Giving and re-gifting to charities booms as end of tax year looms

Few events stimulate charitable giving like the end of the year. The holidays put some in a generous mood; others are motivated by the desire to gather up one more charitable receipt to send to the IRS.

At the American Cancer Society’s Discovery Shop on West Garland Avenue, so many clothes and houseware donations piled in over the past week that volunteers can barely maneuver through the store’s only storage area.

“Our back room is just crammed full of stuff,” said Carrie Christen, who has volunteered at the secondhand store for three years. “We are trying to process the donations as quickly as we can.”

Christen said the store is grateful for the donation rush that will fill shelves with new merchandise.

Goodwill Industries is also feeling the love from Spokane-area donors.

President and CEO Clark M. Brekke said donations are up 20 percent the last six days compared to the first six days of the month.

“We get a great variety of things,” Brekke said. “Mostly clothing and shoes, but also kitchen items – typically things people get for Christmas.”

He added that when consumer spending goes up, so do donations, for the simple reason that people have to buy stuff before they can donate it.

“People get new things for Christmas and they donate the old,” Brekke said.

The downside of dealing with donated housewares and furniture is that some of it can’t be resold because it’s broken.

Brekke said children’s items in particular are problematic, because older car seats may have expired and some older cribs are dangerous for children.

“Some cribs have been recalled, and we typically don’t sell car seats,” Brekke said. “And we don’t sell old mattresses.”

Goodwill will spend more than $500,000 this year to get rid of stuff that can’t be resold.

“I hope we can re-educate people,” Brekke said, adding that donations of broken items simply become an expense.

Many nonprofits focus their major fundraising drives around the end of the year.

At Transitions, development director Mary Tracey said there has been a noticeable uptick in donations toward the end of the year.

“I think the holidays pull at people’s heartstrings,” Tracey said. “And we also have donors who want that last tax write-off.”

Transitions – which operates a women’s drop-in service center and two transitional housing programs as well as the New Leaf Bakery Cafe – is local and gets no support from a national organization, Tracey said.

“Local businesses have been very generous to us,” Tracey said, mentioning how one company covered a need for a double stroller and STA bus passes. “They just showed up.”

National numbers show that 2015 was one of the most generous years on record with individuals, estates, foundations and corporations donating an estimated $373.25 billion, according to the Giving Institute, which is based at the Indiana University Lily Family School of Philanthropy. That’s up 4 percent from 2014 – and predictions look good for 2016.

“Things are really good – we have seen a huge increase in donations of year-end gifts,” said Stephanie Neumann, development director at Volunteers of America. “Volunteerism is up, too.”

Neumann said people increasingly want to know where their monetary donations are going and they like to be able to dedicate a donation to a certain VOA program like Crosswalk, which houses and educates homeless teens.

“We find that when people know exactly where their money goes, then they give more,” Neumann said.

The generosity of Spokanites is wide-ranging.

“In the past couple of months, Spokane Arts has received a $2,000 and a $5,000 anonymous donation,” Melissa Huggins, executive director of Spokane Arts, said in an email.

Huggins wrote that Spokane Arts supports and advocates for artists, but the organization also wants to show the community how it can participate in the arts programming Spokane already has to offer.

“End-of-year donations like these are crucial to those goals,” Huggins said.