity to have their friends over. But she knows that there's people in this area that that see her and that she's loved and that she's not alone. And that's what we're all about.
Michael Sipe:That's so good. So that's an example of how a client comes but how do you get them furniture and how does it all get delivered instead of modeling stuff there?
Unknown:It is yes. So we get furniture from all sorts of places. The number one is just from people like you so people in the community hear about furnish help and they drop off items that our warehouse on Tuesdays and Thursdays and they bring us beds and couches and kitchen tables and kitchen items. The other way that we receive donations is when people are selling a home relocating, they hear about furnish hope because we stay Trump's and that's one of our fundraising activities. But through that word of mouth realtors and people that are in the process of moving donate items to us. And beyond that we are really lucky that there's a ton of resorts and hotels in the Central Oregon area that have heard about our mission and when they're cycling through their inventory of you know condo kind of vacation rental type of furniture. They reach out and they donate it to us. In addition to that, we have really great partnerships. Our very first partnership began with College Hunks back in 2019. They, they brought us truckloads of furniture that was coming out of Eagle Crest resort, and really kick started our work and branching out to nonprofits beyond habitat and extending our services. And most recently, we, we got a call last week from the FBI. And they said, we have 100 households of furniture that we'd like to donate to you. And I was just awestruck. I couldn't believe it. And after reaching out to Les Schwab, one of our other business partners, they quickly and readily said, Yes, we'd love to help you get that furniture over to Central Oregon from from Salem. And so just yesterday, Mike, a huge Les Schwab semi truck showed up just filled to the brim with household furnishings. And we're so excited to engage our volunteers this next week with unwrapping it all and seeing what's there and getting it out into the hands of people in our community that need it.
Michael Sipe:Well, this is begging the question like, What was the FBI doing with? I mean, I know that it was a rabbit trail, but I can't let that Yeah. I mean, like, what was the FBI doing with all that furniture?
Unknown:Well, unfortunately, there was a bad group of people out there that, you know, they were posing as a moving company, and they were taking people's money, loading up their stuff, and never never delivering it. And so it all got got dumped multiple places, but the biggest place they got dumped was this warehouse in Salem. And I think there were 250 victims of this terrible crime. And so long story short, the insurance company got involved for these, these people, and most of them had the chance to just buy new stuff. And they they've had the opportunity to come collect their personal mementos and things. But for the most part, they wanted to just start fresh with the new things that they were able to buy and wanted to donate their items. So because we have worked with the FBI, from time to time, they reached out and said, hey, we'd like to donate this to furnish hope. And, wow, what a gift and a blessing is going to be for our community.
Michael Sipe:No kidding. What a crazy story. That's Yeah, amazing. So you, so you got all this stuff? And and then people need it. How does it get delivered? And how does it get set up?
Unknown:Oh, wow. Yeah, it is a lot of logistics and moving parts. So we can't do the work that we do without volunteers, number one, and it we have close to 100 volunteers that support the mission of furnish help and come alongside us and help us receive donations, pick things up, pack for families do the delivering. And we are literally sending our trucks and trailers all over Central Oregon, all throughout the week in order to accomplish this. And I think that I think this week, we did maybe 15 deliveries. And so just just sort of to understand what goes into it from when we receive a referral from an agency like the American Red Cross, somebody just lost their home to a fire, to contacting the family, finding out what they need, and then being able to pull everything together, get it packed and get it delivered. It takes about 14 hours per per household. And so you can imagine it's a lot of volunteer support, and then the logistics of driving things all over the place. And and we don't charge anything. So that's another another gift to our community. Because so often the folks that we're helping, they don't have the the transportation or the capacity to come pick it up.
Michael Sipe:Wow. So just what are a couple of the operational challenges that I mean, this is really a lot of logistical work. But what do you see as some of the real kind of main operational challenges?
Unknown:Yeah, yeah. Well, for sure, number one, its warehouse space. So as the referrals have continued to increase, and the need out there is growing. We just need more space to be able to receive more donations. And currently, we have a warehouse that's donated to us and it's just been the biggest blessing we could not do what we do without warehouse space and we need increased space in order to keep up with the demand. Second to that we we need to be able to transport the items and just this last week the transmission went out and one of our trucks and we've been hobbling along on one truck this week. We really need at least three trucks in our fleet, three cargo trailers and what really I mean, that's you can't you can't move furniture and get it in and out the door without the transportation. And then obviously, we need the volunteers and the donations and we have just continued to be to be blessed. Every time, our capacity has been stretched, we have had more people come to volunteer and more donations coming in the door. So really the two most central needs right now are the warehouse, space expansion, and then our transportation fleet being expanded. And then, obviously, just from the logistical operational end, we need to grow our staff just a little bit to keep up with all of the phone calling, scheduling, organizing. There's just a lot of backend work in order to support this. And so I guess what all that boils down to Mike is the funding and we fundraise, like you mentioned earlier in the introduction, by by staging homes, and that brings in about a quarter of our operating budget, we also are hosting our very first fundraising event on April 25. And we write a lot of grants and have a lot of monthly donors that support us. So all of those things are really critical to our operation.
