Social Media

---

  Last year (2021) "Sofas" helped 128 veterans in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois furnish their homes with furniture, beds, kitchen wares, small appliances and other miscellaneous household items. 

There are an estimated 40,000 homeless veterans in the country with 2,500 of them live in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Veterans are referred to us through various sources.  Originally we were made aware of the need through the Veteran's Administration Medical Center in Tomah, Wisconsin. But referrals now come from individuals as well as many organizations like the MAC-V (Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans), VAF (Veterans Assistance Foundation), Center for Veterans’ issues, County VA offices and Veterans Courts, family members, word of mouth by veterans to veterans and others.

If you have a passion for "giving back", especially to our veteran heroes, then volunteering with "Sofas for Service" may be where you'd like to feed your passion!

You can help out with muscle power in the warehouse or helping with picking up and delivering furniture.  Delivering is where the "rubber meets the road".  The feeling of walking into a home that is virtually void of any furnishings and leaving it fairly well furnished with new beds, kitchen wares and furniture from lamps and recliners to wall décor is one that can leave one humbled and emotional, especially if there are young children.

If your passion is on the administrative side of an organization, we can use your help there also.  We are strictly volunteer and have no payroll but are a "non profit corporation" with all the administrative needs any business has from managing a warehouse to tracking incoming/outgoing donations to writing grants.

We sincerely thank all of the supporters that have helped us to achieve the success we've had.  So far over 400 veteran homes have been furnished since our humble beginning in 2014 when Pete Hestekin saw a need and started filling that need. There are many of you, both with small and with large gifts that can share in our success.  It costs "Sofas" nearly $350 on average to serve one veteran (based on 2020 records).  That number doesn't include any consideration for the value of volunteer hours or a large portion of transportation costs which are born by our founders, Pete and Renae Hestekin.  However, the average veteran receives nearly $550 worth of home furnishings (consider a used sofa is valued at $60 so it is a considerable amount).  

In 2021 we purchased 93 new bed sets, traveled 31,424 miles to deliver furniture and pick up donations and logged 4,374 volunteer hours to serve 128 veterans.

Continuing monetary support is constantly needed.  Monetary contributions can be mailed directly to the address in our contact information.  You can click the donate button on this web page or in our Facebook page too.  If you make purchases with Amazon you can designate Sofas for Service, Inc. as a "beneficiary" in Amazon Smile to generate a monetary gift from Amazon every time you make a purchase from them. Thank you for supporting veterans by supporting Sofas for Service, Inc.