I need to get this off my chest. I know that rants are not healthy, but in my ranting, I hope a message which will benefit all smaller non-profits on the Oly area can be discerned. I work at Bread and Roses (this fact drives most of my reasons for posting on olyblog). We are, as I'm sure many of you know, a small grass-roots non-profit which serves the poor and homeless with a modest facility. Modest is being euphemistic; we operate out of the first floor of an old house. Living-room = office. We love donations, but only the ones that we can appropriately use and efficiently store. We are open during regular business hours Monday through Friday, and although we are often busy, we are always happy to see if a given donation can be used by either ourselves at the non-profit (say, a printer) or by our guests (hygiene supplies, socks). If we cannot accommodate a donation, we can easily refer the donor to any number of agencies that are able to handle such a donation. Just today, Sunday, my porch (I say my because yes, I live here, too) has been inundated with clothing , speakers, an unusably dirty couch, a pasta maker, large unwieldy carpet scraps, and many more items of questionable use. Because of the nature of Bread and Roses, it is up me and any of my four coworkers to move all of this so we can be a functioning agency tomorrow. I do not honestly think the donor thought one of our guests could really use a pasta maker-it was the thoughtless act of one person schlepping their offal onto an already beleaguered non-profit. Please, I know we are not the only non-profit to have to deal with this. Let your friends and family know, we are happy to take inquiries about donations, but during business hours only! It takes time out of our ability to fulfill our mission to serve. Thank you.