A Fresh Start

15 to 25% of what is given to AFS clients are items AFS purchases for them. This includes brooms, plungers, toilet paper, cleansers, and more. Your financial donation will help us fill the gap between items donated and those needed to give AFS clients a fresh start in their new home.

The perfect fundraiser. You can change lives from the comfort of your own home. Donate any amount to help us reach our goal of $5,000 to buy beds and bedding for AFS clients.

A Fresh Start serves those emerging from homelessness in Southern Minnesota. We provide household items and furniture at no cost to the client, and we deliver to the client, whenever possible. To receive this service clients must have been homeless within the last ninety days and be referred by a partner organization that is helping them. Although we rely on donations of items for the majority of what we give to clients, we do rely on financial donations to purchase about 20% of items given to clients and to support our other operational costs.

A Fresh Start acts as a disruptor to the impact of financial insecurity and homelessness by providing essentials for successful daily living through a process involving respect and kindness.

Requests for assistance have increased by 500% in 4 years. In order to scale to meet need, we have had to move from being 100% volunteer run to having paid staff. This fund will support personnel costs for 1 year, which will make our work possible and enable us to meet client need with efficiency and high standards of service.

A Fresh Start serves those emerging from homelessness in Southern Minnesota. We provide household items and furniture at no cost to the client, and we deliver to the client whenever possible. To receive this service, clients must have been homeless within the last ninety days and be referred by a partner organization that is helping them. Although we rely on donations of items for the majority of what we give to clients, we do rely on financial donations to purchase about 20% of items given to clients and to support our other operational costs.

A Fresh Start acts as a disruptor to the impact of financial insecurity and homelessness by providing essentials for successful daily living through a process involving respect and kindness.

A Fresh Start serves those emerging from homelessness. We provide household items and furniture so they can truly have a fresh start. The items we provide are lightly used or new. We set the standard that we don't give items unless we would have them in our homes. This fundraiser is to allow us to take in donations and house them until needed by our clients. We have 11 storage units, which cost about $1,400 a month. It is still more cost effective than having our own building, but the expense has been growing quickly (4 years ago we were paying $250 a month). We are looking for support to allow us to rent the storage units so we have items for the 20+ families who are referred to us each month. The total sought through this fundraiser will finance 1 - year of storage.