Furniture Mission looks to the future, offering hope alongside home furnishings

Conceptually, there’s not much difference between the tight confines of the Furniture Mission and any number of retail operations catering to the upper-middle-class households that are the backbone of Sioux Falls.

There is a difference, of course.

It’s money, and station, and desperation and hope.

In a small warehouse on the east side of downtown Sioux Falls, the staff at the Furniture Mission design living rooms from donated pieces. A couch, some end tables, a lamp, coffee table and throw pillows. Just like you’ll see when you’re walking through a big store looking for inspiration for the family room.

There’s the difference, of course.

This isn’t you.

The families who come to the Furniture Mission are rebuilding from absolute zero, with nowhere to go but up. And when you’re starting over, or hoping to, this is the place where you go. Not so much for the couches, lamps and pillows, though that’s vital. But for some connection to normal, what life is supposed to be, to dignity.

“I am a young woman who climbed out of poverty myself,” said Janean Michalov, the 35-year-old executive director. “We are all one paycheck away from being on the other side of the table. At any moment, it could be me. It could be you.”

The ministry started 20 years ago, operating for most of that time from its current location on North Nesmith Avenue. More than 34,000 families have come in search of dinner tables, beds, chairs, dishes — all the things you need to make a home, Michalov said.

That’s a lot of furniture.

What the ministry needs now is more room.

The plan is a new building on the Empower Campus on East 10th Street, a collection of nonprofits and service agencies on the site of the former South Dakota School for the Deaf.

Fundraising for the $5 million facility is under way. The effort was boosted by selection for the annual Greater Sioux Falls Chamber Appeal Campaign, which ends July 31, and a recently announced $1 million donation from the Seed for Success Foundation dedicated to an expanded woodworking shop.

Between the Nesmith Avenue location and a warehouse in north Sioux Falls, the organization has about 15,000 square feet of space. They’re full, often floor to ceiling with pillows, blankets, lamps, knickknacks, pictures and various small appliances. The new Furniture Mission will have 26,000 square feet and eliminate the constant shuttling to the warehouse.

Michalov said they won’t know for sure until the campaign is finished and they’ve tallied up the donations, but between the fundraising and the sale of the existing properties, she’d like to have more than half of the $5 million in the bank. The rest – hopefully a small amount – will need to be financed, something the ministry has not done in the past.

The woodworking shop is a key element of the Furniture Mission. That’s because cribs and children’s beds are often the focus of safety recalls, which makes taking donations very difficult. Among the organization’s 140 volunteers are skilled craftsmen who build cribs, platform beds and other necessities that go to the families.

“Making sure that children sleep in beds, that children eat at a kitchen table, is one of the most important things,” Michalov said. “We’re not just building a building. We’re building a life for someone to be successful.”

The numbers illustrate the need.

• Between picking up furniture, delivering it or shuttling back and forth to the warehouse, the volunteers touch more than 200 pieces every day.
• About 140 families come through each month. Every family goes through an application process, which applies the federal poverty level as a benchmark for inclusion.
• Repurposing used furniture keeps about 55,000 tons of waste out of the landfill each year.
• The Furniture Mission served more than 1,700 households in 2021.
• The woodworking shop produced 1,500 toddler beds in 2021.

That need isn’t going to decrease anytime soon.

As the Sioux Falls metropolitan area continues to grow, there is more demand for services. People are moving here from across the country. Many of them come with very little or sold everything they had to make the trip.

Furniture Mission clients are people who moved here for the jobs, who left states shut down by COVID; they are immigrants, men getting out of prison, families referred from the Children’s Inn that are fleeing abuse or from the Bishop Dudley House as they transition from homelessness, Michalov said.

It’s not just the Sioux Falls area, of course.

Currently, Michalov said the ministry serves only communities from where it’s also getting donations. But that needs to expand. One of the reasons for the new building is to expand services.

That doesn’t mean that every piece of furniture needs to flow through Sioux Falls. That’s not logistically feasible. But it is possible to establish satellite operations in other communities, in church basements or a storage unit in a parking lot.

“We know that there is a greater need across our state,” she said. “And this building is kind of the first step in making sure that we’re helping transition from poverty, not just in Sioux Falls, but in the future helping families across the state.”

Mentoring and building the next generation of volunteers is another focus for Michalov and benefit of a larger facility.

The $1 million for the woodworking shop is the prime example. Young people can learn carpentry skills that serve them a lifetime. And those mentees are tomorrow’s volunteers.

It’s the cycle of kindness. That the things you do to help somebody today enable them to help someone in the future, Michalov said.

“My dream would be that the children that we put in toddler beds today become the mentors and the mentees that, in a few years, when this building is ready to be a teachable space, that become the next generation of volunteers, and we create that life cycle.”