The Secret Life of Thrift Stores---About donating

My recent comment on Hermione's blog made me think it might be time to offer all of you an inside look at the workings of your local second hand stores. After all nothing terrible goes on back there and it may help all of you, and us make life a little easier.

While it's true that different thrift stores may have small variations in procedure this is pretty much how it works all over. There is alot to cover on the subject. I could be here typing all night if I try to explain it all, so today I'll just talk about the things you should know before making a donation.

Choosing a charity:

There are probably hundreds of different charities out there asking for your "gently used" clothes and household goods. They all support good causes, so how do you decide who gets your closet cast offs? Some people choose to support stores where they shop or causes they have strong attachments to, but for the rest of the world, it can be hard to tell one charity from another.

Fortunately, you can do two very simple things to help sort through the gaggle of organizations at work in your area.

1) Find out where your donations go:

Not every charity has it's own store. Some charities sell their donations to commercial second hand stores who then turn around and sell those donations at a profit. Sometimes these commercial stores pay as little as 10 cents per pound. At that rate a charity has to sell half a ton of cloth to raise as little as $100 dollars. In the meantime, the commercial stores turn around and sell the same clothes for roughly 3 to 4 dollars per item, if not more. The difference goes not to the charities or their beneficiaries, but to line the pockets of corporate investors.

This is not the fault of the charities who do this. They are being taken advantage of by the corporations. Unfortunately, the only way to stop the practice may be to donate your goods only to organizations who do not resell your donations to corporate companies. If you still want to support the cause in question donate cash or services directly, or if you're feeling truly ambitious, sell your items yourself and donate the proceeds. That way the charity still benefits and corporate raiders are cut out of the loop.

2) Find out where the money goes:

Charities are all different, but all have overhead costs. Sometimes there is the cost of maintaining store fronts as well as administration, sometimes not. And some charities pool resources nationally to help all over the country, such as those that come in to aid in disaster relief. However, a general rule is that the more money that stays right there in your community the better it is all around. Look for charities where the highest percentage of money spent is on programs and services that directly benefit the people the charity is supposed to support. Also look at how successful those programs are. Are they really having a positive impact on the community or are they spinning their wheels?

One thing to note here is that some charities spent a significant portion of their proceeds on lobbying efforts. While sometimes this may seem out of place or inappropriate other times it is a vital part of the charity's efforts. For example, a charity that aids victims of domestic violence may spent large portions of their budget educating the public on the signs and causes of such violence, making people aware that help is available and encouraging victims to come forward. Doing this saves lives. The charity may also spend money lobbying on the local and federal levels to pass laws strengthening protections for victims and increasing penalties for perpetrators. This also saves lives. If you find a charity you wish to support spends large amounts of money on lobbying efforts, don't automatically reject supporting them, but do find out just what their lobbying efforts entail.

What and how to donate:

Just what does "gently used" mean anyway? It means that in order for a store or charity to be able to use your donations the items must be in new or like new condition. We cannot sell clothes with rips, tears, holes, or stains, even if they are "minor" or "tiny". The fact is people just won't buy them. We do not have people on staff that can repair them. This is not to say that unsellable clothes are thrown away, the get recycled into industrial rags, but really to raise the funds we need to keep us and our programs going we need clothes you could almost put on and wear out the door. In general, if an item is in poor enough condition that you wouldn't wear it out in public, it's in too poor a condition to donate.

The same guidelines apply to housewares. A little dust is fine, we give things a quick wipe down before they go out anyway, but even if it can be "fixed" we can't sell it. We can't sell chipped or cracked dishes, rusted out pans or broken knick-knacks. We can't sell that coffee cup you glued the handle back onto, either. Little chips on the back or bottom of items we can sometimes get around, but if grandma's favorite vase has a giant crack down the front of it, it's just not going to work.

Please do wash your clothes and housewares before donating them. No, we don't have people in the back or at the warehouse that launder or scrub your items. We sort and price about 2,500 items of clothing a day. Can you imagine the space, water, power and labor it would take to launder each piece before selling it? Unfortunately it's just not possible. If your knick knacks have years of grease and grime on them please wash those, too. In housewares we have to price 80-100 pieces an hour to keep stocked. That leaves us about one and a half seconds to spend on each item. If we'd have to scrub off ten years of kitchen grease off something to make it presentable it's going to end up in the recycling. Even with volunteers, we just dont have the time or the manpower to do otherwise.

However, it is perfectly okay to donate out of season items. With the help of some very awesome volunteers, we do have a system for packing and storing out of season items, so go ahead and send us your Christmas decorations in July, picnic baskets or poolwear in January or Easter baskets in September. It actually takes all year to accumulate enough items for us to sell for the holidays so we don't complain. Please make sure they're in good condition, though. Pack fragile items carefully and label them, i.e. "Christmas ornaments", "Halloween decorations", etc.

It's okay to send us weird stuff, too. In fact sometimes the weirder the better. That is what people look for in thrift stores. We want the unique, the different, the "hey, what the heck is that?". We'll happily take the lava lamp, the sumo wrestler figurine your great aunt brought you back from her trip to Japan or the kitchen gadget that looks like an alien surgical instrument. However, if something is a rare, hard to find, odd, or difficult to identify item, sometimes a label telling us what it is can be very helpful.

Thank you,

Ms. Betty