The Heart of Home Furnishings

NEW YORK—Charitable works are a noteworthy aspect of the home furnishings business, but sometimes go unheralded. This week, we rectify that with a few examples of recent community outreach.

Walker Furniture held a ceremony and luncheon at the VFW Post in North Las Vegas late last month to announce this year’s 12 U.S. military veterans who will be receiving furniture, some specialized, as part of Walker‘s sixth annual Help for Heroes program. John Mull’s Road Kill Grill provided the lunch to the veterans and their friends and families while the Las Vegas Rescue Mission donated food boxes to each recipient. This year’s new community partner Yes Air Conditioning is providing any air conditioning or plumbing repairs each recipient may need.

The Miami Dolphins in collaboration with Ashley HomeStore surprised 100 underprivileged children with the gift of comfortable sleep at the third annual Hope to Dream Sleepover last month. Each of the children enjoyed a sleepover party at the Baptist Health Training Facility, where they received their own twin-size bed and bedding from Ashley HomeStore complete with a Miami Dolphins comforter.

Malouf has partnered with software company Podium to support child survivors of sexual exploitation. Podium is offering exclusive pricing to all Malouf retail partners, giving them complete access to its full range of resources on customer interaction management and online review management. For every Malouf customer that creates an account, Podium will donate an additional percentage to the Malouf Foundation to help the organization fight child sexual exploitation.

BJ’s Wholesale Club is donating $75,000 to Forgotten Harvest’s Summer Lunch Program to provide quality meals to at-risk children in metro Detroit. Since December 2018, BJ’s has donated $175,000 to Forgotten Harvest, a Feeding America member food bank, to support families experiencing food insecurity.

Amazon is making an $8 million donation to housing and homeless nonprofits in its headquarters regions and making a company match for employee contributions. Plymouth Housing will receive $5 million from Amazon to provide permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness in Seattle; $3 million will go to the Arlington Community Foundation in Arlington, Va., to increase access to affordable housing for low-income families and veterans.

All Jordan’s Furniture store locations have been collecting donations of new and gently used clothing and shoes for children from birth to 12 years old in support of Cradles to Crayons’ Ready for School program. This marks the 13th year of Cradles to Crayons’ school preparedness program, which provides low-income and homeless children in Massachusetts with the essential back-to-school supplies and clothing needed to start the year prepared and excited to learn. The Cradles to Crayons/Jordan’s Furniture partnership, now in its eighth year, has supported more than 18,000 children to date and expects to pass the 20,000 mark this year. The collection runs through Aug. 18.