For about a decade, Matthew Gould’s lifelong passion for creating and building with Legos has benefitted Kansas City area foster children.
About 10 years ago, Gould and his wife Erin founded The Giving Brick, a nonprofit that takes donated Lego pieces, repackages them into retail-quality sets and gives them to local children in the foster care system.
The Giving Brick’s growth in the years since the Goulds founded it has left the organization, quite literally, with millions of Lego pieces. They have a storage unit packed with 250 13-gallon storage containers, all full of Legos.
Now, the Goulds want help to sort those Legos to get them ready to be donated to Kansas City area kids in need.
The Giving Brick is partnering with Neighbors for a Better Roeland Park on a Lego-sorting event this April that aims to chip away at its massive inventory.
The event will take place over three days, from April 11 to 13, at the recently opened Roots Church KC, the former Roeland Park United Methodist Church at 5110 Cedar St.
Here’s how you can help:
‘Pass forward that joy of Lego’
Gould said he grew up playing with Legos as a child, and he passed his passion down to his three sons.
The Gould household accumulated enough Lego toys to pack an 8-foot long, 3-foot wide and 2-foot deep container to the brim.
One Christmas day about 10 years ago, Gould’s wife Erin said the household needed to get rid of at least some Legos.
Gould quickly discovered that there weren’t great options for donating Legos that wouldn’t end up in a landfill or that were packaged in an actual set.
His experience searching through his existing supply for all the Lego pieces necessary to build a Millennium Falcon Lego set — a new one of which currently retails for about $850 — gave Gould the idea to create sets from his family’s Lego inventory.
It took the Goulds about a year to sort through their Legos and pull together pieces for 10 usable Lego sets, he said.
At the time, Gould said he knew someone connected to the foster care system who was thrilled to take the 10 sets.
Lego sets, it turned out, are the most requested item for young boys in the foster care system, Gould was told, but are rarely donated because they are so expensive.
“This can be done on an individual scale,” Gould said. “If people have Legos, they can do this as well. They can pass forward the idea of Lego and pass forward that joy of Lego, rather than keeping it in the attic for legacy purposes.”
The Giving Brick tries to give away 25 Lego sets — pieces that can be put together to make things like cars, boats spaceships — around the holiday season, Gould said.
During its best year, the nonprofit gave away more than 100 Lego sets.
Why a sorting event?
The Giving Brick has millions of donated Lego pieces that need to be sorted by color and then by specific pieces, Gould said.
This is the first step to repackaging the Lego toys into retail-quality sets that can then be donated to foster children, Gould said.
In previous years, Scout troops, church groups and other children’s groups have taken advantage of the volunteer opportunity to help the Goulds out.
With millions of Lego pieces and 250 storage containers already, Gould said the nonprofit currently does not need more donations of used Legos but instead needs help sorting what they already have.
“It’s very cumbersome for us to comb through the millions of pieces that we get each year to find those exact pieces that match the inventory for a Lego set,” Gould said. “It’s something that I couldn’t do myself.”
There are still open slots available for volunteers
- Those who are interested in signing up for a two-hour time block on April 10, 11 or 12 can do so online here.
- Roots Church KC can accommodate up to 50 volunteers per time slot from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 11, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 12 and 12 to 4 p.m. on April 13.
- As of Thursday, there were several open volunteer slots available on each day.
- Shea Geist, a member of Neighbors for a Better Roeland Park, said snacks and refreshments will be available for volunteers.
- Volunteers are welcome to connect with other community members while sorting, Geist said, but they can also choose to sort alone if they wish.
Keep reading causes and community news: Helping Hands: How a JoCo family’s Merriam-based nonprofit helps students in need
