You don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you, but you don’t want it to slap you in the face, either.
That’s the dilemma a Richmond non-profit has been facing for several years, with seemingly well-intentioned folks donating stacks of items when the organization is closed.
As long as Ruth Taverner can remember, volunteers at Richmond Family Place on Ash Street have spent several hours – mostly after weekends and holidays – cleaning up the mess left behind from would-be benefactors at its front door and over-flowing donation bin.
Most of the time, the problem begins with items of furniture, which they don’t accept, before it degenerates due to homeless people ransacking the donations.
But after the recent holidays, the chaos left behind was so bad, Taverner said the organization is considering removing its donation bin, which sits adjacent to a Big Brothers bin.
“We get about $3,000 a year to have the Big Brothers bin there, so we’d be taking a hit. But we also have to weigh up the time our volunteers are spending cleaning up almost every day,” Taverner, Richmond Family Place’s program coordinator, told the Richmond News.
“When the bins are full, people still leave stuff there, despite us continually asking them not to.
“I know they mean well with their donations and we appreciate it, but it creates a lot of problems for us.”
Many of the items left over the weekend – such as broken tables and mattress foam - were clearly dumped, as opposed to donated.
“What possible use could we have for this?” added Taverner, pointing to the garbage left Monday morning.
“It either attracts people to dump even more stuff there and then there are people, some of them homeless, who just rake through everything and leave a whole mess behind.
“The stuff, even if we can use it, ends up in the dirt or all wet with rain and it becomes totally useless for us.
“We tell people we don’t take furniture, but we still get it; but we can’t accept cribs and car seats for safety reasons.”
Taverner said it’s almost always left to the non-profit’s volunteers to clean it up, squeezing as much of it as they can into the charity’s own garbage and recycling bins.
“The city has been very good at sending a truck to pick up stuff now and again, but they can’t always come right away and we end up having to store it some place,” she said.
“Our staff are out there every single morning cleaning up as we want it to look nice for families coming here.
“But it’s not a pleasant job for the volunteers to be doing every day and there are safety issues.”
Taverner is, once again, pleading with people to donate during their business hours of Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
“Please hold on until then, it will make a big difference.”
