Wharton / Penn Alumni Griffin Amdur, Andrew Witherspoon, and James McPhail from the class of 2018 started the Chicago Furniture Bank (“CFB”) in July 2018 after winning Penn's President’s Engagement Prize. The CFB (501c3) and its sister nonprofit Honest Junk Company collect furniture donations and household goods to redistribute to Chicagoans leaving shelters and moving into permanent housing.
The mission of the Chicago Furniture Bank is to provide dignity, stability, and comfort to families and individuals that face poverty by allowing their clients to handpick an entire home's worth of furniture for free. In just three years, the organization has gone from a 3 person operation to a 35 person team that just purchased its own warehouse. In 2021, the CFB will furnish 3,200 homes for 8,000 clients through partnerships with 400 local social service agencies, diverting 5,000 tons of furniture from landfills. https://www.chicagofurniturebank.org
Come show your support for our local alumni and help the CFB by volunteering outdoors next week:
On Sunday, 8/22 the Chicago Furniture Bank will be hosting the Gold Coast Art Fair from 9:30 am-6:00 pm and is in need of 12 volunteers to help run the event. Volunteers will be placed at entrances of the fair collecting payment for tickets (proceeds will be donated to the CFB). Support from members of the Wharton Club Chicago would be a huge help to the organization. Those interested in volunteering please fill out the Google Form.