Chairty cheats?

I have a rather jaundiced view of the national charity industry. I suggest that you go online to find a telephone number for Goodwill Industries, and place a call to find out if this is a reasonable contention for those employees to have made.

I think I'll do that tomorrow. There is a phone number for the local offices on the receipt I was given.

It makes me feel kind of sad that workers at the donation center might try to profit from what people are giving.

I do track donations for tax purposes too. I'm wondering if the fact that Goodwill won't have any record of this donation could cause some kind of problem.

I worked for a few years in an office of a local branch of a nationally-based charity, and developed a very jaundiced view of the charity industry. Theft of items by drivers and their helpers who recovered donations from drop-off sites and boxes was common. More than that, the agencies themselves were involved less in charitable activities than in the enhancement of their own position in a corporate entity. So, for example, i worked in a family shelter operation. It was heavily promoted to encourage an increase in donations either in cash or in kind to the organization. However, the organization only paid my salary, the salary of the shelter director, and the salary of one other employee--everyone else who worked for the shelter was a volunteer. I also maintained the organizations computer hardware and software for them, in addition to my duties in the family shelter (i usually worked evenings or nights, when the shelter needed someone on duty, and when it was more efficient to carry out hardware or software maintenance on the computers).

Every other penny, apart from those salaries, came from other sources--a local charitable foundation provided the funds with which we rented apartments for families. A local agency which administered FEMA funds provided the cost of housing families temporarily in motels until more permanent placement was found for them. Household goods and clothing were obtained for the families from other local charity organizations, despite the fact that our organization was the largest and most successful collector of donations in kind in the area. We chiefly relied upon Catholic Social Services and Lutheran Social Services for household goods and clothing for the families, especially the Lutherans. Those were the only two organizations for which i developed a genuine respect. Local Baptist churches provide some of the food with which we provided the families, and food banks and WIC provided the rest.

In short, for a pittance in three salaries, the organization reaped huge PR value and increased its already formidable in-kind donations. So i became, as i saw it, understandably cynical.

Clothing donations are commonly sorted into those items which may be quickly "turned around," and sold in thrift stores. Theoretically, that money then goes to fund charitable activities, but don't bet on it (c.f. the organization for which i worked, whose only real goal was to compete with other local branches of that charity in sending large sums to the national headquarters, which activity enhanced the career prospects of those in charge of the local branch). The clothing which does not meet the former standard is bundled, the bundles baled, and it is shipped to Latin America, Africa or Asia, and sold in bulk, where it ends up in used clothing stores which serve a clientele with much lower standards.

So, if anyone were siphoning off your donations, they would either hope to resell to a commercial used clothing operation, or to accumulate enough to make up a bale--i believe that the bulk sales of the lower standard clothing is only purchased by the bale, and i rather doubt that local scammers would be attempting that--they would more likely be looking for items to resell to a private, commercial operation.

Goodwill Industries has a deservedly good reputation in the national charity industry, largely because they provide employment to people who might not otherwise have employment prospects. I strongly urge you to contact someone in the organization, because i would hate to think of someone ripping off Goodwill.

I would not suggest that you stop donating to Goodwill Industries--they are a good bunch, and if there is any chicanery going on, i'd say it is a case of bad apples. At the same time, i would encourage anyone to consider donating to Catholic Social Services, or to Lutheran Social Services, especially to Lutheran Social Services, as it is my experience that donations to these organizations do the most direct good to those in need.

Ouch, Setanta. Sometimes the more you learn about charities the less charitable it makes you feel.

I'm pretty picky about who I donate to. I kind of lost confidence in Goodwill a few years back when it was reported that the Oregon director was paid more than a million dollars a year. I poked around a bit and found out what a big, profitable operation they run here (including a designer store and as a supplier of rare books to several vendors). The fact that they run it smart and that they do a lot of good took the sting out of the high salaries.

A lot of the stuff I took in today was pretty nice; it just wasn't getting used or worn much around here anymore and I'm trying to simplify. It was all loose in the back of my car so it was probably obvious it wasn't just a lot of junk.

I'll let you know what I find out after talking to them.

I'll check out the Catholic and Lutheran charites, Set. Thanks. We donate quite a bit each year to various groups and I'm always on the look out for good ones!

Most of our donations go to a small, local, children's charity. For national groups I really like "Dress For Success".

If you suspect the local organization, then i encourage you all the more to investigate Catholic Social Services or Lutheran Social Services. Ask Dys about this, as well. He has expressed the same opinion from his experience.

Our cynical organization, although operating fifteen thrift stores in the area, provided clothing to the people in our family shelter by using clothing vouchers from Lutheran Social Services, who operated only two thrift shops in the area. I would take clients to one of those two shops, and they would pick out items which were displayed among the general merchandise--nothing was reserved, no matter the perceived value. In addition to that, both Catholic Social Services and Lutheran Social Services provided us with evaluation forms, and upon our recommendation, they would assume the case management services for our clients, and provide their needs. Upon a recommendation of trustworthiness from us, they would take on a client family, and refer them to a local Catholic or Lutheran congregation, the members of which would then make their own volunteer efforts to get them back on their feet. In the time i worked for that shelter, i only knew of one family which cheated that system, and that was a family we had not recommended (no one asked us), which was scamming a local Lutheran congregation. We found out about, and warned them, and managed to stop them before they handed over a check for $1,700 to a family we had kicked out when we found out that the single mother's boyfriend was using her welfare check to buy reefer which he would sell in the apartment complex where we lodged many of our families. Not a single family which we recommended to the Lutherans or the Catholics (in that area, the Catholic Social Services only took on single mother families) either attempted to scam them, or failed to get back on their feet and get on with it.

I have only ever seen one other organization which gave more direct aid. There was a shelter for single men (these can be and often are very dangerous operations, due to violence) run by a local fundamentalist preacher, called Faith Mission. If you took your in-kind donations to Faith Mission, they sorted them on the spot before issuing a receipt, and took only what they were sure they could use--they gave back anything they couldn't use, and suggested that you donate it elsewhere. They also provided direct aid to some of our clients. They had not one single paid employee, and the preacher was well-known locally for having kept public and open books for more than 20 years. Otherwise, i'd say Catholic Social Services and Lutheran Social Services. The local Baptists helped us with food donations, but they always wanted to extract their religious pound of flesh, usually insisting that the clients come to their churches to be fed, which would only happen after a long sermon. The Baptists were not friendly even to our employees and volunteers, and gave real meaning to the expression "cold as Christian charity." That is perhaps unfair, and i realize that these things may vary from one locality to the other. However, i do think that it is noteworthy that Dys, who has had more experience of these operations than i, and who worked in a different region of the country, had exactly the same opinion of Catholic and Lutheran Social Services.

I called Goodwill this morning and explained what happened and my concern that my donation might have been diverted and they told me that this was a common practice done to save time.

It still seems a bit odd to me but I'll go along with that and not worry about it in the future.

Our Goodwill drop off points (there are many, and I've used three different ones) all have a single reciept, completed by the person making the drop off, and nothing is checked. Been that way for years here. I've often wondered how that works as far as claiming things that were not donated, or a higher value than what it was really worth.

I figure once I've made my donation and thanked them for taking it off my hands, I have no more responsibility except to properly report to the IRS when completing taxes, and even that we forget to do most of the time.

I guess we'll probably never know if they were or not...that's annoying.