Why can't charity shops accept donations left outside?

[Paintpalette]

I'm forever seeing SM posts and increasingly bigger signs in the windows of charity shops near me who absolutely CANNOT be expected to accept donated bags which have been left on the porch.

Can anyone tell me why they are so furious about this?

When I've taken bags in to drop off directly with staff, they haven't made me wait while they check through every item to see if it meets a standard and I'm sure there have always been the odd unsuitable things that must be disposed of.

For what it's worth, I haven't left anything there or had it rejected, but if it was more convenient to drop off, I would donate more. Ironically enough, it means I fill the plastic bags put through my letter box which are collected from outside on the doorstep, which is apparently safe enough for them!

It gets wee-d on by men and dogs. And rats scamper over it. Then it rains.

Our local one doesn't always take donations if they are full. Also it would encourage flytippers and thieves

This. Its prolific. I volunteered to work for one once, it was disgusting. So much literal rubbish, including damp mouldy clothes and urine soaked clothes.

Because people dump shite they know will not be accepted, and use it like a fly tipping spot. Dogs pee on it, people rummage through it and they usually end up as a sodden mass the staff are just throwing out

And paying commercial waste disposal charges for the privilege of getting rid of people's shite.

I work for the LA and it costs £400 to empty a commercial waste bin of 1100L. People massively underestimate the cost of waste disposal because it isn’t a separate bill domestically.

Not everything is listed on streaming. Then if you have a motorhome or caravan- you can’t get internet as good

Because it gets wet as it rains a lot here.

Because when I volunteered I was told a homeless person took an item out to shit on and put it back in the bag.

Gets rained/ peeed on, set fire to, rifled through, stolen and kicked around. Staff have to deal with it and can't get through the door, other than that its fine.

Rain, fox / dog / cat wee, items being strewn all over the pavements by thieves - all these make the donation unsellable and just a drain on the charity when they have to pay to dispose of it. Surely that's obvious?

It is basically fly tipping

A few months ago I took a small van load of black bags and boxes of crockery to a charity shop, but because they were closed I left them around the back of the shop, 'thinking' they'd be safe outside the back door until the next morning.

How wrong was I! The next day I called in and told them it was me who left the donations at the back. To which the manager replied "oh it was you. Never leave anything outside in future. When we arrived this morning there was stuff on the back thrown everywhere" She proceeded to say what I'd said I'd left had all been taken, with only bits and bobs left over.

I was so shocked that a huge box of crockery could be taken just like that as it was very heavy. There were also numerous bags of bedding and clothes, bags, shoes towels etc.

She told me it wasn't homeless who's done it, it s the gypsy's who go around late at night to see what ppl's left and take them r for themself.

I was furious as there was a lot of decent stuff I'd donated that many ppl would have been very grateful for at a low price.

How little imagination and common sense do you need to work this one out? Not much.

• Charity shops are not rubbish disposal centres, yet they still have to process everything 'donated' and bin or recycle a huge amount of it.
• Some days, charity shops are low on staff or high on donated good and can't accept any bags that day. By fly-tipping them in front of their doors, you're making an additional problem for them.
• Fly-tipping (which this is) is illegal. You know this, right?
• Charity shops often can't take certain classes of goods but if you just dump them then they don't get to tell you, do they?
• leaving stuff you don't want any more in shop doorways is messy and unsightly.
• Dogs and the odd antisocial bloke will piss on those bags which is lovely!
• It salves your conscience to be 'donating' yet in fact you're just littering, and making work for (mostly) volunteers.

@Paintpalette you do realise this isn't Google?

My local shops always have signs saying no more donations today no matter how early, or there are H&S reasons for not accepting. So mine is either given on free groups or more usually taken to the recycling centre

It's disturbing how consumerist we've become that there's too much for charity shops to even accept

*She told me it wasn't homeless who's done it, it s the gypsy's who go around late at night to see what ppl's left and take them r for themself.

I was furious as there was a lot of decent stuff I'd donated that many ppl would have been very grateful for at a low price.*

Really? You thought that people would be grateful to have your stuff for a low price, yet were "furious" about people having it for no price? The general idea that you want to benefit the cause of the charity is understandable, but your reasoning here makes no sense.

Donate when they are open, If you work the entire time they are open use clothing banks in the supermarket

I think because the people who took it did it out of greed, not need?

NC as this may be outing. I volunteered in a charity shop for 2 years

I'd say 60% of the time, donations left outside our doors when we were closed were a complete disgrace. I'm talking complete junk and treating a charity shop like a dump. A few examples of things I remember us getting, ripped clothes, smashed mirrors, broken dirty toys covered in cobwebs. Some of these donations were frankly dangerous for us to sort through, especially when we're talking about broken glass etc. Out of the other 40% of donations, I'd say 20% made it to us in a sellable state, the other 20% got rained on, rummaged through etc.

On top of this, the garbage that is donated has to be thrown away by the charity in general waste black bins, which costs them actual money. The more general waste that needs to be collected, the more the charity has to pay. So by someone dumping this stuff on us, they were actually reducing the income of the charity as we had to pay to dispose of the shite we'd been left with.

It's amazing how, when someone is forced to show their face with an in-person donation, the rate at which we got garbage donations reduced quite significantly (although that didn't stop some people to be fair, but still greatly reduced)

This is why I and many others get very angry seeing people leave donations outside charity shops under big signs telling them not to do so. It is fly tipping. You are honestly not helping anyone.

I dont donate direct to charity shops because they make it so inconvenient, and they don't seem to be that keen to recieve them. I'd hate to have someone sifting through my donations in front of me, if I'm donating I want to be able to drop off and leave immediately. I'd rather make money for myself by selling on Vinted, or get rid of stuff the easy way through those bags left on the doorstep, or use old clothes for rags/cleaning.

I often think that individual charity shops should no longer accept donations in shops but everything has to be donated to a central location to be sorted there.
Then stock distributed out to the shops (and the shops could have stock that's more relevant to the local population or have specific ones for books, children's things, homewares etc rather than a mish-mash).
But unfortunately this would be very expensive to run and smaller charities might not be able to do it.

Charity shops are changing. People seem to have stopped donating and I have found recently that a lot of charity shops seem very low on donated stock.
My charity shop favourites of books, toys and collectibles are becoming non existent.
One shop I regularly go to used to have several shelves of books plus one of those paperback spinners and a separate load of shelves for children's books. Now it has 2 shelves - but could easily just manage with one.
So they are selling more new products that are designed specifically for that charities chain of shops or sometimes products that have been purchased in bulk like clothes from retailers that have gone bust (or rather the suppliers who were stuck with the stock).
I think charity shops are getting fed up of the crap donated. They don't want to sort through broken products and dirty clothes.
It's a shame. As usual those that just don't care and think it's perfectly acceptable to donate a bin bag of shit covered sheets or whatever have ruined it.
People just don't care. They don't think the rules apply to them.
🙁

"The IQ of a geranium" is my new favourite phrase

Firstly there is a huge waste issue with charity shops. They get so much nonsense and people that leave things outside often have rubbish items that can’t be resold. They then have to use their income to pay for it to be disposed off or recycled or whatever. I once opened a donation left outside and it had dirty used mattress covers we didn’t bother digging through the rest of the bag - DISGUSTING.

They normally rely on volunteers to sort through things and lately there has been a drought of regular volunteers. It has to be someone’s job to pick up stuff left outside which could be wet, opened up by foxes etc. They have a system so we should use it. We don’t question the bin men or ask them to change how they operate for us.

Local councils fine organisations for leaving “trash” outside. This was a thing when I worked on a high street project with the local council.