NAO is excited to spotlight nonprofit members, share their success stories and exciting news, and raise awareness of their mission and the impact these amazing nonprofits make in our communities.
We’re excited to share the work of The ReBuilding Center located in Portland who has been a member of NAO since 2010!
Established in 1997, ReBuilding Center builds community resilience and empowers DIYers by ensuring access to affordable used building materials and repair skills so people can be self-sufficient and reduce waste.
We had the pleasure of catching up with Executive Director Jackie Kirouac-Fram about how ReBuilding Center has recently pivoted their purpose and impact.
Since launching in 1997, ReBuilding Center has diverted over 35,000 tons of reusable building materials from the waste stream, reclaiming materials and mitigating the negative health and environmental impacts of landfills and new production. In addition, they have provided affordable building materials to over one million members of the community. They have also taught over a thousand carpentry, plumbing, and electrical classes to over 11,500 students, creating a safe and encouraging place for all people to learn, in part by offering women-, LGBTQ-, and BIPOC-only classes and providing partial need-based and BIPOC scholarships.
Over the past four years, the ReBuilding Center has experienced a significant realignment of the purpose of their work. They have always had a focus on reducing waste but now have developed an equal focus on the people who stand to benefit from their work the most: people who are most at risk of displacement from their homes and first-time homeowners on a budget. To address this, they have evolved their store layout to make it easier to find items for people who have limited time to shop and refined material donation acceptance guidelines to make sure items are in good working condition. In addition, ReBuilding Center launched a home repair education program for low-income homeowners, expanded home repair class offerings, revised hiring practices to ensure their workforce reflects the community. These changes have helped position them as the region’s low-cost, fun, inclusive resource for sustainable building materials and home repair education. As Jackie said, “It’s been a very rewarding transition!”
When asked what the best way to support The ReBuilding Center is, Jackie mentioned the dire need for material donations and financial support. “With the rapid growth of reuse platforms like Facebook Marketplace, there are numerous options for Portland-area residents to sell and give away their used building materials. But those platforms are time-consuming and inconvenient to navigate if you have just a few dollars to spend, not a lot of time to search and message with several unresponsive sellers, and no personal transportation to drive around town picking things up. The ReBuilding Center remains the best resource for folks who don’t have a lot of time or money – but we are struggling in this new context to get enough materials in our store to meet our community’s needs. So, we really need more material donations and help raise awareness of our free pick-up service and the impact of donating materials to the ReBuilding Center. Additionally, because we keep our prices low enough for the people who need us, we need more financial donations to support our ability to pay our team and keep our trucks running, and to operate our Home Repair for All program, which provides free home repair classes for low-income homeowners. Our work is only possible with philanthropic support, and we invite donors of all financial capacities to join us!”
Thank you to Jackie for her time and all the work The ReBuilding Center does to support the Portland-area community and meet community members where they are to have stable and working homes while also reducing waste. If you are in the Portland region and have materials that you can donate, please do so at the Center or use their free pickup service. Monetary donations can be made at https://www.rebuildingcenter.org/donate-today.
Learn more about The ReBuilding Center with this video: