Success Stories
Storehouse for Teachers
In 2009, with the planning, capacity building and leadership support of Serving Leaders and the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation, Storehouse for Teachers was launched. The mission of SFT "to serve kids and their teachers by providing a resource center where school and classroom supplies are distributed at no cost."
Born from Vision
The story of the birth of SFT is rich in innovation and examples of how God uses the vision and capability of individuals, wraps those people into communities of support and shared labor, and brings great good out of His work for everyone.
Leadership Matters
Telling the story backwards, we must begin with the Executive Director of SFT, Justin Brown. Justin was the director of the Pittsburgh Community Storehouse, also launched by Serving Leaders and the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation. While leading that ministry, which procured new donated product and distributed it free of charge to two hundred non-profit organizations in southwestern Pennsylvania, Justin saw that there could be even greater impact if the purpose of the Storehouse would be sharpened.
Community Matters
Serving Leaders worked with Justin to convene a strategic thinking group, to evaluate use and demand of the Storehouse, and to search for alternative business models. Through the course of this work with Justin, a "teacher supply resource center" model was found. Instead of donating free products in general to non-profit organizations across the board, SFT would meet a specific and critical need demonstrated by this fact: teachers report spending up to $3,500 out of their pocket for the critical classroom supplies that they need - $1,200 average annually!
Justin Brown led this process, and together with Serving Leaders and Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation, folded the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation into a new shape—Storehouse for Teachers. The result was an immediate magnification of energetic partnership and support by a factor of at least 10X!
Learning and Growing
Before Justin Brown's tenure, Pittsburgh Community Storehouse was created by Dick Johnson and Craig Esterly as a Gifts-In-Kind ministry to serve area non-profits. Over $40 million of product was distributed to these non-profits from 1996 to 2007. The need was great! The business model didn't work, however, in that funders saw this activity as "good," but not "essential."
Healthy Organizations transform cities
Gospel Entrepreneurship serves the kingdom of God, and pays attention to excellence in leadership, management, and business operations. "What is good?" must be answered operationally as well as missionally. In God's economy, operations are missional, too.
Serving Leaders is thankful for the business and marketplace gifts of Justin Brown that allowed him to take an organization that was good, and to re-invent it into an organization that is great.
