Materials For The Arts provides free supplies and equipment to non-profit organizations and public schools throughout New York City.
All of the items are donationed by businesses, individuals, government agencies, and even other non-profits. Many companies donate surplus inventory, like these boxes of metal fasteners.
There are two to three shopping days a week. Members must sign up a few days in advance for one of a limited number of half-hour time slots.
Jan McCray, assistant principal at the High School for Art and Design, adds art prints to her shopping cart. She said teachers could use the photographs and paintings as inspiration for their students, or turn the poster over and use it as a canvas for their own work.
Available items range from paper and office supplies, like these boxes of rubber bands, to fabric, lumber, and construction materials. MFTA also receives props and decorations from television shows, Broadway musicals, and other productions
MFTA occupies a 35,000 square feet warehouse in Long Island City.
Sandra Passirani, a member of the American Dance Guild, looks through donated postcards. While everything is free, members are required to write thank you letters to donors.
Materials For The Arts is a partnership of the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Department of Sanitation, and the Department of Education. It fills a niche at the intersection of arts and trash, supporting struggling non-profits, while reducing waste.
Trim and fabric are popular items.
Aaron Beall, left, and Cara O'Brien, look for props for a theater production. Beall, the director of Todo Con Nada, said he comes to MFTA unsure of what he'll find. "We'll build the set depending on what is available that week," he said.
MFTA requires members to register when they arrive, and complete a worksheet as they shop, listing each item they are taking, and who donated it.
Jose Rosa, one of the warehouse employees, handles the some of the paperwork. Before leaving, members checkout and receive an invoice.
With only 13 employees, and more than 4000 member organizations, there are a lot of rules to ensure shopping days run smoothly and efficiently. "It's thirty years of perfection," said Ahmed Tigani, the donations director. "We're pretty strict."
Executive director Harriett Taub organizes a box of donations. On shopping days, most of the staff can be found on the warehouse floor.
MFTA accepts donations at its warehouse, and also schedules pickups for large items.
The walls of the offices are lined with decorations made from donated materials. MFTA offers arts and crafts classes, where visitors can work with some of the inventory.
Because of the recession, donations of paint and other building supplies are down, as businesses are avoiding surplus purchases.
Some donations require an amount of creativity to find new uses.
While there is no limit on how much an organization can take, non-profits must find their own transportation. "Even when you are trying to cut corners and save, it's hard to figure out the logistics to go grab these things," said Tigani.
Robin Frohardt and Ben Mortimer load their car with props for their production, "Pirate Puppet Rock Opera."
At 10AM on a Tuesday morning, about a dozen people are lined up in the hallway at Materials For The Arts, awaiting the start of one of its twice weekly shopping days. It doesn't quite have the manic feeling of a Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart, but the deals here are better. The shoppers are public school teachers, theater directors, and dance instructors, and on the other side of the door is a warehouse full of the things they need to run their organizations–basic stuff like office supplies, furniture, paint, and fabric, as well as a few more exotic items, and all of it free. Everything here is donated by companies with too much inventory, individuals with no space left in their closets, and even other non-profits. To walk out of the warehouse with a shopping cart full of materials, recipients are only required to write thank you letters.
For more than thirty years, MFTA has filled a niche at the intersection of arts and trash. As a city organization supported by the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Department of Sanitation, and the Department of Education, its dual roles have received renewed emphasis as New York confronts two seemingly independent challenges. The recession has forced budget cuts across the city, and by placing donations with schools and arts groups, MFTA helps those organizations fill in the gaps. At the same time, New York is constantly challenged to handle its garbage in an efficient and environmentally sound manner. MFTA is one of a number of programs across the city that prevents items from entering the waste stream, finding new uses for things that would otherwise be thrown away.
A day at the warehouse runs like a well rehearsed musical production. "It's thirty years of perfection. We're pretty strict," said Ahmed Tigani, a donations coordinator. MFTA runs two or three shopping days a week. Members schedule half hour appointments online in advance, and about 20 people are on the floor at any given time. An orientation video runs on a loop in a room off the main floor, and is required viewing for first-time visitors. Shoppers must sign in, show proof that they belong to one of MFTA's 4000 member organizations, and surrender a picture ID. They are given a well-worn clipboard and a pencil, and as they make their selections, they write down the item, and who donated it. At the end of their time, an MFTA employee reviews the checklist, and hands the shopper an invoice.
Materials For The Arts occupies 35,000 square feet on the third floor of a warehouse in Long Island City. The organization recently finished an expansion, adding space for two classrooms. On shopping days, the building's freight elevator stays busy. At the loading dock, beat-up station wagons and minivans fight for space with trucks making deliveries to the other tenants. Many of the shoppers don't have cars, and come and go on the subway. While everything is free, moving a filing cabinet cross-town on the R train isn't always an option. "It's hard for our recipients, because there are a lot of limitations on what they can do," said Tigani. "Money is tight. Even when you are trying to cut corners and save, it's hard to figure out the logistics to go grab these things."
