You want to donate and you are not sure what is useful. There is clothing you no longer wear, food you have spare, toys in a cupboard, maybe an old appliance. The intention is good, but the honest question is whether any of it helps or becomes a burden for whoever receives it.
The uncomfortable truth: a good share of what gets donated is thrown out by the organization itself. Damaged clothing, expired food, broken toys, appliances that will not switch on. Each one creates extra work and disposal costs, and diverts resources from something else.
The test that settles most of it: would you accept this yourself, in the condition it is in?
Clothing
What helps is clean, complete and in good condition. Picture the person receiving it as you, or someone in your family. If you would not wear it, nobody else will either.
People in a vulnerable situation do not deserve to receive our discards. They deserve things they can use.
Food
What helps is non-perishable, in unopened original packaging, with a generous expiry date: grains, rice, cooking oil, tinned goods, powdered milk, flour, pasta. Foundations can store it and use it over weeks.
Anything close to expiry, or already expired, is not a donation. It is relocated rubbish.
School supplies
Always needed, and critical at the start of the school year: notebooks, pencils, colours, markers, rulers, backpacks in good condition.
There are children who miss class for lack of these. A single donation can cover an entire school year.
Toys
Highly valued at children’s foundations, with one condition: clean, complete and working. A broken toy is not a gift, it is a disappointment.
In December foundations receive enormous quantities of toys. They would take a few good ones over many they cannot hand out, every time.
Hygiene and personal care
More needed than people assume and almost always in short supply: soap, shampoo, toothpaste, brushes, toilet paper, sanitary products, nappies.
It is the category that runs out fastest and the one fewest people think of.
Medicines: almost always no
Contrary to what many believe, these generally are not donated directly. Health regulation is strict and foundations have firm protocols: unopened, in date, with a prescription where one applies.
If you want to contribute to health, donate money to a medical foundation or use the formal pharmaceutical collection programmes.
Appliances
Highly valued when they work, especially for families arriving at a new home with nothing. A fridge, a stove, a small television can change a whole family’s daily life.
The condition is literal: they have to work. Not to have worked three years ago.
The donation almost nobody considers
Your professional skills.
If you are a dentist, one day a year. If you are a lawyer, advice for migrant families. If you do accounting, help a small foundation with theirs. If you write software, a system that saves them twenty hours a month.
It costs you no money and creates an impact no cash donation of the same size could buy.
Call first
Organizations keep specific lists of what they need this week. What one has too much of may be exactly what the one down the road is missing.
One call before you start packing prevents useless accumulation and respects the time of people who already have very little of it.
Keep reading
- Where to donate food in Pereira safely
- How to donate safely in Colombia, step by step
- How to help without money: the real options
In the Corag application, needs are published with what is actually required, in what quantity, and for how many people. That is precisely the problem this article describes.
