Community Closet and Curated Closet Donated Over One Million Dollars to Local Non-Profits

by Tony Crowder

Livingston’s sister non-profit Community and Curated Closet thrift stores recently achieved a one-million-dollar milestone in contributions to local non-profit activities and organizations throughout Park County after nearly 20 years in operation.

Executive Director Caron Cooper, who relocated to Montana from California in the mid 1990s, opened Community Closet in 2005 after developing the business model while employed at the American Red Cross in Park County. Cooper was raised in Altadena, a mid-sized southern California town, and studied mechanical engineering at Cal-Poly. Upon graduating, she briefly worked for an oil company and completed graduate coursework in business administration before abandoning mechanical engineering and her MBA program to pursue a master’s degree from Georgetown University in Russian Studies.

Once employed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Cooper worked in Washington D.C. consulting on projects purposed with privatizing the electronic energy grid in the Soviet Union as it dissolved and became modern-day Russia during the early 1990s, continuing this work following her PhD candidacy at UC Berkley (an interdisciplinary program with an emphasis in the USSR and energy), often traveling to Moscow up until 1995, just two years after arriving in Livingston. She eventually ascended the ranks to Chief of Party prior to leaving USAID and joining the American Red Cross for a three-year stint.

While working for the Red Cross, Cooper pitched a business plan: opening a thrift store to fundraise for the organization—Clara’s Closet. At the time, the foundation’s state director was considering new community service projects, and the recent closing of Livingston’s Salvation Army presented an opportunity to serve a need within the community while generating crucial funding for disaster relief and other types of aid.

However, despite Clara’s Closet having a positive cash flow, the American Red Cross faced extensive scrutiny following 9/11; all chapters, including the Montana Red Cross, began restructuring by terminating employees, including Cooper, who returned to her post in Livingston from Great Falls feeling discouraged and outmatched.

She said, “I will never forget standing by the register at work, putting my elbow up on the counter and saying to my manager Jamie Plummer that we were done for, and we are going to have to close. That’s when she said, ‘what the hell do we need the Red Cross for?’ And that’s what started the Community Closet.”

Rather than reapplying to Red Cross, Cooper, a struggling single parent who frequently shopped in thrift stores with substandard conditions—often lacking public restrooms and dressing rooms, creating a “demeaning experience,” according to her—set out to improve upon the model she had previously developed. “I felt like it didn’t have to be that way,” she said, and “I had a sixth-sense that money could be made [at it].”

Within two weeks, Cooper assembled a board of directors, recruited assistance to investigate the requirements for non-profit classification, completed the application process, secured a location, and acquired building insurance. With enough cash to pay for three months of rent, she took a chance and opened her doors to the public 20 years ago this October.

Community Closet now staffs 26 part- and full-time employees charged with processing up to 200 donations daily, ranging from clothing to furniture, dishware, books and other miscellaneous items, an unpredictable and sometimes challenging business model, explained Cooper.

Unique and high-value donations are sold at the Curated Closet location at 117 S. Main Street in Livingston. Their space, significantly smaller in size relative to the Community Closet—which recently expanded to include an additional building purposed for storing and processing donations—features fewer pieces for an efficient shopping experience. Cooper explained, “Early on we discovered some people would prefer to look through less merchandise. The thrift store [Community Closet] can be hectic and time-consuming.”

“Curated also,” according to Cooper, “Helped people trust us with higher end donations, which helped us to grow as a business. People with higher end goods to donate are more comfortable knowing something they purchased for $100 won’t be sold for a dime.”

Community Closet also shelves high-end gear like Patagonia (most of which is featured in bulk during the month of February, a strategy devised by Cooper to boost sales during the cool season) LL Bean, and others—quality merchandise sold at an affordable price.

Proceeds from purchases and monetary gifts are used to fund non-profit programs and events with no particular emphasis though initiatives must be based in Park County and accessible to the general public—per their website, examples include but are not limited to the Park County Environmental Council, Livingston School District and The Shane Lalani Center for the Arts. Funding is awarded via grant applications available on the organization’s website listed below.

In her experience, Cooper witnessed fundraising efforts by the American Red Cross within Montana become increasingly corporate and aimed at benefiting people outside of the local community, inspiring her to limit the non-profit’s focus by drawing a geographical boundary around Park County.

Cooper, who spent two terms on the city commission, describes the thrift store as a marketplace for redistributing wealth where people who are financially distraught have an opportunity to fund their own services with support from the community. She says, “Where else in town do you buy something and feel like your money makes a difference?”

This difference has now reached new heights. At the January board meeting,
Cooper announced that the foundation has now exceeded one million dollars in financial assistance to non-profit initiatives throughout Park County, a massive undertaking spanning twenty years of dedication to local philanthropy by Cooper and her employees.

The Community and Curated Closets are open Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 5:30 pm. The Curated Closet is also open for business on Sundays. For more information regarding volunteering, donations, available funding and more, please visit the organization’s website at https://www.communitycloset.org/.