The Longmont nonprofit OUR Center has stopped accepting or offering clothing donations, choosing instead to make more room for other programs and projects.

OUR Center provides access to critical resources for residents of the St. Vrain Valley School District, including housing and food assistance. The nonprofit at 220 Collyer St. recently closed its Community Closet, where individuals and families could take clothes home for free. The closet was also a place in Longmont where people could drop off unwanted clothing.

But, in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, OUR Center staff discovered that clothing hasn’t been the most popular resource for its clients.

“There was a lot of volume coming in, but not as much volume going out, unfortunately,” said OUR Center executive director Marc Cowell.

According to OUR Center data going back to 1995, the number of households accessing the closet has actually been steadily declining for around 15 years. In 2024, OUR Center saw five to six families on average visit the closet every day. That wasn’t nearly enough to justify the 100,000 pounds of clothing the nonprofit took in last year, Cowell explained.

In contrast, there’s been a “steady increase” in people seeking food pantry services over the past 20 years, with roughly 100 people visiting the Community Market every day.

Cowell said 88% of OUR Center’s clothes weren’t even being returned to the community, both because of the low visitor count and because some donations weren’t in good condition.

“If we had 50 people a day visiting the closet, it would probably still stay open,” he said. “We came to the conclusion that the need just wasn’t there.”

Because the Community Closet was underutilized, April 30 was the last day OUR Center accepted clothing donations, while May 30 was the final day people could get clothes from the closet.

The area of OUR Center that held the closet will be converted into a community room, which can host classes and meetings. The former closet space will also enhance the center’s Community Market by allowing more room for storage and making it faster for people to access food staples.

Additionally, the redesigned space will add another room for child care at OUR Center, so clients with children can attend meetings and classes more easily.

Cowell explained that a lot of the Community Closet was used to store and sort clothes. Now, the shopping area, storage and sorting spaces can all be repurposed to meet more pressing needs.

“We can put it to much better use than what we’ve done in the past couple of years,” Cowell said.

OUR Center already has a classroom, but it can only fit around 25 people. The new community room will provide a second, larger space where the nonprofit can offer more case management and family development services. These include financial literacy classes, parent support groups, and tax return assistance.

“We’d like to have just a really nice community space where other safety net partners can come in and offer classes,” Cowell said.

Cowell said construction on the redesign could start this fall, which would get the new spaces ready by the end of the year.

Since closing its closet, OUR Center has directed people to other Longmont resources for clothing donations, including BRITE Collaborative, Mountain States Children’s Home and Arc Thrift Store.

BRITE Collaborative has a Community Closet at 528 Main St. Alejandro Rodriguez, program manager for BRITE Collaborative, wrote in an email that the nonprofit has noticed an increase in both walk-ins and phone calls from people wanting to donate clothes in the past month.

Rodriguez wrote that, while managing the increased drop-ins has been a bit challenging, OUR Center is meeting a “critical need” in the community by expanding its pantry.

“Every nonprofit and community partner in Boulder County plays a different role, and we’re all doing our best to support our neighbors with the resources we have,” Rodriguez wrote.