Following the success of the 2025 Chair Affair, Executive Director Anna Kurnizki writes to Community Warehouse supporters with gratitude, sharing highlights from the past year and celebrating their incredible impact on the community.
We live in a time that feels both more connected and more divided than ever. That tension—between connection and disconnection—can feel overwhelming. But here’s what I know: the antidote to division and isolation is community. And there is no better place to feel the power of community than with Community Warehouse.
Because Community Warehouse is as local as it gets…as local as your living room.
Think about your own home for a moment. You may see the hallmarks of family—things passed down. The marks of your personality—your taste in art, the color of your sofa. If you’re a Portlander, maybe a Pendleton blanket, or a thrifted coffee table—pieces that tell your story. These things matter. They remind us where we’ve been, what we’ve overcome, what brings us comfort and groundedness and joy.
Now, imagine having nothing in your home.
Years ago, that was the reality for Fidel and his family when they immigrated from Cuba. As a teenager, he advocated for his family to receive furniture from Community Warehouse. Years later, as the founder and executive director of Project LEDO, which provides STEM education for BIPOC youth, he still holds onto a mixing bowl from the Warehouse, and his mom still has this little white toaster they picked out at the furniture bank. Why? In Fidel’s words, “It’s a reminder of where we were and where we are now.”
Furniture is not just functional. It’s deeply personal. It holds our stories, our resilience, and our dignity.
After receiving furniture from Community Warehouse, people feel more connected to their community–and often inspired to pay it forward.
Many of you know that feeling. Because there’s something magnetic about the energy of Community Warehouse. Maybe you’ve dropped off dishes, found a favorite piece at the Estate Store, or shared our mission with a friend.
It’s that local impact, that beautiful feeling when you’re contributing to something that benefits you and others equally. Passing an essential household item from one home to another—that’s what we do for family.
And when we do it for our community, it brings us closer together.
So whether you showed up to Chair Affair last month in your ballgown—or are showing up tomorrow in your tennis shoes to donate a dresser—you’re helping make sure Community Warehouse is here for your neighbors when they need it most.
And if you haven’t heard, Community Warehouse has been up to some pretty amazing things:
- In 2024, we launched a 4-day workweek for our staff while increasing accessibility for our community by adding Saturday services!
- We’ve opened our third location in Gresham and will begin providing furniture bank services in East County this spring!
- We’ve joined Oregon’s statewide mattress recycling program—so drop off your mattress or box spring at our Portland location and it’ll be reused or recycled!
- We’re leading the charge in the conversation on furniture poverty and supporting furniture banks across the country by helping co-found the National Furniture Bank Coalition!
- And this year, we expect to furnish over 4,000 homes in our community!
Watch this video for a closer look into our expansion efforts!
Community is truly at the heart of Community Warehouse, and we have to look out for each other right now.
Despite the challenges nonprofits are facing today, our furniture bank isn’t going anywhere, and neither are our values:
- We will continue to champion reuse because we believe in sustainability and climate justice.
- We will continue to stand for housing equity because everyone deserves dignity and a place to call home.
- We will continue to embrace immigrants and refugees, because that’s who we are, and that’s how this organization was founded.
- And we will continue to stand up, and to show up with kindness and love—because we believe in the power of community.
Now is the time to stand together. We need you. We need each other.
Please consider making a gift to ensure that Community Warehouse continues to be a place of stability, dignity, and hope for thousands of families in our community.
Thank you.