Endorsements
Liberty Gleaner Newspaper
January 2002
“Creating a sense of community is interesting Stuff”
By Laurie Jennings
There’s an old adage that goes somthing like one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. In the case of Stuff Canada, these words resonate with a powerful meaning.
Stuff (Supporting Today’s Underprivaleged For the Future) is the brainchild of local business owner, David Cooper, who runs Cooper’s Office Furniture on Queen St. W. Today, he divides his time between
overseeing the successful family business adn Stuff, a not-for-profit organization that provides charities with used goods for donation to the less fortunate. Conceived our of a genuine concern for
people in need, its purpose is to help reduce homelessness and poverty.
Stuff started almost by chance as an offshoot of Cooper’s core business. As David Cooper tells the story, “around 1995 people wanted to sell excess office furniture and we couldn’t take it all as
stock so we decided to source out (to) a charity that could. We found In Kind Canada. Through charities like In Kind Canada, Stuff has facilitated the donation of over 4 to 5 million dollars worth of
furniture to needy people across Canada.
Obviously, Stuff has burgeoned into a success of its own. Cooper deals with over 200 worthwhile charities, from food banks to women’s shelters. He provides them with a multitude of used goods,
including computers, text-books, furniture, kitchen supplied, food, sweaters, eyeglasses, and basically every conceiveable commodity that people might want to get rid of.
For David Cooper, the project is an educational process that helps teach businesses how they can give back to the community. “People are tired of just writing a cheque to charity. They yearn to help
build community and they don’t know how to do that so we give then a means to be able to do something.”
In giving back to the community, Stuff has impacted the lives of people as far away as Sierra Leone where they facilitated the delivery of 6,000 textbooks to assist educational programs last year.
Although bureaucratic red tape has made it difficult for Stuff to obtain its charitable status, David Cooper waits patiently for the day Stuff can issue tax receipts. With hopes of becoming a
registered charity by next year, Cooper plans on creating national programs with greater impact. In his vision, every woman’s shelter across the country is propertly equipped and every child has a
new pair of shoes on the first day of school.
“The most important thing, we can do as human beings is feel a sense of purpose. If we have a purpose, then we feel fulfilled and we feel happy. The satisfaction that we get from dealing with these
agencies is far beyond measure.
In 2000, Stuff was able to supply over 70 apartments with enough goods to make them fully livable. Not that’s serious stuff.
To make a donation, contact David Cooper at 416-596-6822 or contact us at our web site.
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