Pick up for Used Items - CHARITY

[Sanhedralite]

Does anyone know what assoc. in downtown Toronto come to your door to pick up old clothing/household items for donation?

I've already called the Diabetes Assoc. and they don't pick up in my area.

Thanks.

[Cream Puff]

same here ! i have a load of used clothing i would like to donate (i dont mind driving to drop it off if it's uptown)

btw, is it true that they try to resale the clothing for a profit? does the money end up helping others or does the charity use the money for their operating expenses?

[yao416]

nvm

[goddess]

i'm having a hard time finding charities that will pick up furniture donations.

[Stunt_101]

just be careful when giving away your cloths, make sure you give it to reputable charity organization rather than some phony ones thats gonna sell the clothing they collect

[Shaner]

www.freecycle.org

Give it to someone needy who will come to your house and pick it up. There's not much of a market for used clothing, so only those people who actually need the clothing are going to come pick it up.

[45ED]

i'm having a hard time finding charities that will pick up furniture donations.

Furniture Bank (http://www.furniturebank.org/index.html)

From their "About Us - Mission Page":

Our Mission (http://www.furniturebank.org/mission.html)

Furniture Bank collects and distributes donated gently-used furniture and other household items to assist a wide variety of persons in the Greater Toronto Area who are in need.

Our clients are:

• individuals and families leaving abusive situations,

• refugees to Canada,

• homeless persons leaving shelters.

All clients are referred to us by partner agencies and shelters in the GTA.

We strive to meet our objective of reaffirming faith in the innate dignity of each member of the human family and to acknowledge the right of every person to his or her basic needs for sustainable living.

For Furniture Pickups:

Pickup & Delivery (http://www.furniturebank.org/pickup.html)

Can't drop off your furniture? Do you need your furniture donation picked up? We will send a truck with a driver and helper to come into your home and remove your furniture items.

The cost for this service depends on the distance from our warehouse, volume and quantity of items picked up.

We call our commercial Pickup & Delivery service Furniture Link which operates as a social purpose enterprise.

Call now for your personal quotation! 416-934-1229

I'd figure that if someone were donating used furniture, that the furniture would be picked up for free. But given that they're a charity of sorts, picking up large pieces of furniture on an infrequent basis can cost in gas and truck maintenance - which is where I think the pickup fee goes towards.

Breakfast Television story on Furniture Bank (http://videotoronto.citytv.com/?fr_story=2a836dc0eb9e90a40ba5c1cd21c54a8816c4de18&rf=bm)

[Sanhedralite]

www.freecycle.org

Give it to someone needy who will come to your house and pick it up. There's not much of a market for used clothing, so only those people who actually need the clothing are going to come pick it up.

What a great link, thanks.

[Sanhedralite]

i guess for used furniture, just free ad in cragslist/rfd/kijiji would do...

[BornRuff]

same here ! i have a load of used clothing i would like to donate (i dont mind driving to drop it off if it's uptown)

btw, is it true that they try to resale the clothing for a profit? does the money end up helping others or does the charity use the money for their operating expenses?

The idea behind the pickup service is that they collect clothing and sell it to make money for their charity. Some charities run their own thrifts shops, most will sell the clothes to Value Village, which gives them a set amount of money per box or bag of clothes and then sells the clothes in their store.

The way the money is used depends on the charity, but no charity can spend more than 20% of their donations on admin, most spend much less than that. For example, the Canadian Diabetes Association spends about 10% of their revenue on admin. If you are worried about a charity, do a bit of research into them. You can normally find out if a charity is known for scamming people very quick on google, and most charities post financial reports on their website.

Of course, when figuring out how much money goes to the charity from these programs, you have to account for costs. Running the trucks costs money, so if you want to have a larger impact, consider dropping off the clothing yourself rather than having it picked up. If pick up is more convenient for you though, no worries, since they have worked it out to still be very profitable for them to do the pick ups.

[BornRuff]

I'd figure that if someone were donating used furniture, that the furniture would be picked up for free. But given that they're a charity of sorts, picking up large pieces of furniture on an infrequent basis can cost in gas and truck maintenance - which is where I think the pickup fee goes towards.

Breakfast Television story on Furniture Bank (http://videotoronto.citytv.com/?fr_story=2a836dc0eb9e90a40ba5c1cd21c54a8816c4de18&rf=bm)

Since they are giving those donations directly to people, they don't have any way of using a portion of the donations to pay for pick up. When you donate to something like the diabetes foundation, they sell those clothes to variety village, so they end up with cash. With that cash they can pay for the cost of the trucks and then use to proceeds for their programs.

When you donate to furniture bank, the donations are never converted to money, and they can't pay for the costs of running the trucks with furniture. That is why if you need pick up, you need to pay for it. In the future, they may find it beneficial to fund raise to provide free pickup, but it is obviously most simple if people just drop off donations.