Three ways you can help!
Updated: Mar 24, 2022
Dear friends,
Our Apartment Shelter Program served 84 families with kids through shelter services in 2021! The prior year we sheltered 72. Additionally...
More than 70% secured permanent housing (i.e., signed a lease);
Our housing retention rate still holds firm at 88% (2 years);
Our length of stay increased from about 50 days pre-pandemic to about 90 days/family.
Constant school/work quarantines and sicknesses played a small part, sure, but we know we need to do better here.
Now we need your help. We believe in the dignity this program provides, and we want to see it continue. Below are three ways you can help now, next month, and later this year. Every dollar, volunteer hour, and prayer matters, the same way every family that calls us for shelter matters.
Thank you for all of it--past and present--because together anything's possible.
With faith,
Mike Chapuran
Executive Director
1) Plan to give to the #NightWithoutABed fundraising campaign launching Friday, April 1, or participating in the interfaith "sleep out" April 30!
The #NightWithoutABed campaign is launching on Friday, April 1 and culminates with a "sleepout" at University United Methodist on Saturday, April 30. Thirty-two people already registered to attend in tents and cars! For two years, this event has single-handedly allowed us to rent apartments and furnish them as shelters for families. Every week, families with new or increased income take over our leases, keep all the furnishings, and live independently. The best part? Their children sometimes never know they stayed in a "shelter!" Plus, it's more 30% cost effective then traditional brick and mortar shelters (read the reasons why).
If you can make a gift this April, we are so thankful. If you can make a team and encourage others to contribute, it makes a difference. If you can "sleep out" with us at University UMC on April 30, it contributes to a bold community statement. Let's get that goal of turning no one away from shelter next year.
2) Mustard Seed (furniture bank) has temporarily shut its doors. Can you donate a piece of used furniture?
While Mustard Seed--our nonprofit furniture bank partner in Fishers, IN--continues its new executive director search, we are set to lease about 14 apartment shelters in the next two-to-three months. We need your help! Can you donate a bed, couch, chair, or table? If so, add your name to the list linked below, and you'll get an email within a week or two from our volunteer Laura Nichols who is coordinating this for us free of charge for the next 60 days! She'll send another volunteer(s) out with our trailer to pick it up and take it to our newly rented storage units. We are grateful for the support, as it can save us more than $20,000 purchasing all the furniture needed!
3) Can your congregation or company do a housewares drive this year and volunteer to set up an apartment shelter?
We turn over leases to families weekly, so we are constantly renting and furnishing new units. Doing a drive to supply an apartment shelter is a great way for congregations and companies to get involved. Just click the sign-up link below, choose a month when you can do a drive, and four weeks prior we will send instructions and the housewares list. We will team you up with other groups if you want (if you don't want to partner, fill in all three blanks for the team with your congregation or company name). Thanks for helping us meet the need!
P.S. We regret we do not have capacity to respond to all individual inquiries about donations of housewares since we do not have a staff volunteer or donations coordinator. Our formula for success has been volunteer coordinators from congregations (and now some companies) generously leading the procurement efforts for an entire apartment at a time.
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