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Ok I've finally had enough to need to get this off my chest. I work for a well known charity reseller. That is to say that people bring their donations to us and we then sell what is good in our store and use to money for charity projects.
You would think that the act of giving would not have any EW's. Wrong guess, minus 5 point! It's amazing what people think we should do. More on this below. Some of these are SC/EW issues and others are just plain lack of knowledge. Some are interchangeable.
1. ALWAYS check with your local store/donation center to see how they specifically handle things. This is from years of working the business in various areas so milage may vary. But most of it will make you look god-like in the eyes of the person taking your donation.
2. Box or bag your donations. Loose clothes especially are simply hard to get out of the containers we place the donations in prior to taking them to the sorters. It's way easier to reach in and snag a bag and then work it on the sorting table.
3. NO LAWN BAGS! My gods do you know how heavy those things get when filled with clothes? Possible exceptions are stuffed toys or items that are very lightweight but volumetricly large. Otherwise use standard size trash bags.
4. Seperate out your items. Now if you just have a few items that fit into a tiny grocery bag, don't worry about it. But if you are doing a large donation, then at least seperate out the cloth based items (clothes, shoes, linens, etc) from the rest. Most of the sorting areas are seperated out this way. If you have a lot of a certain item, say books, then isolating them from the rest of the wares is very helpful.
4. When the donation taker tells you they can't take an item then they can't take it. There are many things which some stores are licensed for and things they aren't and then there are all the health laws and other regulations. Just because we are a charity doesn't mean the laws are exempted for us. Outside of food banks most of us can't take donated food. However, feel free to bake us a cake and bring it in specifically for us!
5. Don't bother to gulit trip us. We really don't care that if we don't take it then you are going to go to the dump or throw it away. Me, personally, will try to give you some alteratives based on what I know of other local resources. It makes sense that if you are willing to give it to charity instead of already throwing it away then you'll seek out these other resources if you know about them.
6. No you can't use our dumpsters. The reason we don't take those items that we can't sell, is that we have to pay for trash removal. I've not worked for a company yet that has their trash removal service donated to them. So taking your items we can't sell (sometimes by law) means that our dumpsters fill up faster. That means we need them emptied more often. That means we pay the trash company more money. That means less money for helping people. I though you wanted to donate these items to help people.
7. No we don't give anything away. The goal of most of these stores are to get funds for running the company's charity work. The store has the added bonus of getting "gently used" items to the general public and low prices. We're just not set up to give anything away and that would attract the EW's anyway. So when we can't take something, don't tell us we can "just give it away". That's how people get fired.
8. No we don't have cleaning facillities(sp?). Don't tell us it just needs cleaning. We don't have the equipment or proper chemicals to do it. So don't bring us the moldy stuff, or the trunks reeking of mothballs, or the super rusty items. We also can't fix items either, so leave the broken tables and other items behind
9. Do NOT leave any donations out at a donation center outside of normal donating hours, unless there is a locked box of some sort there for that specific purpose. By the time we get to it in the morning other people will have come by and ripped through it all, and scattered it all over the area, at least that which they don't take. We have to throw the rest away. Would you really want to buy anything that's been like that? And that's if the looters are nice. I have too many times had to wear latex gloves because of the human waste that is covering the ripped open donation.
You would think that the act of giving would not have any EW's. Wrong guess, minus 5 point! It's amazing what people think we should do. More on this below. Some of these are SC/EW issues and others are just plain lack of knowledge. Some are interchangeable.
1. ALWAYS check with your local store/donation center to see how they specifically handle things. This is from years of working the business in various areas so milage may vary. But most of it will make you look god-like in the eyes of the person taking your donation.
2. Box or bag your donations. Loose clothes especially are simply hard to get out of the containers we place the donations in prior to taking them to the sorters. It's way easier to reach in and snag a bag and then work it on the sorting table.
3. NO LAWN BAGS! My gods do you know how heavy those things get when filled with clothes? Possible exceptions are stuffed toys or items that are very lightweight but volumetricly large. Otherwise use standard size trash bags.
4. Seperate out your items. Now if you just have a few items that fit into a tiny grocery bag, don't worry about it. But if you are doing a large donation, then at least seperate out the cloth based items (clothes, shoes, linens, etc) from the rest. Most of the sorting areas are seperated out this way. If you have a lot of a certain item, say books, then isolating them from the rest of the wares is very helpful.
4. When the donation taker tells you they can't take an item then they can't take it. There are many things which some stores are licensed for and things they aren't and then there are all the health laws and other regulations. Just because we are a charity doesn't mean the laws are exempted for us. Outside of food banks most of us can't take donated food. However, feel free to bake us a cake and bring it in specifically for us!
5. Don't bother to gulit trip us. We really don't care that if we don't take it then you are going to go to the dump or throw it away. Me, personally, will try to give you some alteratives based on what I know of other local resources. It makes sense that if you are willing to give it to charity instead of already throwing it away then you'll seek out these other resources if you know about them.
6. No you can't use our dumpsters. The reason we don't take those items that we can't sell, is that we have to pay for trash removal. I've not worked for a company yet that has their trash removal service donated to them. So taking your items we can't sell (sometimes by law) means that our dumpsters fill up faster. That means we need them emptied more often. That means we pay the trash company more money. That means less money for helping people. I though you wanted to donate these items to help people.
7. No we don't give anything away. The goal of most of these stores are to get funds for running the company's charity work. The store has the added bonus of getting "gently used" items to the general public and low prices. We're just not set up to give anything away and that would attract the EW's anyway. So when we can't take something, don't tell us we can "just give it away". That's how people get fired.
8. No we don't have cleaning facillities(sp?). Don't tell us it just needs cleaning. We don't have the equipment or proper chemicals to do it. So don't bring us the moldy stuff, or the trunks reeking of mothballs, or the super rusty items. We also can't fix items either, so leave the broken tables and other items behind
9. Do NOT leave any donations out at a donation center outside of normal donating hours, unless there is a locked box of some sort there for that specific purpose. By the time we get to it in the morning other people will have come by and ripped through it all, and scattered it all over the area, at least that which they don't take. We have to throw the rest away. Would you really want to buy anything that's been like that? And that's if the looters are nice. I have too many times had to wear latex gloves because of the human waste that is covering the ripped open donation.
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