Non Profit Rantings--Part 1: Shitty Donations

There has been enough general crap build up at work to cause me to need a venting session. So much so, that I'm afraid my rants are going to have to be compartmentalized. Part 1: Shitty Donations.

I know that a nonprofit is supposed to be grateful for whatever the hell it can get. We work on a shoestring budget; we highly value "in-kind" services, like rent free space. We got free office rolley-chairs yesterday. Whoo-hoo. But honestly, people, give some thought to what you're doing before you just go dump stuff at your local nonprofit. I think some people believe that nonprofits are just a place to park the junk that they can't use anymore. I'm sure that Goodwill has to sift through clothes with tears, holes and stains. I mean, come on, would you want to wear something like that? But we have a unique and dicey problem, being a literacy center and all.

People want to give us books.

Now, that may not seem like such a bad thing. Literacy=Reading, after all, right? My specific bitch is with the kind of books we keep getting. It's blatantly obvious that whoever decided to dump their boxes of reading matter on us paid no attention to what we actually do, nor gave two flying fucks about what others might be able to do with the material. We recently got a call from Hospice in the next county. Some big company in Southern Pennsylvania did a big literacy drive and had donations to give to us. "The driver will be there within the hour!" We were sort of psyched. Most of the adults in our program can't read most of the books people donate to us. It's really difficult to find reading material that isn't patronizing that an adult with a reading level of about the 5th grade can get hold of. So, we weren't too optimistic. However, even though we're an adult literacy program, we run a mobile library for kids in that county who have no access to a public library. The bus even makes a stop at a local elementary school that can't even afford to have a library. So, any kids books in good shape, we stick on that mobile library.

Forty-five minutes later, I was ready to drive up to PA and throw their things back at them. I had an entire load of crap that covered the front deck, including old sports magazines that were tattered and worn; kids books that were so rain damaged mold was growing on the pages; a complete set of science encyclopedias--from 1975; a giant bag of crayons--wtf are my adult learners going to do with a huge bag of used crayons??; a happy cow figurine--what, precisely, does that have to do with literacy?; several dozen tapes of country music (WTF??); a "how to use the library" three ring binder--from 1982; and two globes that still had the USSR as a country on them.

It was pretty obvious that they were just dumping off crap that they had held onto for years, did some spring cleaning, and lobbed it all onto us. There were two giant boxes of kids books, and I spent precious time going through to see what was usable and what wasn't. As I was going to KY to get Dante, Director/Buddy suggested that I see if his school would take the books. Good enough idea. I came away with two usable boxes of books out of the crap that they dumped all over the porch. I have one of the globes at home as a whimsical decoration. At least Dante's library teacher was grateful to get the books. She said the school had frozen her library budget for three years due to lack of funds. That giant book box was the first real books she'd gotten for the library in that time. We took the rest of the crap to the dump. That's right, the dump.

When we came back to WV, guess what was waiting on the front porch? The first out of two more loads. Same junk. This load contained a bunch of broken chalk pieces. Nothing usable. Guess where both loads are going? Straight to the dump.

Ironically, in a couple of days, Director/Buddy has to do a photo op with the people from PA, who want their faces in the local paper showing what a "good deed" they did. She says that what's going to make her smile is the image of she and I, the literacy nonprofit people, standing in the bed of her pickup truck heaving over boxes and boxes of that crap.

-- Virgil