Goodwill not only has training programs, they also have a free medical equipment loaning service. If you or a family member need assistance equipment - anything from a wheelchair to a bath bench to a cane - for a short period of time, you can check out the equipment you need for up to several months of use. It's a lifesaver for people who can't afford to buy gear they'll only need while recovering, and it's very convenient for those who can afford to buy, but don't want to get stuck storing gear after they no longer need it.
Threads like this always draw a lot of misinformation.
There are a lot of charities out there, and the vast majority of them are worthy. I know this because we make a lot of contributions, and before I make a contribution, I vet the charity. It is easy to do, because almost all of them have to provide information to the IRS, and there are organizations
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is one) that check the information and you can get a good picture of those charities there.
The Salvation Army does not file the forms, because they consider themselves a religious organization, free of government rules. Every person I know and consider informed on this subject praises the Salvation Army and believes they use their funds wisely. If their endowment is now a billion dollars, they must be using it, because they received a single gift of $1.5 billion a few years ago. I have no problem with them taking some time to plan how to use such a gift. And that is not the only large gift they have received from informed donors. So the donor community is happy with what the Salvation Army does.
And I have no problem with the head of the Red Cross receiving a large salary, because they are running a huge organization and doing a good job. The head of my electrical utility, which is a much smaller organization, gets a salary that far exceeds that at the Red Cross (try ten or twelve million dollars).
A good time to retell my story about finding an electric wheelchair in the trash. I called a guy I know who had a medical equipment store, and he came over and said in the condition I found it, it was worth 1000 dollars. (The most expensive thing I ever found) He had me call the MS or MD people, and they sent some guys from another medical equipment store to pick it up. They said they store it for a little while until the MS or MD society has someone who needs it.
When I found it, it was impossible to push, but the battery was still charged. It was really hard to walk behind or beside as I had it push itself, so I had to ride it back to my house, about 300 feet away.
I'm pretty sure I sort of knew the guy whose chair it was. Well, that is, he'd sit in the sun on nice days, and I'd wave as I drove by. (Sometimes there was another guy in a wheelchair there too). After I found the chair, I reaized he was never there anymore The people at the apartment building just put his chair next to their dumpsters, never thought about donating it somewhere, it seems. (Also the device that he used to sit himself up in bed. I gave that to the same place. )
There is an industry of professional fundraisers. They go to a legitimate charity and promise to increase their contribution income, for a commission. The charity will probably agree as they will gain a little from this arrangement. The professional fundraiser takes control, but everything the public gets is from the charity (even though it is prepared by the fundraiser). The fundraiser probably doesn't have a lot of ways to solicit donations, so pretty soon the solicitations from many charities start resembling each other. I guess this is legitimate, but to me there is a smell about it.
We had a substantially retarded** next door neighbor, the son of the old couple who lived next door, who used to sit on the swing on the front porch all day long, and swing. When I was 6, my father was 61 and the couple next door was substantially older than that.
The couple worried what would happen after they died, and my mother told me that one of their nieces, maybe the cute little girl who used to come to visit, took him in. (She woudl have been married by this time and probably had kids.)
I would not say that my mother was prejudiced against him, a loaded word to begin with, but she was afraid he wouldn't know his own strength and he might hurt me by accident, I guess like Frankenstein's monster did in the original movie, which she may have seen. He was a lot bigger than my father. He must have been 6'4" and built like a wrestler. I think he was 30 or 40 when I was 6.
I don't think the little city (50,000) that I lived in had anything like Goodwill Industries and I don't know if anyone in town could have helped him more than his parents did by protecting him.
**"Retarded" was, of course, a nice word, meant to mean that they were on the same course as the rest of us, just slower at it. New euphemisms probably have more syllables, but I don't think they are any nicer.
Well, this is academic for me, because my clothes can't even be worn by poor people in Africa by the time I get through with them. They are usually shreds.
I usuallly have a charity come and tow my car away, but I take off anything I might want to use. Even before the IRS tightened up on how much one could claim a donated car was worth, one tow truck driver said he couldnt' give me a receipt because my car was worthless. I'm not even sure he would have towed it if he hadn't already been here.
Even when I've gotten a receipt, I don't itemize my deductions anyhow.
One new-used car I bought kept stalling starting two days after I bought it, and the code said it was the RAM/CAM/SLAM sensor circuit, or something like that. I still had the old car, also a LeBaron,, so I took the part off the old car, but it woudn't plug in. The electric plug was different. But I found if I pushed the thing on tighter, the car worked more days, and eventually I put a plastic tie on as tight as possible and it worked for 5 years before I had to tighten it again.
Then there is Planet Aid. They sell the clothes, send the money to somewhere in Africa, and that's all we know. Where it goes from there is anyone's guess.
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