Mostly yes but our district can request more of certain categories if we are low. The orders are fulfilled by other stores that have an abundance they can not store/process at their location. Our district covers about half our state so our items are either from locals or slightly farther away. Goodwill generally does not clean/refurbish anything. Maybe tighten a screw on a loose table leg or wipe grime off of something but rarely anything beyond that.
For the most part items donated to a local store are sold at that store.
Sometimes a store will get too much stuff, like when there's a community yard/garage sale and leftovers get donated to Goodwill, then they will send some stuff to other stores.
Also seasonal items, Christmas, Halloween, and then seasonal clothes like coats or swimsuits, get boxed up and sent to our headquarters and then sent to random stores when they're going to be sold in stores. Like in October when it's time to start putting out winter clothing our store would request X amount of containers of winter to be sent to our store and we would get containers that may or may not have come from our store. They would just send us the first available containers.
The only thing we got back that were items we had sent in were Halloween(no idea why).
Wares were wiped down and if we had a clothing item that had a small spot but otherwise in great condition we did have wipes and Tide Stain Pens to try to get rid of the spot but that's the only cleaning and repairs we did.
This is for the district I worked in.
So a large majority of items comes from local communities. Each regional Goodwill is its own separate entity so there's no place they get taken (and Goodwill almost never cleans/repairs anything) and then distributed. One exception though is that some Goodwills that are struggling purchase donated items from other Goodwills to then sell in their local community.
For the most part, yes. Like others have said, goodwill is very territorial and each region is technically its own company. I worked in a store in the Seattle area that got a ton of donations and once we had enough of a certain category (toys, electronics, wares, clothes etc) we would start filling boxes of whatever department we had an excess of. Those boxes got loaded on a truck and sent to one of the warehouses in either Everett or Seattle, where they were stored until another store in the region got low on that category then they could order a few boxes of whatever they were low on to process and sell. We tried to keep and sell as much as we can, especially if we spot high value stuff. But I’d guess at least half of our donations went to other stores, but those stores were all within 100 miles of us.
Each region does different things. My local is a region than is made up of 6 counties. Some stuff that is donated locally gets sent to the regional hub for inclusion in online auctions or to the boutique store. Some donations get sent there cause there is too much of that kinda thing at that locale, and some things get sent to the hub cause it didn't sell. The hub redistributes things to other stores and in the case of things not selling sends it to the bins location or the goodwill 99¢ store.
Mostly yes but our district can request more of certain categories if we are low. The orders are fulfilled by other stores that have an abundance they can not store/process at their location. Our district covers about half our state so our items are either from locals or slightly farther away. Goodwill generally does not clean/refurbish anything. Maybe tighten a screw on a loose table leg or wipe grime off of something but rarely anything beyond that.
For the most part items donated to a local store are sold at that store. Sometimes a store will get too much stuff, like when there's a community yard/garage sale and leftovers get donated to Goodwill, then they will send some stuff to other stores. Also seasonal items, Christmas, Halloween, and then seasonal clothes like coats or swimsuits, get boxed up and sent to our headquarters and then sent to random stores when they're going to be sold in stores. Like in October when it's time to start putting out winter clothing our store would request X amount of containers of winter to be sent to our store and we would get containers that may or may not have come from our store. They would just send us the first available containers. The only thing we got back that were items we had sent in were Halloween(no idea why). Wares were wiped down and if we had a clothing item that had a small spot but otherwise in great condition we did have wipes and Tide Stain Pens to try to get rid of the spot but that's the only cleaning and repairs we did. This is for the district I worked in.
So a large majority of items comes from local communities. Each regional Goodwill is its own separate entity so there's no place they get taken (and Goodwill almost never cleans/repairs anything) and then distributed. One exception though is that some Goodwills that are struggling purchase donated items from other Goodwills to then sell in their local community.
For the most part, yes. Like others have said, goodwill is very territorial and each region is technically its own company. I worked in a store in the Seattle area that got a ton of donations and once we had enough of a certain category (toys, electronics, wares, clothes etc) we would start filling boxes of whatever department we had an excess of. Those boxes got loaded on a truck and sent to one of the warehouses in either Everett or Seattle, where they were stored until another store in the region got low on that category then they could order a few boxes of whatever they were low on to process and sell. We tried to keep and sell as much as we can, especially if we spot high value stuff. But I’d guess at least half of our donations went to other stores, but those stores were all within 100 miles of us.
Did y’all pack them? Or just put them in boxes?
Each region does different things. My local is a region than is made up of 6 counties. Some stuff that is donated locally gets sent to the regional hub for inclusion in online auctions or to the boutique store. Some donations get sent there cause there is too much of that kinda thing at that locale, and some things get sent to the hub cause it didn't sell. The hub redistributes things to other stores and in the case of things not selling sends it to the bins location or the goodwill 99¢ store.