Note added on March 22, 2020: During COVID-19 United Methodist Mountain Mission has closed their stores. They are not getting sales that help them meet payroll and have had to lay off nearly half of their employees, many of whom are in addiction recovery. They are in desperate needs of monetary donations. Donate here; additionally, you can donate to them via your regular Amazon purchases through smile.amazon.com, or via check by mail.
United Methodist Mountain Mission (MMM) was started in 1943 and provides used clothing and household items at a moderate price to anyone in the region. Operating eight stores in Jackson, Barbourville, Irvine, Harlan, Hazard, Pineville, West Liberty and Burkesville, Kentucky, they employ approximately 70 people.
Photo by Malcolm Wilson
In addition to providing good quality items at very affordable prices, MMM also provides affordable health insurance to its employees. For around $50 biweekly, employees can afford high quality insurance with the vast majority of the cost being paid for by MMM.
Currently, they employ those in specialty court – individuals in addition recovery – to actively fight the drug epidemic in Eastern Kentucky. They are proud to be a second chance employer and that many individuals have had great success at MMM, being promoted or going on to other companies with references from MMM.
Narcotics Anonymous meetings are offered for those in recovery, along with Concerned Persons, a group for those with family or friends in the throws of addiction. Concerned Persons comfort one another, listen to those in the medical field to learn more about addiction, and share stories to better understand this epidemic and what they can do to help their loved ones. In February 2020, they started another version of the group, “Concerned Persons for teens” for those in 7th-12th grades.
MACED is working with MMM to complete energy efficiency audits at its locations in order to help them find savings on high energy costs.
Just through looking at their recent utility bills for billing errors, MACED was also able to almost immediately find them a sales tax refund of $1,000 and an additional $1,900 per year in savings through getting their account on the correct utility rate class.
Their next step was lighting retrofit at their main office and warehouse in Jackson, completed by MACED New Energy Intern graduates Scott Shoupe and John Craft. This retrofit alone is expected to save them $1,100 per year. They invested $2,060 in the new LED lights, so the upgrade will have paid for itself in less than two years.
With these numbers, they continued to contract Scott’s business, New Age Solutions, based in Harlan County, to switch out their lights to LEDs in their Irvine and Barbourville stores.
During the audit in Barbourville, MACED noticed that they had an issue with one of their furnaces. Once they got this issue fixed, Andy Mitchell from MMM said their bill has been less than one third of what it normally is.
In total, they are looking at $7,300 in savings per year so far.
“Scott has been such a blessing to us. We have already been saving quite a bit of money after just working with MACED and Scott for such a short amount of time,” Mitchell said. “We are looking forward to realizing future savings across our locations.”
MACED is proud to help non-profits like MMM save money on energy bills in order to better sustain their critical mission to support Eastern Kentuckians.
In recent years, many small churches and other faith based groups have approached MACED looking for relief from high utility bills. To learn about other faith groups MACED has worked with, please visit here.
