NOVA Thrift Shop prepares for early February reopening in new building

In 2001, Network of Victim Assistance (NOVA) launched its NOVA Thrift Shop as a way to develop a funding resource that would also provide a service to the community while raising awareness for NOVA’s work with crime victims and prevention education. The initiative has proven successful beyond the community service organization’s wildest dreams, necessitating—and enabling—NOVA to build a new home for its 16-year-old thrift shop.

Within the next few weeks, NOVA Thrift Shop will open its doors to the public in its own building at the intersection of Route 313 and Broad Street, 1.2miles up the highway from its former home in Fountainville, which it vacated the end of December. A later grand opening celebration is scheduled for March 25.

“In the meantime, we are accepting donations of new or gently used clothing and household goods at NOVA’s Jamison headquarters, 2370 York Road, Suite B,” says Maria White, NTS’s manager. “Our Thrift Shop volunteers will be there Monday through Friday from 10am to 4pm, so just come in the main entrance.”

NOVA Thrift Shop’s phone number remains the same: 215.249.8000. Until the shop reopens, callers can leave a message.

New digs
NOVA closed on the purchase of the 3.25-acre parcel in Hilltown Township in January 2016; in the spring, construction began on the tan building with a red roof. NOVA Thrift will occupy 7,000sf of the 9,500sf building, accommodating the shop’s anticipated need for retail, office, preparation and storage space for many years to come and ample parking for donors and shoppers alike.

NOVA is currently seeking a tenant to occupy the remaining 2,500sf.

“Our new home gives us 20 percent more retail area,” says Ms. White, “but we are especially excited about the room our staff and dedicated volunteers will have to manage the back end of the operation. Anyone who has visited NOVA Thrift in recent years is aware of the sheds we’ve used to hold out-of-season items and donations yet to be sorted. Well, we won’t need the sheds!”

Since it opened 16 years ago, NOVA Thrift Shop has donated nearly $2.5 million to NOVA’s programs and services, contributing annually approximately 55 percent of the shop’s income from sales—a statistic that makes NOVA Thrift Shop stand out among other nonprofit thrifts. Only the manager is fulltime; she and the five part-time assistant managers work side by side with a core group of less than a dozen devoted volunteers and about 70 other men and women who give several hours a month to the operation.

All staff and volunteers embrace their parent organization’s mission to support victims of crime and to deliver prevention education and other services throughout Bucks County.

Assistant manager Denise Held says, “We know what we’re working for: our one mission that impacts our own community.”