House Manager Report
July 12, 2019


Client Statistics – In June, we served 245 families for a total of 701 people. This consisted of 351 adults and 350 children. We have had 358 new families so far in 2019.  The number of clients is a bit lower than usual. This may have something to do with the road construction on State Street although we had 208 families last year in June.


Saturdays – On Saturday, July 6, we had 3 clients and many volunteers. All went very smoothly.


Volunteers – We have 32 regular volunteers. 3 are having health problems and 1 is off for the summer.  However, we have 1 college student who is volunteering several days a week and 1 volunteer who only volunteers in the summer.  So we seem to be doing OK!  We will have a volunteer meeting on July 20th to go over any suggestions and issues.


Donation Status –

Clothing donations and other items continue to flow in.  We’re handling the flow quite well.

Our current needs are:

  • Pots and pans
  • Twin, full, queen & king size sheets
  • Blankets/comforters/spreads of all sizes
  • Small appliances (fans are in demand now)
  • Backpacks/suitcases
  • Large size men’s shoes
  • Forks
  • Boys clothes sizes 6-18
  • Towels


Business/Community Contacts –

We picked up several car and truck loads of donations from Unity Church on Carpenter after their yard sale. We had help with the transport. There were many small furniture items, most of which are gone now.
An 8th grade student from the Rudolf Steiner School, selected House by the Side of the Road as her service project.  She thought she would collect about 2 large bags of clothes for us.  Instead we received a full truckload of bags of clothes!

Community Outreach –

DAPCO (Destiny and Purpose Community Outreach) continues to use our space (the office) on Wednesday afternoons to hand out free diapers and wipes to clients.  They expect to have a more permanent space in the near future.
We continue to share donations with the Belleville Clothes Closet and 2nd Baptist Church of Ann Arbor on a weekly basis.
We need to connect with a clothes closet in Monroe.  I have not had time to follow up.
We donated several carloads of shoes to an Eberwhite School fundraiser.  They took any shoes that we planned to recycle.  That worked well for us, since we are overwhelmed with shoe donations at the moment.

Facility Status –

We got shelves for the shoe room (a donation).  These will be installed in the next couple of weeks. 
No progress on the awning, carpet cleaning, signage for back door, or bathroom upgrade.  There may be some opportunity for grants here or projects for Boy Scouts!

Safety Issues – None
Incidents – None
Areas that need attention –

Documenting procedures – We need to finalize some of these. 

Client Stories – None
Overall Appearance and Organization – In general, everything continues to look very good! 
Computer plans – No update.


Issues --

Language barriers – There is still room for improvement here. 


Two of the 4 windows on our side of the garage are broken.  We have cleaned up the glass.  I will follow up with the landlord.
We still need a few new racks.

Submitted by,

Mary Danforth, House Manager