Tucked into the Columbia Square Shopping Plaza at 101-1001 Columbia Street, BASES Family Thrift Store gives New Westminster shoppers a reason to browse that goes well beyond a bargain. The stores name is short for the Burnaby Association for South East Side, a grassroots group founded in 2011 when two Community School Coordinators in South East Burnaby noticed the same problem again and again: schools wanted to offer richer out-of-school and after-school programming for kids, but grant applications and one-off fundraisers could never guarantee steady, dependable funding from year to year. Rather than chase another short-term grant cycle, the founders looked at successful nonprofit thrift stores elsewhere and decided to build their own sustainable revenue engine. The doors opened in October 2013, and the shop has been quietly funding classrooms ever since.
The growth has been real and traceable. In its first full year, 2014, the store raised enough to support programs in four Burnaby schools. By 2018, that number had tripled to twelve schools spanning both Burnaby and New Westminster, and the organization had grown capable of contributing to district-wide extracurricular initiatives on top of individual school programs. Every dollar spent on a secondhand coat, a stack of paperback novels, or a kitchen gadget at this store cycles directly back into academic, physical, and personal development programming for kids who might not otherwise have access to it.
Inside, the racks and shelves are in constant motion. The store advertises that its stock changes daily, meaning the clothing, housewares, books, toys, and miscellaneous finds a shopper sees on a Tuesday morning may be entirely different by the weekend. That turnover rewards regulars who make a habit of dropping in, since donated inventory from the community keeps the selection fresh without the store ever needing to mark down last seasons stock. The shop operates seven days a week, open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, making it an easy stop whether someone is running weekend errands or looking for something to do on a weekday evening.
Location matters here too. Columbia Square sits in a busy corner of New Westminster, and BASES leans into that visibility rather than hiding a nonprofit thrift store in a back alley storefront. The organization has also been explicit about operating on Coast Salish territory, acknowledging the traditional and ancestral lands of the hn’q’amin’am and Skwxwu7mesh speaking peoples as part of its public materials, a detail that reflects the community-first ethos running through the whole operation.
What sets BASES apart from a typical donation-based thrift shop is the direct, documented line between a purchase and a specific outcome: a public school program in Burnaby or New Westminster that keeps running because of thrift store proceeds. There is no ambiguity about where the money goes or why the store exists. Shoppers looking for secondhand clothing, books, and household goods can treat a visit as both a treasure hunt and a small act of local investment, since the newsletters BASES publishes each season detail exactly how thrift store revenue continues to expand the number of schools and students served. For anyone in New Westminster hunting for affordable finds with a clear community payoff, BASES Family Thrift Store is a daily-changing secondhand shop in Columbia Square whose entire purpose is funding after-school programs for Burnaby and New Westminster public school kids.