While businesses and non-profits have both been affected by the recession, giving has remained strong. Total declared value of donations has increase 41% since 2003, up to more than $5 million in 2009. Harriet Taub, the executive director, said she sees a confluence of factors–household donations have dropped as individuals buy less, but struggling businesses have been forced to get rid of inventory. "My take is that people are not buying the extra set of dishes. But people are closing up warehouses, and we are getting the overflow," she said.
With cutbacks all around, MFTA helps its recipients do more with less. As a part of its sponsorship with the Department of Education, the warehouse is open to every New York City public school teacher. After a city-wide $405 million budget cut earlier this year, paper supplies were one of the first things to go at the High School of Art and Design, and teachers and administrators were left to find their own solutions, said assistant vice principal Jan McCray. On her first visit to MFTA, she picked up dozens of posters and art prints. She said teachers could use the photographs and paintings as inspiration for their students, or turn the a poster over, and use it for their own work.
That was exactly what Alenia Sammy had in mind when she started a collection program for MFTA at her job. Sammy, an office manager in MoMA's retail creative department, saw the amount of usable art supplies that were wasted. "We would throw out mockups of posters, because people just didn't know there was an alternative use," she said. "I used to be a school teacher, and a school teacher with a modicum of creativity can reuse those materials." According to Sammy, MoMA has donated more than $3 million worth of items to MFTA since 2003.
Like other charitable contributions, businesses and individuals can receive a tax deduction for donations to MFTA. But like Sammy, many donors just want to make sure their belongings don't go to waste, said Taub. "Especially in the last couple of years, individuals really want to see things go to a good cause," she said. "Now people are much more interested in making sure that these useful items are not going into the landfill."
Some donors relish the thank you letters they receive from arts organizations. "That is a huge factor in the recurring donations," said Taub. "I think we have a number of people, maybe women of a certain age, who actually go out and buy things just to donate, because they really love those letters."
With constantly increasing supply and demand, MFTA finds itself in a unique economic position, limited only by logistics. It can only give away as much as it can take in. According to Taub, the majority of the organization's $1.4 million operating budget is spent on rent for its expansive warehouse. It has 12 full time employees, and two trucks that pick up donations three days a week around the city.
In 1990, the sanitation department saw that, in addition to supporting non-profits, Materials For The Arts was reducing waste, and the department began providing financial and logistical support, including servicing its two box trucks alongside the department's 5000 garbage trucks. While the 600 tons of materials that are donated each year may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the 12,000 tons of trash collected in New York City each day, organizations like MFTA are a part of the the city's larger reuse initiatives. The department runs NYWasteMatch, an online swap meet for businesses. It also sponsors the Materials Exchange Development Program, which connects organizations in the reuse sector, like MFTA, with one another.
On this day, there are two pallet-sized boxes on the warehouse floor, each one containing hundreds of cases designed for the last-generation Kindle. The boxes are just past the sign in desk and cap aisles of office supplies and household items, what would be prime retail real estate in a grocery store, where one might find a pyramid of Wheaties or cases of Coca-Cola, on sale. The cases, donated by a company called S Link, are made of rubber, with a flimsy metallic stand, and come in either black or neon pink. As an accessory for an obsolete gadget, these cases could just as easily been thrown away as donated here.
Beth Gutman, an activity therapist at Neponsit Adult Day Care Center, has about twenty of the cases in her shopping cart. "They have a stand, so we're going to put a picture in it," she said. This is where trash meets art. With funding from its non-profit partner, Friends Of Materials For The Arts, MFTA runs education classes, giving teachers and others ideas on how to create art projects out of junk. The walls of its offices are covered with examples of student work, like mobiles and dreamcatchers and sock puppets made out of yarn and cans and paper scraps.
But for the most part, it's up to the artists to find their own ideas. Aaron Beall, a theater director, said MFTA has been vital to his productions over the years. "Whatever show we're doing, whether its Goethe to Shakespeare to Chekov, we'll go to Materials and we'll build the set, or the idea around the set, depending on what is available that week,'" he said.
Beall has filled a shopping cart with Christmas ornaments, mostly donated by Macy's. He said he is producing a children's Christmas pageant, and has found three plastic fish he intends to use as the centerpiece of the non-demoninational performance. "Everything that I've done in New York theater, the sets, lights, costumes, and magical fish have been provided by Materials For The Arts. Its just a huge debt that I owe this organization."
