There are a lot of charities that will accept donations of various things. However, it's usually incumbent upon the donor to get the donation to the charity. This is problematic when the donor doesn't have a car, which happens often in urban areas.
Solution: a service where people pick up your charitable donations and take it to the appropriate charity.
What's people's motivation to do this? If pure volunteerism isn't enough, it could be done by people who need community service hours (high school students and people who have been charged with minor criminal offences). Those who have cars can do the schlepping (maybe they could swing it so their mileage expenses count as a tax-deductable charitable donation?) and those who don't have cars could answer phones, schedule pick-ups, and find charities who will take the various items people have to donate.
I'm thinking maybe it could even be done almost entirely online to minimize need for overhead. People could book pick-ups and do research online, so they wouldn't necessarily have to go into some central office. There probably would need to be a central office, but it could be small and maybe even in donated space belonging to a larger organization.
6 comments:
What I meant to say was, where I am, we have a couple of charities that will pick up your donations on certain days. They usually call a couple of weeks ahead and schedule a pickup.
Something else they should invent: and EDIT button for blogger comments *LOL*
Really? Like who?
There's a thrift store here that only takes pick up donations, they don't let people drop off. (I'm in Norfolk, Virginia, USA BTW) I just received a call from The Military Order of the Purple Heart to see if I had anything to donate. Also Disabled American Veterans will pick up. There's a few, but maybe that's only in the US.
In NYC there were several charities that would pick up your donations. Groups that helped newly un-homeless people get furniture, a group that helped connect used computer equipment with people who could use it, some others.
But your service would be more useful.
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