What Happens to Your Donations

Do you know what happens to your household donations after they are collected? The following details how your donations are critical to Goodwill’s mission and how lives are changed through your generosity.

Step 1: Members of the community donate clothing and household items at one of our Attended Donation Centers located throughout Dallas and surrounding cities. In 2004, 440,522 donors contributed over 27 million pounds of clothing and household items. The attendant at the Donation Center is there to greet you, help you unload your car, and give you a tax receipt. Because of the Attended Donation Center concept, Goodwill is able to employ 45 attendants, many with disabilities or other barriers to employment.

Step 2: Every few days the full Donation Center trailer is replaced with an empty trailer. The full trailer is taken back to the Goodwill processing plant located at Westmoreland and Singleton Boulevard, in West Dallas.

Step 3: The trailer is unloaded and donated items are distributed to respective departments (clothing, toys, etc.). Donated items are freshened up, checked for working condition, and organized for distribution to our 9 retail stores. In every department, individuals with mental or emotional disabilities have been trained to perform one or two simple tasks. Overall, Goodwill hires approximately 19 disabled individuals to work the dock area, and 120 to work in processing donations.

Step 4: Items that do not meet our quality standards are recycled. For example, if donated clothing is torn or soiled, it is baled and sold to salvage companies who will turn the material into rags. If electronic items do not work, we do not repair them like we did in the past, but rather separate out the materials (metal, plastic, etc.) to recycle or we auction the items to dealers who will repair them.

Step 5: Sorted items are inventoried and sent, in the appropriate season, to one of our 9 Goodwill Retail Stores. At Goodwill we are committed to providing high quality merchandise, variety, and competitive prices. Each store receives a shipment of inventory every few days, however, items are hung and placed on the shelves every day. Approximately 82 people are trained to manage and work at our retail stores.

Step 6: The salaries and wages of the employees listed in the above Steps are 100% paid for by the revenue generated from items sold in our Goodwill retail stores. In other words, when you purchase items at the Goodwill Store, the money you spend is putting a disabled or disadvantaged individual to work! As stated before, most of these employees have either mental or physical disabilities or other barriers to employment such as homelessness, illiteracy, or welfare dependency. Goodwill gives many of these individuals a chance, sometimes their only chance, to find and keep meaningful employment.
As you can see, donating to Goodwill and shopping at Goodwill stores provide jobs…meaningful employment to individuals who would not have it otherwise. As a provider of work opportunities, Goodwill helps a broad spectrum of individuals who need an opportunity to develop skills, build self-confidence, and establish self-esteem.

Thank you for making our mission possible.