Christmas is right around the corner! Many of us are still scrambling to complete our shopping lists, running store to store or finalizing our shopping online. Often, with the hustling and bustling this time of year we can lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas or start to feel a bit of the bah humbug creeping in. When this happens, it’s time to stop, and reflect on the true magic of the season, giving back. This doesn’t mean you have to drain your wallet on gifts for other people. Giving back this year can be as simple as decluttering your house and shipping those items to Goodwill. The best part, you can do this for free.
This year Goodwill stores have teamed up with Give Back Box to enable you to reuse your online shipping boxes to donate your unwanted household items (such as gently used clothing, handbags, shoes, etc) to Goodwill at no cost to you.
Here’s how it works:
Give Back Box gives every cardboard box a second life to help people in need. Some of the international partners in support of the Give Back Box are Ann Inc, Asics, Ann Taylor Loft, Overstock, Dockers, Levis, Bon Ton and StyleUpGirl.com. These retailers are leading the way towards finding innovative solutions to widespread social and economic issues. You can see all of the participating retailers at givebackbox.com.
By gathering your unwanted items that are stuffed in the back of your closet, under your bed, in your attic or garage or wherever it is hiding, you can pack it up and ship it to Goodwill to help create jobs.
Thanks to the job training programs made possible by donations of clothes and household items, Goodwill helped place more than 312,000 in jobs in the United States and Canada in 2015 — that’s one person finding a job every 23 seconds of every business day. So you’re literally donating your stuff AND helping to create jobs.
Did you know, you can even calculate how much your donation helps your local community by using Goodwill’s donation impact calculator, a feature available within the Goodwill Locator App and at Goodwill.org (click “Explore Our Map” on the homepage to access the calculator). Simply input the items you’re donating to calculate the number of hours of career counseling, on-the-job training, résumé preparation, financial planning classes, and other services you’ve helped provide people facing challenges finding employment.