From Basement To Foundation: How One LI Woman Started Her Charity

LINDENHURST, NY — It's been nearly six years since Lindenhurst native Amanda Munz started her charity, The Fashion Foundation, and in that time she's had to overcome a lot but has been able to help thousands in the process.

Munz has always had an interest in fashion. While attending Lindenhurst High School, she went to a Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) school for part of the day to study fashion merchandising. She began interning with a fashion company at 16-years-old, where she stayed for five years. After graduating high school in 2008 she was accepted to the Fashion Institute of Technology where she got her bachelor's degree in 2012 and went on to get her master's degree in 2014.

During all this time, Munz constantly saw this problem in the fashion industry where they overproduced merchandise. She found that many companies ended up with an abundance of samples that they didn't know what to do with. It was then that she sought to find a solution to this issue.

"I decided right before I graduated from FIT that she wasn't going to get a 'real job,' wanted to start charity in fashion," Munz told Patch.

That's how her organization, The Fashion Foundation, was born. She began building it while she was in school in her home in Lindenhurst and by the time she graduated with her master's, her non-profit was registered as a 501c3 charity. Munz started by asking friends and families to clean out their closets and give her items they no longer wanted. She then built a website to sell these products and use the money to help buy school supplies for underprivileged children.

"I'm always very transparent with anybody I speak to because I think a lot of people associate charity with wealth and that was not the case," she said. "I grew up in a middle income family, I didn't come from money or anything like that and I always think that's a key component."

She then started networking in the city, attending fashion events, building up contacts until she got a big break about a year after launching. While networking, she met someone from a major handbag company who six weeks later, donated about 300 handbags for her to sell on her website. After that, another major company donated 3,000 pajamas, which were delivered to her home in Lindenhurst and she received another large order of 1,100 pounds of pants. In addition, fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff heard about Munz and her cause, and decided to support her non-profit.

While building the company, she received lots of support from the Lindenhurst community. Childhood friends would help her sort the clothes and last year, a local club hosted a fundraiser to help her sell 1,069 fuzzy socks she received as a donation that happened to be "Lindy green." After working from a basement for over two years, she had acquired 100 big plastic bins filled with merchandise and a need for a larger space. That was the moment that Munz said "everything changed for the better." She moved out of home basement get a showroom open to the public starting with her first one in Bay Shore before moving to Farmingdale and finally, last September moving to New York City, which she says was her goal since starting the company.

"I always from the day I started said it was a New York City company," Munz said. "It belongs in New York City."

However, tragedy struck when just four weeks after she set up everything, an issue with the radiator filled the showroom with steam and damaged a large percentage of her merchandise. Before she even got the chance to official open her showroom to the public, nearly 85 percent of her business was completely destroyed.

"For years I've helped thousands of students and today I feel helpless," she wrote in a statement last October. "I'm unsure of what the future holds but sometimes life pushes you to the limit before a breakthrough."

Since then she spent the past few months rebuilding and reopening her showroom, still accomplishing her dream of bringing her charity to New York City.

"That was a really big hurdle and I basically had to work really hard to build it from scratch I didn't have much to work with," she said.

Munz says she was thankful that nothing available on the website was damaged, as it was all located in another facility. Since the unfortunate incident which she says "knocked her off her feet," several fashion companies have reached out to help, allowing her to rebuild her supply and raise more money for charity. Last week, she was finally able to open her showroom. Those who wish to visit can email amanda@thefashionfoundation.org to book an appointment.

Since she began The Fashion Foundation, Munz has help over 10,000 students in New York. She has contacted schools in Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Harlem to ask exactly what supplies the students need and then uses the profits from the organization to buy them. Some advice she gives to those looking to build their own company is to build a solid network. As a professor at LIM College in New York City, she advises her students to talk to people and be nice.

All photos courtesy of Amanda Munz