The Internship

Well, like I stated in my earlier blog post I am interning at Bridging AZ Furniture Bank located in Mesa. What is a furniture bank you may ask? Well it is a place where people or stores donate their unneeded furniture to be cleaned up (or not hopefully) and redistributed at no or very little cost to this who are in need. Now, we live in a city of 5 million people, and this organization is one of only 2 furniture banks in the city of Phoenix, so the need is high and donations can never come fast enough. To make things even more challenging this non-profit is ran by a total of 3 people. 1 of who is considered a part-time employee! It is a husband and wife you do all the paperwork and director duties while they have one warehouse worker who takes care of picking and fulfilling orders that they received. He himself is in charge of 3 different locations with several thousand pieces of furniture, quite the task. Currently Bridging mainly works with Southwest Behavioral and handles the vast majority of their dealings with them.

Now on to my part in all of this. During my time here I will set up a inventory management system for them to help with the flow of inventory and to also get a more professional feel with slightly more personalized invoicing. Inventory management is crucial for an organization of 3 dealing with so much. I will also help with the creating of a for-profit arm that will take disabled veterans, give them a job learning how to repair and build furniture so costs can be cut down and so that these veterans can learn a new skill set and apply it elsewhere! This will be a daunting task as setting up a new business is not easy, especially when in relation to a non-profit organization. I will also handle small tasks like invoicing and whatever else needs to be done, there will be plenty to do!