Every November, the same things show up: flag sales, restaurant discounts, a few posts thanking veterans for their service. None of that fixes the staircase a veteran can’t safely climb anymore.
This Veterans Day, there’s a gift that actually changes someone’s daily life. A working stair lift turns a dangerous staircase back into a normal part of someone’s home.
Why Veterans Day Is the Right Moment
Veterans Day puts veterans on people’s minds for a few weeks every year. That attention is worth something, but only if it turns into action before the moment passes.
Two kinds of people read this: someone with an old, unused stair lift sitting in a garage or a deceased parent’s house, and someone who just wants to do something real this Veterans Day instead of another discount-code post. Both of you can fix a veteran’s staircase before the holiday is over.
What’s Actually at Stake
This isn’t abstract. Falls are the leading safety threat for older adults living independently, veterans included.
- More than 1 in 4 older adults falls every year.
- Falls send roughly 4.5 million older adults to the ER annually, with 1.4 million serious enough to require hospitalization.
- Hip fractures alone hospitalize nearly 319,000 older adults a year, and falls cause the vast majority of them.
A staircase a veteran can no longer safely use isn’t just inconvenient. It’s often the reason someone ends up leaving the home they’ve lived in for decades. A stair lift is one of the most direct ways to prevent that.
Two Ways to Give This Veterans Day
1. Donate Your Old Stair Lift
If you or someone you know has an Acorn or Bruno stair lift that’s no longer in use, it doesn’t have to sit unused. We accept donated units, professionally recondition them, and install them through our licensed partner, Star Lift LLC, for a veteran who needs one right now.
What that looks like in practice:
- We coordinate pickup or removal of the donated unit.
- Our technicians inspect, recondition, and safety-test the equipment.
- A veteran gets it installed, often at little or no cost to them.
2. Make a Financial Gift
Not everyone has a stair lift to donate, but every dollar still moves a veteran closer to getting one installed. Here’s exactly where it goes:
- $50 helps purchase replacement parts for a reconditioned unit.
- $250 helps transport a donated stair lift to where it’s needed.
- $1,000 supports the labor to get it installed correctly.
- $3,000 can sponsor an entire veteran’s stair lift, start to finish.
Every contribution goes toward transportation, installation, repairs, batteries, and safety inspections, the real costs behind turning a donated unit into a working one in someone’s home.
Who This Actually Helps
We’re currently serving veterans in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Missouri, with more regions coming online as our partner network grows. If you’re outside those states, a financial gift still funds equipment and installations for veterans in the areas we do serve, and helps us expand to reach more.
Veterans applying for help can also look into the VA’s HISA grant, which covers stair lifts for any service-connected veteran. It’s a good resource, but it caps at $6,800 and approval can take months. Donated equipment through programs like ours often moves faster, which matters when someone’s climbing stairs they can’t safely climb right now.
Make This Veterans Day Count
A flag on your porch is a nice gesture. A working stair lift is a veteran staying in their own home instead of being forced out of it.
This Veterans Day, do one of the two things that actually move the needle: donate your old stair lift, or make a financial gift toward someone else’s.