Tools and listening to experienced volunteers come in ‘clutch’ through multiple Florida hurricanes
“Learning from the volunteers in the field and using this grant to procure tools and necessary assets has reduced disaster response time from one week to three days.” – Trey Bearden, CEO of ToolBank USA
After a hurricane, having the proper tools, equipment and expertise is critical for helping families repair and rebuild their homes. Since 2023, CDP has made consecutive grants totaling about $500,000 to ToolBank USA to address a series of Atlantic hurricanes that made landfall along the Florida coast, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
The grants allowed ToolBank to equip 44 nonprofit organizations with tools for more than 20,000 volunteers to help disaster survivors recover their homes. Over the course of the grants, the organizations and their volunteers completed more than 7,000 projects, from mucking and gutting and mold mitigation to major critical repairs that allowed families to return home.
Trey Bearden, CEO of ToolBank USA, shared that the flexibility provided by the funding from CDP allowed ToolBank to listen to experienced volunteers and purchase more effective tools. For example, at the advice of the volunteers they were engaging, ToolBank replaced manual-pump chemical sprayers with battery-powered sprayers.
“[Our old] pump sprayers were effective but laborious and inefficient,” said Trey.
CDP’s grant allowed ToolBank to procure the battery-powered sprayers, allowing a single volunteer to complete mold mitigation on 10 homes in the time that they would have completed a single home with a manual sprayer.
In alignment with their organizational goals and encouraged by CDP, ToolBank used their Atlantic Hurricane Season Recovery Fund grants to increase their fleet of trucks and trailers and help their staff obtain CDL licenses to more nimbly support rural Florida locations, reaching communities further from their warehouse hub than ever before.
Trey shared: “We simply couldn’t do what we do without the support of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. The financial support not only helped with long-term recovery but also helped the ToolBank team be better prepared for future disasters via lessons learned and education.”
CDP is proud to support ToolBank’s efforts to provide critical rebuild and repair resources to community-based organizations throughout Florida as they work toward long-term housing recovery.