About Us

The free store started five years ago. We were part of an organization here at the lake called LANI.  The group had a discussion at one of the meetings about a free store they had another nearby community. We talked about starting one here at the Lake. I said we have a storage unit we can keep donations in. One of the churches said we could use a room. So the free Store started. Then that church changed pastors and we had to move.

Moved to another building that another group was part of that building got flooded. All of this happened over a couple of months. Then a gentleman donated about a 620 square-foot  space in a local town. So the store moved to Camdenton. At that time the group asked my wife if she would be the manager as she had been managing a thrift store for a different organization and due to budget issues it was closing.  So she accepted  the manager position of the Free store. The store operated in this location almost a year. The  people in the this organization were talking about how to get my wife paid.  I said I wasn’t raised in the way to try and figure out how to make money helping people. Judy and I  were very very blessed and fortunate to where she didn’t have to be paid.  I didn’t think that was right. The lease was for a year free and the landlord was going to start charging rent. So around that time we went and looked at another space just down the street that was 6000 Square Ft 3000 up and 3000 down. At around the same time my wife was coming home frustrated. There were some differences of opinion of how the store should be ran. So I researched the option of starting our own 501.  I found all the forms that I needed and so I went ahead and set up our own 501. It took me a few hours to do all the forms was a $400 fee and we had our 501 status in 2 weeks.  I contacted the gentleman from the store we went and looked at met him again because I knew he wanted to sell it more than anything so we came to a price. I told him about a building in my hometown we donated to a church. He called us and he said well he needed to get 125,000.00 and he would donate $25,000 and so he would end up we would be a purchase price of 150,000. A unit in the building sold for 167,000 a few months early so I was not worried about it appraising. I went to my bank my bank said we need 25% down for a commercial building.I went back to seller and told him we would use a 165,000.00 purchase price. And he would donate 40,000 thousand. He got his price and Raising Hope Free Store INC got the loan. My wife and I guaranteed the loan and we went in to this with the idea that if we had to subsidize it we would. We had a tenant in the lower level. With his rent and the donations of the clients, local churches, organizations, and individuals, it has been self supporting and we have not had to subsidize funds. 

For about the first year and a half we kept the furniture for the free store at a offsite storage unit that we had about 5 miles from the store my wife would have to meet families out there to get  furniture. The tenant left the lower level and we decided to  keep that for furniture it was so much more convenient and by then we had sufficient   donations coming in to cover our operation costs, without the rental income.