Genesis Furniture Donations - Your Questions Answered

Your questions answered about furniture donations

Genesis Furniture has grown and it’s thanks to you, our community, for your quality furniture donations. We completely rely on furniture donations from you to then sell online to generate funds that help support the charitable work of Genesis Trust. From April 2025 until March 2026, 1080 local people have donated quality furniture to us. Thank you very much!

We wanted to answer some of your most common questions. I spoke with Joe Wade, the General Manager for Genesis Furniture, and asked him the following questions. The answers are specific to our furniture business and so we are not speaking for other charities that collect furniture donations. 

How come you don’t take certain items? 

This is the question we get most often and it’s very understandable. Many people think that our main mission is to provide furniture for homeless people. We do support families and individuals in need and will answer how below. But our main mission is to sell quality furniture to raise funds for the charitable work of Genesis Trust, which supports homeless and vulnerable people from crisis to independence, from despair to hope. You can read more about the vision of Genesis Trust by clicking here. 

That means whatever we collect we must be able to sell. If not, then we have to take it to the tip and we are charged a fee to do that. That is not a sustainable way of doing business so it is vital that we collect items that we can sell. This is common with all the furniture charities.   

So we can’t take the following: 

• Any upholstered furniture without fire labels. It would be illegal for us to sell on any upholstered furniture items without a fire safety label. 

• Items which smell of cigarette smoke. Nobody will buy it and so we would have to take it to the tip.  

• Items which are too worn, stained or damaged. We won’t be able to sell these and will need to be taken to the tip, an added expense. That takes away funds which could go toward Genesis Trust’s work with homeless and vulnerable people. It also takes staff time away from collecting and delivering.  

This may sound a bit blunt, but we are not set up as a house clearance company which collects any and all household furniture. Those companies make their money by charging people to take furniture away. The only way we can provide a free collection service is if we can sell the furniture we collect. That’s a win win scenario for both of us! You get your unwanted furniture removed for free and we sell it on to raise funds for the charity. 

What items are your best sellers? 

Nearly fifty percent of our sales are sofas. Other good sellers are dining tables and chairs, wardrobes, chest of drawers and sideboards. 

Do you still provide essential furniture for homeless people and vulnerable families who have been newly housed? 

Yes we do. Between April 25 – March 26 we provided 49 local individuals or families with furniture for their homes.  

Local agencies like BANES Welfare Support, Curo, Connect Families and Alongside (formerly Julian House) contact us with a person’s furniture needs and we provide and deliver their furniture.  

One of Genesis Trust’s values is, ‘we act with compassion, integrity and kindness’. When we deliver furniture to people supported by other agencies, whatever their situation, we provide quality furniture for people to start a fresh. These are often items like beds, sofas, tables, chairs and bedside tables. 

Most of the people we support struggle with the feeling of the lack of self-worth. Bluntly, they feel like rubbish. That’s why we don’t want to deliver to them low quality furniture. We want to show them kindness and compassion and encourage them that they have great value too. If we show up with stained or damaged furniture, that can perpetuate their feelings of lack of self-worth.

Will you ever open a physical shop again? 

Probably not and there’s good reasons. When COVID struck we had to close the physical shop. This gave us time to review our business model and it was decided to re-open as an online shop. 

We now use eBay. This has enlarged our market and now we are selling and delivering country-wide. And the new model is working! Sales have grown 650% over the last few years. In fact, London is our biggest market and makes up 25% of our sales. 

Because we have a larger market and are not limited to the small space of a physical shop, we are able to collect certain furniture donations which other charities may not take. For example, some dark, wooden furniture and good quality vintage looking furniture are selling really well for us on eBay. Ultimately, that’s less furniture going to the tip! 

Thank you for your support! 

The Furniture team really appreciates the generosity of our community. If you have donated furniture to us in the past we want to say thank you. If you’d like to read more about donating furniture you can read more HERE.  

We hope the answers to these questions help you more understand what Genesis Furniture is about. If you have any other questions, please email Ed who does the marketing for Genesis Furniture at edward.major@genesistrust.org.uk.