Joining me and three ACL Move-In Ministry regulars, thirteen volunteers carried out three furniture pick-ups (harvests) and three deliveries on Saturday, June 6. The volunteers are all members of the MADabolic Gym in South Austin. They helped us do as much work in one morning as we typically do in two mornings of work and service. As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers.
Megan Kaplon works for Austin Resource Recovery, the City of Austin entity whose mission is to transform waste into resources thereby keeping the Austin community clean. In 2025, she found out about the Move-In Ministry and came out to join us for a morning of furniture harvests and deliveries. She was impressed with our operations and told her husband, Ryan Berning, about ACL. One thing led to another, and Ryan, the MADabolic gym manager, showed up on June 6th with a dozen gym members to volunteer.
As a collective team, we delivered beds; sheets, pillows and blankets; tables and chairs; coffee tables; couches; bath towels; and pots and pans and other kitchen items to two single women and a single mom with three children. For various reasons, these three households were starting anew and were in need of furniture and household items. They were either previously living on the streets or at risk of ending up there. Sunrise Navigation Center referred all three to us.
Since its inception in early 2022, ACL’s Move-In Ministry has now carried out more than 400 move-ins. Ours is the only operation that delivers furniture and household items to Austinites in need on a weekly basis. And we couldn’t do what we do without a steady stream of volunteers who provide us with more than 75 percent of the items we deliver. (Costco donations account for about 15 percent of what we deliver, and we purchase about 10 percent of the items we deliver.)
Our collaboration with Megan has additional significance. Austin Resource and Recovery (ARR), in line with its overall mission, has recently purchased a North Austin warehouse (thanks to Environmental Protection Agency funding from 2023) and plans to open it as a furniture re-use hub later this year. From a KXAN news article: “The warehouse will accept drop-off furniture donations and redistribute them to regional nonprofit organizations with a focus on furnishing homes for those transitioning out of homelessness, according to city documents.”*
Megan and her colleagues at ARR are currently engaged in how to best operate this re-use warehouse. I participated in a “listening session” that ARR had with service providers in March.
ACL is looking forward to the opening and the full functioning of this warehouse. It will essentially serve as a North Austin storage site for us, complementing our South Austin storage facility on the campus of Holy Cross Lutheran Church.
Until that time, ACL will continue full-steam ahead with the Move-In Ministry. We believe that Austin is a better community when it’s a more equitable community. Everybody needs a bed with a pillow under their heads and a roof over their heads. Thanks to donors and volunteers who help make this happen for those in need.
*”City council set to approve $4M purchase of building for ‘reuse warehouse'”
Rev. Tim Anderson, ACL Director