When you think about self-storage, what comes to mind? You probably think of a place where people store boxes of Christmas decorations, unused furniture, or old files for a fee. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, self-storage is “a rented space in a building for storing property, where you can bring or take away your property yourself.” But behind both of those definitions lays a massive industry of men and women aiming to prove one thing: Self-storage gets things done.
Since 2022, StorageGives has been ready to prove just how much the self-storage industry can do when working together for the betterment of the world around us. From drilling wells to feeding children to funding research, StorageGives stands to make a change and brings the whole force of the self-storage industry to do so. Through various giving formats, community service, and charity auctions, the self-storage community has joined forces to produce an over $100,000 increase in contributions in 2023, and that number is only growing in 2024.
At StorageGives, we are continuously researching organizations to support and are excited to announce the addition of three new charities that were added in 2023, starting first with Kure It Cancer Research.
Kure It is a long-time, storage-focused cancer research foundation, founded in 2010 by Barry Hoeven, who lost his battle with kidney cancer in 2016. Hoeven recognized there was a grave disconnect between the number of people afflicted with commonly underfunded cancers and the amount of funding and research being conducted to find a cure. Kure It Cancer Research commits to funding the best and brightest minds working on the quest for a cancer-free future, encouraging out-of-the-box thinking.
The second charity added in 2023 is The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Founded in 1993 by Evelyn H. Lauder, the foundation has raised more than a billion dollars to fuel its mission to end breast cancer. Through a unique and streamlined grants program, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation seeks out the brightest minds in science and medicine and gives them the necessary resources to pursue their best ideas. This enables researchers to make discoveries and design innovative approaches to address all aspects of breast cancer and do so in record time.
The third charity StorageGives chose to work with in 2023 is the Sparrow Foundation. Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery in which traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to control victims for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts or labor services against their will, and Sparrow aims to stop that. Not only does Sparrow take a hands-on approach to helping victims of trafficking, but it also focuses on education. The Sparrow Foundation offers and provides specialized training for professionals, including law enforcement, medical personnel, educators, and state officials, empowering them to respond effectively to the needs of these victims.
In 2023, StorageGives joined forces with several self-storage associations across the country to help make a change. These associations are the Louisiana Self Storage Association, the Arizona Self-Storage Association, the Texas Self Storage Association, the Tennessee Self Storage Association, and the North Carolina Self Storage Association.
In November of 2023, StorageGives and the Louisiana Self Storage Association worked together to achieve something amazing together. After a touching and emotional presentation by the Sparrow Foundation, the night’s auction began. To start off the auction, the board of the Louisiana Self Storage Association generously donated $5,000, followed by the auction which generated $40,000 from vendors and other self-storage owners. This $40,000 was then matched by StorageAuctions.com.
By the end of the evening’s charity auction, $90,000 was raised and donated directly to the Sparrow Foundation. Not only would we like to thank each vendor and owner for making this happen, but we also want to thank the Louisiana Self Storage Association board for starting off this amazing generosity.
In 2023, the Arizona Self-Storage Association and StorageGives got hands-on with Home For Our Troops. The board members of the Arizona Self-Storage Association, several community leaders and Home For Our Troops supporters, including StorageGives, attended multiple HFOT events to support veteran Marine GySgt. Nicholas Beberniss. The first event was the Community Kickoff in which supporters and community leaders welcomed Nick and his family to the Casa Grande community.
The second event was a volunteer day where volunteers helped with the landscaping of GySgt. Beberniss’ new home. Vendors, StorageGives, the Arizona Self-Storage Association, as well as their families, volunteered to help this effort. The final event for GySgt. Beberniss was the key ceremony, where local politicians and corporate supporters spoke and welcomed him and his family to their newly completed home. Overall, in 2023, $20,000 was raised for Home For Our Troops.
StorageGives also partnered with multiple self-storage association state shows, including Louisiana, Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Through silent auctions, direct donation, and live auctions, the state shows raised $108,620 in total in 2023. With the self-storage tradeshow season kicking off this month, StorageGives aims to double that amount in 2024.
It can be hard to look at a number and quantify what that number means and carries out in a charity sense. In 2023, with the help and generosity of the self-storage industry, StorageGives raised $310,00. So, let’s explore and explain what $310,000 means in terms of StorageGives. The money donated to StorageGives in 2023 was used to set up four water wells through Water for Life, a charity aimed at helping provide clean water and wells to areas in need, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. About 4,000 people are provided with well water daily, with about one gallon going to help each person. There are about 3.78 liters in a gallon. With those numbers, those four wells provide 5.5 million liters of clean water per year to areas in need of clean water sources.
The self-storage community doubled the number of children fed through Mission Feeding, an organization that provides meals for malnourished children in villages across Sub-Saharan Africa. Every 50 cents feeds four children, proving that each small donation has an enormous impact. The number of meals provided through StorageGives contributions doubled in 2023, equaling over 1,000,000 meals served.
All this goes to prove: Self-storage gets things done. Self-storage is doing something amazing and deserves to be recognized for the real-life changes our industry is making in lives across the world. Who would have thought that an industry associated with storing your old furniture and Christmas decorations could make this kind of change and movement? Well, we did.
If you want to get involved, partnering with StorageGives is simple. Operators who use StorageAuctions.com as their online auction vendor can choose to donate a part of their auction proceeds to StorageGives. Vendors and other industry partners can also make a direct donation to the organization. For more information about joining the hundreds of industry partners who are making a change, visit StorageGives.org.
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Madison Martin is an alumna of Louisiana State University, earning a bachelor’s degree in mass communication, concentrating in digital advertising and copywriting. She helps run the marketing department of StorageAuctions.com and has been with the company for five years.