Donors Make Late Push To Shuck, Get Deduction

— Beth Irwin doesn’t do yard sales at her Rogers home.

“I’d rather just give it away,” she said after pulling her sedan through the drivethrough of the Goodwill store in Bentonville on Monday afternoon.

Irwin said while sitting in her car, all bundled up and motor running: “I want an organized, fresh start” to the new year.

Goodwill workers had just emptied her car of clothes and other household goods. Earlier in the day, Irwin hadmade another drop at a Salvation Army.

“I have been cleaning out. I have been getting ready for the new year ,” she said, a process made easier by her practice of setting out a bag or box throughout the year to stash items she no longer needs.

The tax receipt she gets for her donation is something she views as a way to get organized for filing tax returns. Irwin was among the Arkansans waiting until the final possible day - New Year’s Eve - to get a deduction for 2012.

But Irwin said she had another concern with downsizing her possessions then: “I needed to get winter clothing out to people now - while they can still wear them.”

Rebecca Brockman, spokesman for Goodwill Industries of Arkansas, described Dec. 31 as “one of our craziest days.”

“It is our busiest day of the year,” Brockman said Monday.

At Goodwill’s 31 locations around Arkansas, people lined up on New Year’s Eve to give clothing, toys, electronics and other household goods, she said, for two mainreasons.

“This is the last day for people to make donations for this year’s tax deductions,” she said.

And as people get Christmas treasures, they often want to shed the old ones. “They’re making room for new gifts that they’ve received,” Brockman said.

“When people pull up, we tell them: “Pop the trunk and we’ll do the rest,” she said. “They don’t even have to get out of their cars.”

At Goodwill’s Bentonville store on Monday, workers quickly unloaded drop-offs from the walk-in and drivethrough stations: boxes and bags, clothing on hangers, armloads of books, and electronics - some in their original boxes.

Despite a steady, cold rain for much of the day Monday, the charitable givers kept coming. About 2:30 p.m., some mentioned that they came to Goodwill after discovering another charity had closed for the day. In between the occasional lull in activity, there were cars lined up to park in front of the store to drop off their wares, their drivers perhaps unaware that a covered drive-through lane was in back.

Two young children took an artificial Christmas tree housed in a box with a suitcase-handle. Among a young woman’s batch of donations was a Samsung DVD player, which was temporarily placed near another donor’s small Emerson combination TVVCR.

In no time, the gifted merchandise was spirited away to blue-bin-filled sorting stations, or in some cases, straight to the showroom floor. Usually within a day, an item is tagged and ready for buyers at the nearly 3-yearold Bentonville store.

According to store manager Kimberly Stevens , the overarching goal is straightforward: “From the door to the floor in 24.”

Stevens and her assistant manager, Christy Goffe, said the rush to donate items typically starts the day after Christmas, culminating in New Year’s Eve’s 11th-hour gift-givers.

Compared with a normal day’s traffic, Goffe said, “We probably double our donations.”

“At least double,” agreed Stevens, who also has noticed a trend among givers toward fewer garage sales, which she said are sometimes limited or banned by neighborhood covenants, property owners associations or gated communities.

“This is better than a garage sale, I think,” said John Barnes of Bella Vista, who added his donations would help the local charities andprovide the tax deduction. “We’ve been cleaning out closets all weekend.”

Jerry Stromer of Rogers said he would consider himself a major procrastinator.

Toward the end of each year, he said, he begins to ask himself what has he done to give back to the community.

“I reflect on the whole year,” Stromer said. Thistime around, he concluded, “I’ve been blessed this whole year.”

He said he always intends to make his donations sooner, but then his year-end reflection and the tax write-off rouse him that time is running out.

Stromer said he found himself catching up Sunday on his goals for contributing at church, and on Monday, his donations to Goodwill.

By midday Monday, Brockman was hoping that weather conditions in central Arkansas wouldn’t make givers to Little Rock area stores want to stay at home on the final day of 2012, especially given the extreme winter weather the region has seen recently.

“It has been a drizzly morning, kind of a constant rain,” she said. “Some of our stores were without power last week.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/01/2013

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