With foreclosures at a record high and jobs moving out of reach for more than 10 percent of working families, many charitable groups are struggling to serve all the people who need help. Fortunately for them, the Rhode Island Donation Exchange Program is there to help agencies provide for an ever-growing and new group of clients.

“We have been supporting programs that find homes or shelter for people for years, but it’s different now. It isn’t the usual kind of homeless people that need help,” said Mary Landreville, the director of RIDEP who is very adept at finding help at times when there doesn’t seem to be enough to go around but confesses the job is not getting easier.

“This is the new homeless: the people who have lost their homes because they couldn’t pay the mortgage or their rent. It’s children, and it’s people who never needed help before.”

For over 25 years, the mission of the Rhode Island Donation Exchange Program (RIDEP) has to improve the quality of life for individuals and families by providing for the agencies charged with helping needy people meet their fundamental requirements for clothing and shelter. While other agencies in satellite towns and cities outside Providence are out assessing the needs of people, The Furniture Bank and clothing exchange operate as a redistribution center for quality donations to agencies around the state.

They get their resources from generous individuals and businesses across the state and are always on the lookout for reusable furniture from any number of quality sources. Landreville and her staff go out and find institutions and businesses that are refurbishing their residential facilities - like schools, hotels and military bases - and offer to take the old but still usable furniture and other useable stuff that would have been taken to a landfill. Instead of having to pay a landfill to take perfectly good beds, desks and chairs and dump them to forever decay uselessly in a crowded dump, they can recycle them.

“We are probably the biggest recycler in the state,” Landreville said last Friday, as her small core of employees unloaded beds, mattresses, desks and other item into their warehouse on River Ave. in Providence. “People know we don’t throw anything useful away, and they know it’s cheaper to give the stuff to us than take it to the landfill. It cost $15 to dump a mattress at the landfill, so they know it is much cheaper to donate them to us.”

Landreville was talking about the beds and desks from military housing that was filling up the good part of a room in the warehouse, this time from sailors who apparently were exceptionally neat, clean and careful. The white, fresh-looking mattresses they were unloading still have all the bounce of the new and can stand up on their ends without buckling. The desks are sturdily built and look as if they could take a beating from hyperactive children if they had to.

“But look at this,” said Landreville, indicating the twin-sized bed frames. “They all have drawers in the base. That’s extra storage space for a kid’s room, and a lot of the people we help have very little space.”

There are also some single pieces of furniture that come in, and some of it is of exceptional quality. Landreville said they try to charge as little as possible. People down on their luck have just as much appreciation for a nice object as other people, she said, so the nice pieces usually find a good home.

“We serve about 100 agencies around the state,” said Landreville. “That includes agencies for the homeless, social service providers, domestic violence centers and community action programs, as well as drug and alcohol rehab programs and community centers, so we keep busy most of the time.”

The Furniture Bank also provides for individuals and families who are moving from group shelters to what is often their first real home. Families that are starting over after a separation caused by any number of reasons deserve and are often required to have decent furniture to qualify for Section 8 housing or other programs that have minimum standards for children’s living conditions. They succeed in making sure the stuff is on hand when it’s needed.

“We do it well because we have a skeleton crew of paid employees who work incredibly hard,” said Brett Davey, the current president of the non-profit agency who, like so many other executives, donates his time and skills to RIDEP.” And we do own the building, so we have no mortgage to worry about and we work hard at getting grants, and the nominal fees we collect from clients can all keep us going.”

The building in Providence was a windfall that has sustained and encouraged RIDEP since the Quill Pen Company donated their warehouse and offices to RIDEP after they moved their operation to Cranston in the early 1990s. But even the best gifts require good stewardship to succeed, and in that respect RIDEP has also been very lucky.

“We are very fortunate that we have Mary,” said Richard Fleischer, the founding member of RIDEP who believes that Landreville really gets it and knows why RIDEP is there and what its purpose is. “She is always going, always doing something to make it work, and always trying to make it work better.”

Fleischer has been guiding the agency from its earliest days, when it was a small project operated out of the Archdiocese of Providence. Prior to the Quill donation, Fleischer rented space in Cranston, Providence and Warwick. He’s proud of the work he’s done for the agency and finds it much more rewarding to use business and social contacts to help people than just for personal advancement.

“When I started, I told the agency I wanted to do more than just work on Chamber of Commerce type things,” he said. “I told them I wanted to get my hands dirty and do something to make a difference, and they wanted to start an outside board.”

The Furniture Bank is what Fleischer was looking for. He has been president several times, been in a variety of seats on the board and still does what he can for the program. It has been a winning proposition all around. The board gets something substantial in Fleischer’s business acumen, and he gets something to point at with pride. There are few charities that can boast about being as sound as RIDEP, and it just keeps getting better.

“We did have a debt of about $15,000 once, but we paid it off,” said Fleischer.

Fleischer has nothing but praise for Landreville, who is a former human resources director for the City of Woonsocket and has brought all her experience to the RIDEP mission.

“No kid has to sleep on the floor,” said Landreville. “We make it possible to sleep in a clean, decent bed.”

RIDEP has also created many special projects, such as Project CoverUp, which collects winter coats, and Project Undercover, (now a stand alone non-profit) which collects diapers, new underwear and socks for kids who need them, programs that are enhanced when RIDEP is involved. They have the resources to mount those programs statewide and frequently call a member agency and tell them they will be visiting their town. Davey said it was Mary who came up with the RIDEP on the Road idea.

“A lot of people who live in other parts of the state can’t get to Providence very easily, said Davey, “and they certainly can’t carry a couch home, even if they could get to Providence.”

Davey said Mary’s idea was to have the warehouse people load up a truck with furniture and clothes and go out to the towns. The truck comes back empty, said Davey, who remarked that another truck for RIDEP would be a good thing to have and would not turn down a donated truck. They plan to get one sometime and somehow.

“When we get really busy, we have to rent a truck and, of course, that’s money we would rather spend on something else,” said Davey.

RIDEP has two fundraising events a year and really appreciates the people who attend, or offer a donation of auction goods or general event sponsorships for the fundraisers. They also welcome contributions of cash that can be earmarked for specific programs, or to just help support the general operating fund, which, although healthy at the moment, has to be continuously replenished. RIDEP has an operating budget of about $265,000.

RIDEP also started a couple of initiatives beyond the furniture business. They started Project UnderCover, which solicits, collects and distributes new, packaged underwear, diapers and socks for children under the age of 9 who live at or near the poverty level. Project Cover Up collects and distributes over 1,000 new and gently used winter coats, hats and mittens each year.

RIDEP works with local businesses to provide other forms of support for non-profits, which includes, fundraising, donations of office furniture and sponsoring events to benefit RIDEP. If you would like to help the Rhode Island Donation Exchange Programs, they are located at 20 River Ave., Providence. The phone number is 831-5511 and you can e-mail them at info@ridonationexchange.com. RIDEP said it would be a mistake to take all our community assistance agencies for granted now, or any other time.

“The work never ceases,” she said, and she doesn’t see any time to relax now. “Unfortunately, we do stay busy most of the time.”