An Interview with The Laundry Project’s Jason Sowell
Jason Sowell founded Current of Tampa Bay in 2008. It’s a non-profit organization dedicated to helping meet the needs of low-income communities.
Sowell is a former youth pastor and executive pastor in the Tampa area.
“That role dealt a lot with people and their problems,” Sowell explained. “We spent a lot of time going to other countries. We would do things like handing out Bibles and building churches, which are all great things. However, I started to realize that neighborhoods here were struggling just as badly as some of the countries we were going to, and we weren’t doing anything for those communities.
“For me, the other issue was that, although it was great that we gave away Bibles, I always walked away thinking that they people there still didn’t have clean drinking water. It was things like this that pushed me into thinking more in terms of how I could help in our own cities with issues that people really struggle with on a daily basis, real needs.”
Current of Tampa Bay focuses on three major initiatives: Affordable Christmas, which is a family shopping event to empower low-income families by helping them provide a fun Christmas for their children through selling new, unused gifts at an affordable cost; Hope For Homes, which provides renovation work on homes owned by working-class families; and The Laundry Project.
Please explain The Laundry Project and its mission.
The Laundry Project is an initiative that meets the basic need of washing clothes and linens at laundromats to help people with that financial burden. The goal is to relieve a little bit of that burden. It’s one of those needs that everyone has, no matter what our socioeconomic status – we all need clean laundry, and we all get the same feeling of dignity from it.
Although the goal is to relieve that financial burden, in a larger sense we want people to find hope through that and to let them know there is a community of people who care about them with no strings attached. It’s not solving every problem they have, but hopefully it’s giving them a bit of hope to carry on to the next day and to connect them to someone else who can help in another way.
How did this initiative get started?
I started my organization in 2008. And, in early in 2009, I was in California with some friends of mine; they were working with homeless people, helping them get to a laundromat to wash their clothes – and that’s what really inspired me. They called their program Laundry Love.
However, I didn’t want to offer it only to the homeless. So, after I returned to Tampa, we held our first free laundry event sometime in mid-2009. I just picked a laundromat in a low-income area I was familiar with. It was an unattended, open-air, 24-hour store. I tried to contact the owner, but I couldn’t find any information. So we just went over there and did it. I assumed that whoever owned this store would hear about it, and we’d either get a phone call telling us to stop, or else they’d be OK with it.
And that’s how it started. We didn’t have any plan or structure in place. I just gathered up a couple of our board members and some college students, got a box of quarters and just did it. Years later, it’s obviously a whole different thing, but that’s how it got going.
Why laundry?
When people want to help the poor and the homeless, most of them automatically think of providing food or shelter. So, there are plenty of services out there for that. I tried to think of what else people in those dire scenarios need for which there is no help – and laundry was one of those things.
The first couple of events we held, we had families say to us, “Nobody does this. There is no help. We never get to do our laundry.” And I just fell in love with it. I thought that, if we can do nothing else to help people, at least we can do this.
How many free laundry events have you held?
Thus far, we’ve held 192 projects. Most of them have been in Tampa and Ohio; however, we’ve also held them in Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas and Austin, Texas.
Do you have any idea how much laundry you’ve done since founding The Laundry Project?
Since 2009, we’ve done 43,400 loads of laundry, and we’ve helped nearly 5,000 families.
The day before the Clean Show in Atlanta this past April, you held free laundry events at three stores in three separate neighborhoods – Sun Cleaners and two Tropical Breeze laundry locations, all in downtown Atlanta, hosted the events. Can you elaborate on those recent projects?
Those events were hugely successful. The nice thing about that project, which was different for us, was that all of the volunteers were from the laundry business – so they knew the drill in the laundromat, which was great.
The network of people there was great – from the three owners who stepped up to the CLA’s LaundryCares Foundation, which pooled its resources to help us.
The customers in Atlanta were so thankful. In fact, at one of the locations, some of the customers went to a dollar store next to the laundromat and bought thank-you cards for all of the customers to sign, and then gave them to the owner of the laundromat and the volunteers.
Another location was so busy that it was almost overrun. They almost couldn’t keep up with the volume. Overall, it was a fantastic day. We did 1,200 loads in three hours; that works out to about 130 families served, or approximately 400 to 500 individuals that day.
We love surprising people. We like to just show up, because it’s a little more meaningful when they don’t know it’s coming. And what happens all the time is customers who are there will start calling their friends and family… “Hey, you have to get over here!”
Can you walk me through a typical Laundry Project event?
An event is three hours long. We typically hold them on Saturday mornings, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Depending on how large the location is, we use anywhere from 10 to 20 volunteers.
We have people at the door to greet customers to explain to them what we’re doing, and we also post signs outside that read: “Today Your Laundry is Free, courtesy of The Laundry Project.”
The onus is on the customers to wash their clothes. We don’t do it for them. But we have people stationed throughout the laundromat and their responsibility is to assist the customers. We’ll put the quarters into the machines for them. If they need soap, we’ll help with that. We get the machines running for them.
Then, once they have their laundry started and going, it’s really just about hanging out with them and having some good conversations with them – just giving them some love and some hope. Of course, we also have coloring books and crayons for the kids, as well as coffee, doughnuts and water. Essentially, we turn a laundromat into a community center for a few hours.
