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LPT Edit: Goodwill is a terrible place to donate to, try donating...

Really? Can you explain?

Do you mean besides the obvious? They take donations and turn around and sell them for 100% profit. Half the time, they overprice the donations as well. Not to mention the uneven distribution of wealth within their own company.

You don’t have to be a dick about it, the person above you was asking a good-faith question.

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So, America used to pay companies to hire the mentally handicapped. You may remember interacting with them as Walmart greeters if you’re in the right age gap.

Then, the government cut the funding. While Walmart simply whittled them out until they were replaced with the elderly, GoodWill fired them all in one fell swoop.

Don’t shop at Goodwill.

Goodwill is the world's worst pawn shop. A sketchy place with "WE BUY BROKEN GOLD" in neon might give you $15 for an item that you originally paid $100 for. They will re-sell it for $50.

Goodwill will re-sell the same item for the same price, but pay a whopping $0.00 to the person donating.

Give your local food pantry money. They can use that more than a can of spinach.

This is an idea coming from a very earnest place, but thrift shops where I live have been inundated with trash lately. They’re also receiving way more donations than they can process. I’m loath to subject food banks to that, too. Make sure that the food bank is requesting household items or clothing before showing up with items unannounced.

The message from most charitable organizations in recent years, including food banks, is that if you want to help, cash goes a lot further than any item you can donate. Food banks in particular can buy way more food than any single donor can with $5 due to a number of programs that stretch their dollars.

I never donate to big box retailers like Goodwill or Arc, because they upcharge about 200% on freecycling, on top of the fact that they only pay minimum wage if they do pay you, but most "workers" are "volunteers" that are trying to get their hours for welfare. It's a shit system that exploits poor people for free labor.

My apologies, I took my anger at goodwill out on OP.

Stop donating to places that make big profit off donated items. Find places in your community that give your goods away for free and support your food bank and Food Not Bombs chapter.

In my small Canadian city, we have a clothes closet run by the CWL where someone can shop for free, a local FNB chapter, several local food banks including the official one, an Indigenous youth lodge, lodges for adults, and numerous church pantries for literally anyone who shows up needing a bag of food. You can find them. Call your local United Way or ecumenical church or mosque and flex your charity for good, not capitalism.

They also have to spend millions of dollars sorting and disposing of the tons of trash that people donate. They could charge less on what they do resell if people didn't use them as a dumpster.

Uh yeah Goodwill sells donated items to fund their programs. The point of Goodwill is not to provide poor people with cheap second hand crap. Goodwills across the country are operated independently from each other by region so some may differ from others but their programs usually aim to help disabled or otherwise less fortunate people find work opportunities. They themselves usually employ a lot of people with disabilities.

On kind of a side note; don't donate your used clothing to Goodwill or anywhere else if it is in very poor condition. Your ratty old jeans and sweaters usually end up going straight in the trash or baled together to be sold to rag pickers/makers.

Goodwill lost its “non-profit” status after being found to have no material charitable activities. Your average “we donate 10% to charity” for-profit company is more than 10 times as charitable.

Don’t donate to Goodwill. They are a FOR-PROFIT organization who’s CEO makes over $1m in salary.

Donate to Salvation Army or Purple Heart instead.

You realize sorting/cleaning, land for the store, electricity for the lights, wages for the workers doing this all, costs money right? Do you live in a fantasy world where this all just gets done for free?

Goodwill takes money so they can afford to have some central location for all donations to go to. That’s just how shit works.

Try donating to local churches as well. We donate to a church down the street that ships the items to Mexico amd gives them out, for free, to people who actually need it.

They upcharge everything

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I thought they donated a portion to charities/social programs? Sorry for my ignorance.

Unfortunately, no. I truly wish they did. There are a lot of non-profit organizations that do that that you can look into.

Goodwill is for profit

I recently donated all my old pots and pans to GW, and on the way home remembered the Food Pantry takes those kinda things too, and got bummed out. Now learning more about GW, even more so. If I had the money, I'd buy them back and take them to the Food Pantry.

I would just try to avoid using them in the future.

Yeah it's pretty gross when I see some stuff that was donated like certain vintage electronics and you can tell they looked the price on ebay and are trying to get full resale value.

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goodwill supports pro life and anti lgbtq causes so no its not good at all

Screw Goodwill and screw Salvation Army! Donate to local Thrift Shops, military veteran programs, homeless shelters, animal rescues, etc.

Yes! And PLEASE donate books to your LOCAL SCHOOLS AND LIBRARY. Your schools will adore having new books!!

So Salvation Army is ok? I wasn’t sure about them.