Month: June 2016

We’re looking for more partners

Since 2002 IRN has provided more than 5,200 trailers and shipping containers filled with furnishings and equipment to nonprofit organizations working in 52 countries around the world, and in 47 U.S. states.  To the nearly 150 charitable organizations who have been our partners, we thank you for making our work possible.

Word about IRN is spreading among colleges and universities, corporations, and K-12 schools and districts who have excess furnishings and want a better option than throwing them away.  As a result we have a growing supply of very good quality furnishings suitable for homes, clinics, orphanages, libraries and schools.  These are available to IRN’s charitable partners at no cost other than transportation from our project site to your location.  If you have not worked with IRN before, please get in touch, and let us start supplying your needs.

Check out our online wish list 

We’re not IT wizards, very far from it.  But we try.  We have a new electronic wish-list for our charitable partners at http://irnsurplus.com/recipients-wishlist.html.  Please take a look, and if you haven’t done so already, please take two or three minutes to fill it out.  That will give us a good idea what kinds of projects are best suited to your needs, so we can reach you when we have a good match (and not bug you with unsuitable projects).

In 2015 IRN provided more than 600 tractor-trailer-loads of furnishings to nonprofit organizations in 26 US States and 29 countries around the world.  In 2016 we’re on track to far surpass that total.

How do we get there?  What is it that IRN actually does?

Here’s a day in our life:  May 27, 2016.

On May 27 we handled six projects in four states:  Massachusetts, New Jersey, and two each in Illinois and New Mexico.  Three were at colleges, one a corporation, one an elementary school, and one a high school.  Two were one-day projects; the others were part of projects that extended over several days, or in one case several weeks.

Two college projects shipped mixed dormitory furniture, one consisted entirely of dormitory mattresses.  The corporation provided a mixture of professional office seating, tables, desks, and storage.  The elementary and high schools provided a mix of classroom, administrative, science, and library furnishings.  These project filled a total of eighteen trailers on May 27, including eight 40-foot overseas shipping containers and ten 53-foot trailers for domestic recipients.

Long before the projects started, we had matched their inventories with nonprofit partners, and set up trucks and trailers to arrive at our six sites.  The shipments on May 27 were provided to four different charities, and ultimately shipped to seven locations:  two truckloads to a tribal school in Utah, one truckload each to independent schools in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, six to Habitat for Humanity locations in Indiana; three shipping containers of mattresses to communities in Haiti; one shipping container to a school in Haiti; and four overseas containers to schools in El Salvador.

What is it they got?  By the end of the day on May 27, IRN had packed and shipped a total of 3,463 pieces of furniture, including nearly 1,000 student and administrative desks, 250 work and activity tables, more than 900 chairs, over 250 bookcases and storage cabinets, 228 beds, and nearly 600 mattresses.

All kept out of US landfills.  Our clients, the schools and the company that generated the surplus, saved money, and did the right thing for the environment and the society of which we are all part.

All on their way to a second life in communities where buying new is not an option.  Our charitable partners got thousands of good-quality furnishings to support their social and humanitarian missions, for nothing more than the cost of transportation.

May 27, 2016.  A busy day.  A typical day in May for IRN.  A good day.