On average, during the three-hour timeframe, we typically serve anywhere from 30 to 40 families and do about 250 to 300 loads of laundry.
How do you choose the neighborhoods in which you hold your events?
We typically look for neighborhoods where the demographics reflect a lot of low-income families. That’s usually the starting point.
However, at times, local businesses, churches or laundromat owners will contact us about holding an event in their area. In such cases, we may host projects in areas that maybe we typically wouldn’t, but because there is group of people there that want to help that particular community, we’ll do it.
How do you choose the laundries that host your events?
The owner and the store is a big deciding factor for us. We’re big on building relationships with the owners who host our events and knowing that the owners are good businesspeople, and that they care about the community and their business.
Usually, I can walk into a laundromat and, within the first few seconds, tell what kind of owner it has. I know laundromats are hard to keep clean and maintained; however, you can definitely tell the difference between one or two machines being out of service but the place generally being in good order, and a store that is just plain dirty and neglected.
In fact, I’ve actually rejected laundries that were probably prime locations in their areas and went to smaller, less-known parts of those communities, because the owners of the bigger ones just weren’t people I wanted to work with. It’s more of a feel – how they are when we meet with them.
What is required of a laundry owner who decides to host a Laundry Project event?
The only thing we ask of the laundry owners is that they let us use their store and that they’re there or they have someone there during the project who can fix things if something goes wrong – and, of course, that they have as many of their machines working as possible.
We don’t ask them to donate money. We don’t ask them to lower their prices while we’re there. I want them to make money, because it’s a small business and because, if they die, that doesn’t help the neighborhood at all.
Some owners will go above and beyond by voluntarily donating time or items, but I go in saying, “Hey, the only thing we’re asking is to let us do it here. Partner with us in the sense that you’re committed to it – either you’re here or your employees are here helping us make it happen.” And that’s it.
Where do you find volunteers to work these events?
We get volunteers from everywhere – churches, community groups and so on. Often, small businesses will sponsor projects; they’ll make it a volunteer day for their business.
We also have long-time customers at some of these laundromats who will step in and volunteer. After a few events at a particular laundromat, the people in the community get to know you. So, when we show up, it’s neat to see families who are their helping us set up signs and bring other people’s laundry in, while they’re getting helped themselves.
I want to point out that it’s not a religious thing. It’s not about trying to send that kind of message. What I love about the broadness of that is I’ve literally watched a pastor and a guy professing atheism standing side by side at a laundromat, pumping quarters into a machine together and actually talking about religion – but in a very non-threatening way because they’re both on equal ground at that point.
I’m sure you’ve heard a number of heart-tugging stories from customers at these events over the years. Do any anecdotes come to mind?
At one of the first events we did, an older woman pulled up in her pickup truck. She had her adult son with her, who was living on the streets, and she brought him there to do his laundry. I approached them and explained what was going on, and she didn’t believe me.
Finally, she said, “Wow, there really are nice people in the world.” To which I thought, we’re just paying for your laundry. How rough has life been that something this simple and this small could elicit that type of response? That was in 2009, and I’ve never forgotten it. She was profoundly affected by that.
Another time, in Florida, a single dad came in with his two sons. He was driving by with a friend to go fishing to get food, and he saw our signs outside the laundromat. He had his friend take him back home, got his laundry and returned to the store. He told us how he had been fighting with his sons all week to go to school; they didn’t want to go because they were embarrassed by not having any clean clothes to wear.
As it turned out, the dad’s choice at that time was either buying groceries for the family or doing laundry. And, when he came in, all he had were a couple of outfits for his sons for the week. We said, “Go home and bring back all of your laundry. That’s why we’re here.” That really hit me as to how big of a deal clean clothes are for kids going to school and for their self-esteem.
What types of marketing support do you provide laundry owners who host your events?
We market the events within the laundromat. We usually promote to customers who are in the store already, and we let word of mouth take it from there.
In a larger sense, from a business standpoint, we send out press releases and do media outreach for those particular projects and communities – and the laundromat is obviously a part of that.
They do get recognition. For instance, with our recent Atlanta event, those stores all received recognition through a news story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
What does the future hold for The Laundry Project?
There are a lot of ideas we have rolling around. We’re looking at developing a mobile washing unit. We’re working on a food-truck-size vehicle that we can take to places like smaller homeless shelters or low-income communities where we can park and help wash clothes there.
Another idea I’m really passionate about is opening a laundromat in a lower-income community that’s more than just a laundromat. In addition to just housing a laundromat, it also could serve as a community center, with job trainers, financial planners, tutors and so on. It could include a series of rooms connected to the laundromat space and could literally function as a community center, specifically for job training and educational tutoring.
One thing I’ve learned is that laundromats in low-income communities are sort of the equivalent to what a Starbucks is within an upwardly mobile community. It’s that hang-out space. So, we’re trying to help the community in that space?
How can laundry owners become part of The Laundry Project?
Simply contact us through our website – laundrybycurrent.org.
What one take away would you like laundry owners to get from reading this interview?
Laundry is more than just laundry. Laundry owners have a prime opportunity to better their communities simply by virtue of owning laundromats. It is a natural space in which communities can be helped – the laundry business has a unique opportunity to help communities in ways that other businesses can’t.
So, think about how you can use your business, not just to provide the service of clean laundry, but how you can bring dignity and hope into the community in which your store is located.
