Making a house a home
Spring 2024 Newsletter
Thank you for supporting the Cleveland Furniture Bank (CFB). We’re excited to bring you this newsletter to share information about the CFB including our programs, clients, partners, donors, volunteers, and our team. We are grateful for the many people and organizations that have supported our mission for the past 16 years. We want to share their stories with you.
Partner Profile – Frontline Service
They’ve served our country. Now they don’t have a place to live. This is the reality for too many veterans and their families. Fortunately, they can find help through Supportive Services for Veteran Families, a program offered by Frontline Service. Frontline Service is a non-profit agency that works to end homelessness, prevent suicide, resolve behavioral health crises, and overcome trauma. Frontline partners with the Cleveland Furniture Bank (CFB) to provide furniture and other household items to veterans and other clients that are moving out of homelessness and into permanent supported housing. Having furniture and other furnishings makes a big difference to families moving into a place of their own. It gives them comfort and a sense of home that they wouldn’t feel without it.
The CFB is proud to have partnered with Frontline to serve 119 clients last year and 25 clients through the end of February this year.
Learn more: www.Frontlineservice.org
Annual Fundraiser
Inside the Park Home Run
Our 11th Annual Inside the Park Home Run fundraiser to support our Beds for Kids program and Furniture for Families program is scheduled for June 16, 2024. The event will be held at Progressive Field again this year. We hope many families will come out on Father’s Day to support this family friendly event that helps families leaving a homeless situation to make a house into a home. The event includes a 4-mile run, a 1-mile walk/run, and a kids run on the warning track at Progressive Field. New this year is an opportunity to see a Guardians game at a future date and receive a Guardian’s hat. Registration for the event opens on March 15 at
https://runsignup.com/Race/OH/Cleveland/Insidethepark
Celebrate Dad while you are helping children receive new beds and families receive the furniture they need to furnish a home to change their lives.
Board Member Spotlight –
John Klipfell, Founding Board Member
From the beginning of the Cleveland Furniture Bank, John Klipfell has been at the board table leading the way. While John was serving as Executive Director of the St. Vincent DePaul Society of Cleveland, he helped develop our current Cleveland Furniture Bank model and has been an ardent supporter ever since. John joined the nonprofit world after serving in various senior executive positions for American Greetings Corporation for 25 years. John and his wife of 53 years, Cheryl, live in Broadview Heights and have two children and three grandchildren. This dynamic duo has visited all 50 states, all ten provinces of Canada, and all four countries of the UK, walked on all seven continents, sailed on all five oceans, and has visited 120 different countries. So glad after all this John still finds time to guide the Cleveland Furniture Bank forward.
YEAR END APPEAL
We want to thank all the donors for our year-end appeal. Your generosity is what helps us to meet the needs of the clients we serve throughout the year.
This year we asked for support for those clients who are unable to pay the administrative and delivery fees to receive furniture and beds. Fifty-two of the donations received were directed to this need. Through the end of February, we were able to assist 31 families who otherwise would not have benefited from our program. The remaining funds will be utilized as others reach out to us to make their house into a home.
The need for this type of assistance is not unique to the end of the year. Throughout each year we meet families who cannot cover these costs. So, our appeal continues. Anytime throughout this year that you would like to help, please consider a donation of $180 so another family can leave a homeless situation.
You can send a check to Cleveland Furniture Bank, 13360 Smith Road, Middleburg Hts., OH 44130 or
Thank you again for your past support.