Michael Sipe:So as we get ready to wrap up here, what are a couple of key objectives that you have for furnish hope over the next year or two? Obviously, there's some immediate pressing things you had to transmission or truck, but you know, in a, in a bigger picture, what are a couple of the key things that you'd like to see the organization accomplish? Oh,
Unknown:well, that's fun talking about the future. So we want to make sure that as the the referrals are coming to us that that we're we're really taking care of the people well, it's easy to get busier and busier, right with with the needs coming in and to to to just move too fast. And we want to make sure we're all about people We exist to see and to love the people that we're serving. And so we want to make sure that we do that well as the need has continued to grow and probably will grow. And so a big piece of that is just the way that we put time and attention to hearing people's stories. And then following through on the other end, once we've served them checking in and finding out how they're doing and how else they might need to be connected to other resources in the community. Second to that one of our long term goals is to have our own building someday, we we know that furnish hope is a very, very needed resource that the community didn't have up until 2019. And it's a resource that 54 other nonprofits rely on now. And it really is a unique niche. And so we would like to see furnish help move on into perpetuity, and to be there for the long term. And so our goal is to see furnish hope habits, its own warehouse space, that's 12,000 square feet that could really handle the growing demand and the need throughout our area for both the donations to come in. And then to go out the door to families. And then the third piece is really exciting. We will be opening up a storefront in the coming months. And we're really excited to be able to create a bowtique environment with really beautiful decor and home finishing pieces that are often donated to us. And then we redistribute many of them to other thrift stores. Just because we haven't had the the warehouse space to hang on to them. And it's also it's also hard to give people decor not knowing if it would be their style. So we'd love to invite our recipients to come to the store and to be able to give them hope loaded on a card and to say you know what, come pick something out that would make your home beautiful. And we also believe that it will be so well done and so beautifully executed that our Central Oregon Community will want to come shop there and that it will create another self sustaining internal revenue stream to help keep the operations of furnish hope going
Michael Sipe:well, since you're doing it. I am absolutely positive that it's going to be done with excellence and it's going to be beautiful. You're in the hope delivery business. So deliver a word of hope today for our listeners. I bet that there's people listening today that are facing challenges, maybe not in terms of furnishings, but challenge maybe living right on the edge or other challenges relationally or piece wise or whatever. So if you had one bit of encouragement for people facing challenges of any kind today, what would you offer?
Unknown:Well, I'm just going to share from a from my own personal experience, Mike because I was in a spot several years ago like I said at the beginning when I when I found myself no longer in education. And and I think that what encouraged me and got me through that was number one knowing that, that I was not alone, and that I was created for a purpose and that I am loved. And that comes from my faith. And knowing that, that God didn't mess up and putting me here that he put me here on purpose, and that, that my life has purpose and meaning. And that faith is what catapulted me into the next day and the next day, and, and my faith is the belief that there is something better to come, and that God does have a plan for me. And that each day, there is something that he has someone that he has intentionally out there for me to encourage for me to love on for me to share my joy and my hope with. And so my encouragement to any listeners out there, who are struggling and needing hope would be that, that I personally have found my hope, and my faith in Jesus Christ. And it's just a game changer, I would say that if, if, if you're if you're lacking hope, there is one source for it, and it is in Jesus Christ, and He loves you and our Lord and, and Father Who has created you has a purpose. And there's there is so much good to come. And there are beautiful things that can come from terrible situations. I've experienced it myself. I'm living testimony of it. And so I would just say, be encouraged and reach out if you need help and help.
Michael Sipe:Well, Megan, you're an inspiration, the work that you do and the community is, is so valuable, and I am grateful. So many people are grateful and the community is better because of the work of furnish hope. My main takeaway, I think today is just the just hearing the joy in your voice, in terms of envisioning the future of what can be and how this can continue to grow and serve our community so well. As well as the grounding for the hope that you have. So Megan, I really appreciate your time today and I sure appreciate your message.
Unknown:Well, thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me on and for helping spread the word about hope and thank you for being such a big supporter as well.
Michael Sipe:You bet my guest for this show has been Megan Martin, Executive Director of furnish hope you can learn more about the organization you can get involved you can volunteer you can donate furniture, you can donate time, you can donate funds, big mission big need. Find out more about furnish hope and its services at furnish hope.com Thanks for tuning in.
Narrator:Thanks for listening to cascade views with Michael SIPE. To find out more about Mike the upcoming election. The key issues he's focused on in his campaign to represent Central Oregon and Salem as a state representative. Visit www dot a voice for Central oregon.com that's www dot a voice for Central oregon.com You can get your own copy of Michael sites best selling book the Avada principle@amazon.com. And finally, please vote in the upcoming election. Your Voice Matters