The Giving Brick

photo by Camille Talkington 

From the outside, the Gould family’s basement seems normal, ordinary. A brown couch. A table filled with homework. A T.V. and gaming console. But behind a closed door lies a room dedicated to changing lives —  a room full of LEGO bricks.

The Giving Brick all started with a Sterilite tub filled with over 5,000 LEGO pieces collected for almost seventeen years by junior Ian Gould, freshman Noah Gould and seventh-grader AJ Gould — what Ian calls “a considerable collection,” but his mom calls a mess.

After looking into several options including recycling and donation, the Gould family found that toy drives don’t accept used LEGO pieces and that LEGO is made of unrecyclable plastic. But with a passion for service and connections with Jackson County Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA, father Matt Gould came up with an idea — to give retail-quality sets made of pre-existing LEGO to foster children.

“I wanted to see if my idea would even work,” Matt said. “So I decided to build one of the largest LEGO sets using bricks we already had.”

Thus the 5,000 piece rainbow Millenium Falcon was born — and so was The Giving Brick.

The Gould Family approached then-Executive Director of CASA Martha Gershun with his idea. The two agreed that The Giving Brick would be beneficial to foster children, but there were some logistics to consider. For instance, sets would need to be in sturdy packaging as foster children are not often in the same place for very long.

“Matthew took our ideas and came up with these remarkable LEGO sets with instructions and photographs that look amazing to a kid,” Gershun said.

But before the family could start to distributing the sets to foster children, they needed to perfect the donation and assembly process — not an easy feat from the basement storage room.

“I tried to make an exact set but in red bricks instead of blue,” Matthew said. “But when I gave the set to Noah to try, he couldn’t do it because the pieces were the wrong color from the directions.”

So, the Gould’s got to work sorting pieces into specific categories which are now stored in clear bins in their storage room. They also got creative with the sterilization process by using a delicate bag to send the LEGO through the washing machine and drying them on a baking rack in the corner of the basement.

Four years later, the Gould’s have perfected their process and have been able to donate approximately 500 sets through CASA and Operation Breakthrough — which Ian estimates to be more than $10,000 in retail-quality LEGO.

While The Giving Brick operates year-round, the family generally saves larger sets to be given around the holidays. According to Matt, LEGO is the number one most requested gift and the number one least-donated gift to children in foster care.

“The kids in foster care might not get a present under the tree,” Angie Blumel, current Executive Director of CASA said. “Last year, Noah and Matt personally came to drop off the LEGO sets. It’s really cool for our kids.”

Running a non-profit organization from your basement doesn’t come without its challenges, however.

The Gould’s have experienced everything from an infestation of squirrels in the storage room insulation to  unwanted donations, including a box full of LEGO and a sock, two bandaids, a complete box of crayons and a rusty muffin tin.

The Gould’s have a Facebook page and a website, where most of their donors find the company. Most of their donors send LEGO from the U.S. but they have also received international donations such as a box from France.

Since Matt has a job and the kids go to school, the Gould’s are simply unable to keep up with the donations; Matt even had to get a storage pod to keep up with the donations.

Sorting the bricks is a task that takes hours according to the family. The Giving Brick has hosted a few “sorting” events where people can volunteer to sort bricks, but due to the time and space it requires, it can’t be done every week.

Luckily William Bade, a former geologist, found The Giving Brick via Facebook and offered to help sort the bricks. Now, on Sundays, Matthew and Bade exchange bricks — Bade gives Matt the sorted bricks and Matt gives Bade more to sort.

The whole exchange takes five minutes,” Matt said. “It kinda looks like a drug deal.”

But, for the Gould family, it’s worth it.

“I always tell this little story,” East parent Matthew Gould says. “Imagine you’re a seven year old kid and you’re sitting on the stoop talking to your friend. And your mom comes out in a drug rage and stabs you in the back because she hates you. They take you away to the hospital. They get you stitched up and you don’t go back home. You go to some institution. You wake up with the clothes on your back and maybe a toothbrush, scared as heck. Then you go into the room and a stranger is there saying ‘I’m here to help you.’ And what [researchers] have found is a kid would open up to [case manager] while playing with a LEGO set.”