Delivery truck stolen from Kansas City nonprofit Friday night
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A delivery truck was stolen from a nonprofit organization, Flourish: A Furniture Bank, on Friday night in Grandview, Missouri.
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Flourish, the only nonprofit organization in Kansas City that provides entire home furnishings and essentials to families moving into permanent housing uses the delivery truck to pick up furniture donations around the metro.
However, now that the truck is gone, the organization faces “an immediate economic and operational strain in fulfilling its mission.”
The truck was stolen overnight from a parking lot at 11971 Grandview Road, Suite A in Grandview.
According to Flourish, the truck is a 2013 Freightliner M2 106 model with a license plate number that reads, ‘1ADM83.’ The organization’s name and logo are also on the cab doors.
“So we left yesterday late afternoon, and our truck was parked here. We came back today, and we were all set to clean out a restaurant that was offering all of its tables and chairs after it closed down. We went to get the truck, and it was gone,” Amy Cox, the Executive Director of Flourish, said.
Flourish is the only furniture bank in the Kansas City metro and had a major effect on the people they provide for.
“It really will impact the number of things that we’re able to provide for people. We provide an entire home of furniture and home essentials, which you see here in the warehouse, to individuals who’ve been unhoused for a number of reasons,” Cox explained.
“So we partner with 80 social service agencies, including domestic violence shelters, organizations that serve kids that are aging out of foster care, immigrants and refugees, individuals reentering society from incarceration and just lots of people that have lost their homes for a number of reasons.”
Cox says they are scrambling to re-organize furniture pickups right now.
Next week, the furniture bank could greatly benefit from the assistance of individuals or businesses with box trucks or pickup trucks willing to help with furniture collection.
“We’re also looking into possibly renting a truck for a few weeks until we kind of get our land legs back under us,” Cox said. “We’ve got some partners in the community who can help us out temporarily, but if we don’t recover the truck, it’s going to be how we figure out how to replace it because we can’t do this work without it.”
Cox said it’s a priority to provide families with furniture for their entire home instead of one or two pieces; without a truck to pick up donations, that will be a challenge.
“It’s kind of a constant juggle anyway, getting 32 moving trucks worth of things here every week and pushing those back out,” Cox explained. “Then, this is just another hurdle to make sure that somebody who comes to us three weeks from now gets the same amount and quality of things as somebody who came to us yesterday got. So that’s very frustrating, you know, the idea of picking on an organization doing something good in the community. It’s just unfortunate that someone chose to do this. It’s disheartening.”
“Very emotional for a lot of the people that we serve. About 35% of the individuals we serve have been unhoused for over a year,” Cox explained. “So when you think about living without even a living space, and especially without all the things that are essential for over a year, coming here is really sort of a celebration of all the things they’ve gone through to get housing and to get to this point, and it is very hopeful about what tomorrow is going to bring.”
A local nonprofit organization, Flourish: A Furniture Bank, is asking the public to help them find a stolen delivery truck used to bring furniture donations to permanent housing residents in the Kansas City metro. The truck was stolen on May 10, 2024 and has Missouri plates. A local nonprofit organization, Flourish: A Furniture Bank, is asking the public to help them find a stolen delivery truck used to bring furniture donations to permanent housing residents in the Kansas City metro. The truck was stolen on May 10, 2024 and has Missouri plates.
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If anyone has any information about the stolen truck, Flourish asks that you contact the TIPS hotline at (816) 474-8477 or text TIPS452 or CRIMES (274637).
