Anna Kurnizki got her start at Community Warehouse in 2012, during a summer internship between her junior and senior years of college. To say it was a good experience would be putting it mildly. “I had another career path in mind,” she says, “but as soon as I had my internship, I was like, I will do anything to work here. I’ll take any job.”

That means Kurnizki has spent her entire professional life at Community Warehouse, a furniture bank that provides furnishings and household goods to those in need. Directly after graduation, she became a development coordinator to help with fundraising, then took on the development director role before becoming the organization’s executive director in 2021. Her connection to Community Warehouse was immediate. “I loved the people. From case managers, clients, staff, volunteers, donors — everybody involved in this place was just good people. And I loved the immediacy. It's so tangible, the work that we're doing, and it's so clearly needed. There’s a lot of positive energy in this place.”

Community Warehouse accepts donations of items that are in “dignity condition,” which it then passes on to people in need, whether they are coming out of homelessness, moving out of dangerous living situations, recovering from fire or flood, or whatever the individual case may be. To connect with its clients, the furniture bank works primarily with local agencies—not just housing agencies but hospitals, clinics, faith organizations, educational programs, and more. “For example, some of these programs will find out that a kiddo is sleeping on the floor or that they don’t have a desk or lamp to be able to study at home,” Kurnizki says. “So we create a very broad community. We try to be as low barrier as possible.”

Kurnizki says the demand for home furnishings has risen 250% post-COVID, and adds that according to a national study Community Warehouse commissioned with another furniture bank, one-third of all Americans are experiencing furniture poverty. To meet this need locally, Community Warehouse opened a third location in Gresham in 2025, following their second location in Tigard. The original homebase on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard contains the organization’s offices and an estate store, which raises additional funds by selling the more ornate and collectible items it receives.

While the term “furniture bank” might not be familiar to some, Kurnizki points out that the work is crucial, providing people with beds, cookware, and all the things beyond four walls and a roof that are needed to make a house a home. “A client said one time that the difference between sitting on a chair and sitting on the floor is not all that much physically — but it is a lot psychologically,” she says. “And many of our case managers will say this is one of their favorite parts of their job, getting to come to Community Warehouse with their clients and be like, ‘We did it.’”

Kurnizki’s efforts have helped Community Warehouse join forces with four other organizations to form the country’s first national furniture bank coalition. “There’s nothing like it that exists,” she says. “We're one of the oldest and most established furniture banks in the country, so we were like, yeah, we’d love for this to exist, and no one else is going to do it.” The coalition aims to share resources, set standards, and streamline processes while also opening up communication with government agencies and businesses like hotel chains and furniture and bedding manufacturers that have potential resources to be shared with those in need.

For Kurnizki, the work is its own reward. “I don't take for granted how special this place is,” she says. “There's something about it that's really special to me and aligns with my values. I've been at this organization so long because it's a joy to work here. It's truly a joy. It feels like home to me.”

Photo by Kenzie Bruce
Profile by Ned Lannamann