STORE HOURS:

 

 

Know someone de-cluttering their garage?  Tell 'em we'll pick up their donation for free!  Know someone renovating on a budget?  Send them over to hunt for bargains!  

Help spread the word about what we do, and you can win big:  every week, we'll have a drawing for a $30 Community Forklift gift certificate.

 

You have unlimited chances to win, and multiple ways to play.  Here's how:

 

 

 

 

By the way, tagging yourself and your friends in photos already posted on our page counts as well. See, it's fun and easy!

 

 

 

Ah, Earth Day. It's that shiny moment in April abuzz with anybody and everybody talking their saving-the-planet talk.

 

Of course, actually walking that environmental walk is a bit trickier-especially on a year-round basis. But with its unique voice and gait, the Community Forklift seems to have figured out that 365-day-a- year talk and walk balance.

 

And, as any regular customer knows, the Edmonston nonprofit hasn't had to preach any holier-than-thou, eat-your-broccoli, recycle-or-die sermons to achieve that eco-equilibrium during its seven-year history.

 

Instead, ever since its tiny but ingenious staff of four scratched out a daring reuse mission of "lifting up communities" back in late 2005, the Forklift has chosen to welcome anybody dedicated to advancing this grand but funky green experiment with a warm smile and a hearty embrace.

 

This open-minded approach - a combination of outside-the-box thinking and old-fashioned elbow grease - has spawned legitimate conservation credentials for the Forklift. For instance, the venture has created 30 green jobs, a seven-fold increase in seven years, to keep its 34,000-square foot warehouse humming. It's evolved into a donation repository where tradespeople, contractors, property owners and institutions as diverse as National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institution have diverted $8 million worth of building materials from landfills, giving 20,000 local homeowners access to affordable repairs and renovations.

 

"We're hitting our stride," said Nancy Meyer, the Forklift's chief executive officer since 2012. "We're still in a high-growth mode so the challenge now is attending to a million details and trying to make order in a young organization."

 

Meyer had joined the small Forklift staff as its business manager in early 2007 when it was barely out of its infancy. Her arrival seemed a hand-in-glove fit for an advocate who had gravitated to a career nurturing young and struggling nonprofits, after earning an undergraduate degree in Individual Studies and Art and doing graduate work in American Studies and Education. Before attending college in her mid-20s, she made her living as a union-trained carpenter for several years.

 

By 2009, Meyer had advanced to a position as the Forklift's chief operating officer, charged with guiding an earnest but somewhat wobbly toddler of an organization.

 

"I knew this place was not business as usual and I wanted to maximize its potential," she said about the Forklift's magnetic pull that has kept her there for six years. "I enjoy dealing with the building materials, but this is about being at a place that's the crossroads of a community where so many different people interact."

 

Lists compiled by organizations such as the Building Materials Reuse Association, a trade group the Forklift belongs to, are evidence that hundreds of home improvement thrift stores exist nationwide. And they wouldn't be operating if they couldn't collect the lumber, flooring, woodwork, doors, appliances, bathtubs, sinks and lighting fixtures that attract customers.

 

Meyer certainly comprehends the value of each of those items. But in her view, they are a means for cultivating relationships with every layer of the community, not the be-all and end-all. 

 

Simply put, people matter at the Forklift.  

 

"Yes, we sell stuff but it's never just about the materials," Meyer said. "A vital part of what we do is respect and honor the part humans play. It's about building capacity and knowledge."

 

Our friends at Leafyhead Lotions & Potions will be selling medicinal seedlings at Community Forklift on these two days only!  These hard-to-find plants have special medicinal uses, and herbal medicine master Tricia McCauley will be here to answer all your questions.  Here's a few examples of what she'll have available:

Alkanet, angelica, arnica, basil, boneset, calendula, california poppy, catnip, cilantro, comfrey, dill, fennel, gentian, holy basil, lobelia, luffa, pennyroyal, skullcap, spilanthes, stevia, thyme, & yarrow

 

We hope to see you out at the warehouse soon!

Your friends at Community Forklift