Excess Access
The Excess Access program has morphed into our HumSum.org platform.
HELP US TEST OUR NEW BETA DONATION SYSTEM! IT IS UP AND RUNNING
MATCHING GIFTS, WISHES & MORE!
TO DONATE ITEMS & MATERIALS (including hair), please sign up today, it’s fast, free and easy. Thanks for your feedback over the years!
TheHumSum.net for Humanity Adding Solutions!
History
In 1996, Lisa Gautier, Matter of Trust founder, had been given a new rug and wanted to donate her perfectly good old one. She went to a nearby school and gave it to their library for a story-time area. When dropping it off, she asked the principal if there was anything else the school needed and Lisa got her first “wish list.” She went to nearby businesses and asked friends if they had any of these items and was surprised to get five times what she asked for. Clearly, there was a missing link between donors and wishers.
In 1998, Lisa and her husband, Patrice (VP of Software and Services at Apple, Inc.), set up the public charity Matter of Trust and its first program ExcessAccess. This was done with the help of Leo Nevas Esq. He was Paul Newman’s attorney and familiar with early green businesses and public charities.
Besides furniture and other goods, ExcessAccess.org quickly became the place for people donating waste-fiber clippings for our Hair Matters program that accepts hair, fur and fleece donations. Felted into mats, they are used to soak up oil spills. Together our ExcessAccess.org and Hair Matters programs received international press for the Cosco Busan San Francisco Bay oil spill (2007), the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil spill (2010), etc.
ExcessAccess.org, our free, online, mobile-friendly, database has moved to our new community platform TheHumSum.net. We are recruiting other donation sites in an initiative for a global consolidation of waste to resources. Available to everyone, this program automatically links business, nonprofit, and household item and material donations with the wishes of nearby recipients who can pick them up or accept drop-offs. Divided into 10 departments, it allows for easy sorting and fast matching. There are also opportunities to post green jobs like repairs and delivery as well as volunteer needs and funding. This is a world-wide matching system that also provides tax-deductible receipts for donors in the USA.
Every day, thousands of tons of garbage ends up in landfills. ExcessAccess.org makes it easier to put these materials to better use and extend the lives of second hand goods.
We also offer intranet Excess Access matching within large corporations and government entities, assisting procurement reduction and lowering of carbon footprints through in-kind giving programs.
Related Projects
The Global Compost Project
We’re committed to promoting natural abundance and composting. We’ve teamed up with experts including scientists, NGOs and agriculture specialists from around the world to share information on a platform to make it easy and commonplace.
SONOMA Food Runners
Matter of Trust is proud to be the fiscal sponsor for SONOMA Food Runners, which relays food throughout Sonoma County. This enables them to focus on building their organizational capacity before fully establishing their own non-profit status.
Compost Research
The benefits of composting are well known, but what happens when pharmaceuticals enter the picture? Can material containing traces of pharmaceuticals – antibiotics in animal waste still be safely composted?
San Francisco Urban Carbon Farming Project
The San Francisco Urban Carbon Farming Project will take state-of-the-art science and protocol for measuring the carbon sequestration effects of utilizing compost as a soil amendment and from this, develop and deploy an experimental protocol suited uniquely to urban garden and urban park environments.
Heart of the City Farmers Market
Matter of Trust is the fiscal sponsor of Heart of the City Farmers Market (HCFM). Grants help to keep stall fees 50% lower than neighboring markets which in turn reduces food prices and makes it affordable for low-income customers.
What can I do?
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Feeling overburdened by too much stuff? Wishing you could find free stuff near you? Check out the Hum Sum Free Exchange on our community platform.
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“When you give, you get back tenfold.”
Now, that’s a great exchange rate!
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