Interior Design Expo Helps the Homeless

By Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 5/31/2004

Classic Productions will donate between 2 and 5 percent of the registration fees it collects at each of its 11 East Coast Interior Design Expos this year to local homeless advocacy organizations and Habitat for Humanity.

Some of the groups that will benefit include Middlesex Interfaith Partners for the Homeless, Safe Harbor of Westchester County and the Community for Creative Nonviolence. Suffolk Habitat for Humanity of Long Island, N.Y. will actively seek designers to help with the interiors of newly built homes at the shows in which they participate.

Classic Productions Public Relations Director Alice Fisher came up with the plan, which builds on her own volunteer work with local homeless organizations in the Washington, D.C. area. "Because we target a very affluent audience, I thought it would make our attendees feel good too," Fisher said.

"People in New Jersey were thrilled," said Greg Winton, CEO of Classic Productions, of the $1,000 raised for local charities in that area. Over the next few years, Winton plans on expanding the shows' involvement with homeless advocacy organizations.

This is the third year for IDE. Recently, the New York show covered 32,000 net square feet of exhibit space.