6 Things to Know About Your Donations
If you’re participating in The Salvation Army’s Lent Challenge, here are some key things to remember about your donation.
1 - Everything you donate to – or buy from – a Salvation Army thrift store generates income that provides helpful programs and essential services to people in need right in your community.
2 - Donating household goods, clothing, vehicles, appliances, jewelry, etc., helps you simplify your life and your home. De-cluttering expert Marie Kondo says, “It's important to understand your ownership pattern because it is an expression of the values that guide your life. The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.” *
3 - The Salvation Army keeps your donation in your community. You can feel good knowing that your donated items to The Salvation Army stay local to support our programs and services and budget-conscious shoppers.
4 - When you give household goods, clothing, vehicles, appliances, jewelry, etc., we give you a receipt for your taxes! Consult our valuation guide for more information.
5 - We recycle just about everything! We make every effort to keep items we can’t sell out of landfills and create an income stream from what you donate. For example, we strip scrap metal from appliances or computers, bale or grind corrugated cardboard, and offer torn or stained clothing to vendors who repurpose them as upholstery stuffing, carpet padding, or wiping cloths.
6 - When you donate to or buy from a Salvation Army thrift store you’re putting members of your own community to work managing the store. On average, each store has 8 to 10 employees. And some of the jobs, like sorting, pricing, and stocking donations provide work therapy and job training for men and women in our programs.
More about the Lent Challenge
Every day during Lent, find an item in your home that you’d like to donate to The Salvation Army and place it in a large bag. At the end of the 40 days of Lent, you’ll have 40 items in the bag that will help bring hope and life to someone else. Find a Salvation Army store or drop-off location at www.satruck.org.
*Marie Kondo is a Japanese businessperson and the author of the New York Times #1 best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
This piece was inspired by Melissa McKewen at The Salvation Army in Denver and Alexa Morris at The Salvation Army in Portland.