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Thank you
for visiting the Toolkit area of our website.
In order
to take advantage of the Toolkit, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.
It is available to download for free at Adobe.com
The reason we added this
area to the site is to help people start a similar program in their
own community if the need is there. We included as many useful forms
as possible for you to use. The forms will need to be altered to
meet your needs, but we hope they help in the initial start-up of
the program. To get a printout of our forms, just click on any of
the links to the left.
Please be aware that
the name Working Essentials has been trademarked and can not be
used for your program. Other possible name suggestions are Everyday
Essentials, Job Essentials and Work Basics.
The main advice we can
provide is to:
- Get community input
before starting the program to find out what the main needs are
to help people who are homeless in your community be better prepared
to acquire a job, network with homeless shelters and job training
programs already in place.
- Decide if you will
focus on collecting toiletries only or include clothing collection
(which is a lot of work), soliciting for haircut certificates,
date books etc., see if you can connect with a program already
doing similar work or if you need to start from scratch.
- Pull together an advisory
board from various parts of the community (business, government,
religious, non-profit, academic) that believe in the mission of
the program.
- Decide if you will
acquire fiscal sponsorship under an organization that already
has nonprofit legal status or if you will become a nonprofit program
on your own.
- Decide if volunteers
or a paid staff person will run program. If run by volunteers
have commitments of time and responsibilities divided up and understood
in advance before starting the program.
- If run by a staff
person you may want to visit with foundations, businesses, congregations,
and individuals to find out about the availability of financial
support from your community.
- Acquire, if possible,
adonated office/warehouse space to collect the items you will
distribute. It doesn’t need to be a huge space because the
goal is to get the items out to the community as quickly as possible.
I started and ran the program out of my home using my garage for
four years, now we have a small office of 150 square feet and
an adjoining garage storage space of an additional 100 square
feet.
- Go for it! Set-up
barrel/collection drives at businesses, congregations, and schools.
Request that businesses donate and not destroy useful merchandise.
Reach out to the community in a variety of ways and see which
works best for your group and then focus on that area.
Please feel free to contact
us with any questions. If you decide to start a program in your
community, please let us know.
Sincerely,
Sandy Weil, Founder
Working Essentials - San Francisco
Email: admin@workingessentials.org
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Working Essentials a
project of the Tides Center provides the content of the information
at this website. All material provided for the "Tool kit"
is shared in good faith and does not suggest that replication of
a similar program will be successful in your community, as each
community is different.
If you email us with a question or sign our guest book we will NOT
share your name and/or address with any other organization. Working
Essentials, a project of the Tides Center, takes no responsibility
for information provided at the sites we have provided links to.
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