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When Hope Haven volunteered to do linens for some shelter programs this winter, it considered the effort a way to give back to the community.
This week, the community decided to give back to Hope Haven.
Six washers, six dryers and nearly $5,000 in cash are just some of the donations that showed up after the Observer revealed that Hope Haven's laundry program is suffering from weekly breakdowns of its aging equipment.
Among the charities that depend on the laundry are the Men's Shelter of Charlotte and 20 churches that take in homeless as part of the Urban Ministry's Room in the Inn program.
"What a blessing," said Alice Harrison, president of Hope Haven. "When you are a nonprofit, you learn to make do with problems and focus on the things you need most. But it had gotten to the point where the washing machines were what we needed most."
Hope Haven is a United Way agency that helps homeless people recover from substance abuse. The laundry is part of the charity's job-training program. A class of 13 trainees is washing about 520 pounds of linens and towels a day, at cost, for local homeless programs. This is in addition to hundreds of pounds more laundry for commercial clients such as Central Piedmont Community College.
With the cash donated this week, the agency is buying a badly needed heavy-duty, 60-pound-capacity washer at a $2,500 discount, Harrison said. It's a bargain offered by Coinmach Corp., a company that also supplied washers to the Hall House homeless shelter in 2009.
In addition, Coinmach donated six commercial-grade washers and dryers to the 143 residents living at Hope Haven, to do their personal laundry. It threw in a three-year warranty and a year of free service calls, too.
"We're the largest coin-operated laundry service in the United States," said Garry Campbell, the company's regional vice president. "When our staff heard about Hope Haven's problem, we realized it was definitely something we could help with."
Hope Haven also heard from a Charlotte man, who has launched a campaign to get donations from the faith community to replace the charity's 135-pound-capacity washer, which is 12 years old. That could cost as much as $32,000, officials said.
"Our board has divided up the list of donors and we're calling every one," Harrison said. "We just want to thank them. We're thrilled with the fact that a lot of them have never given to us before, and they cared enough to take the time to write us a check."
