It’s a great thing. Really. But today when I opened the door at work to escort some guests out, there was another gigantic garbage bag on the porch. It was “dumped” there with love I suppose. “Tra la la. I just did something great and gave a bunch of kids joy with my old stuffed animals.” Um, no you didn’t. You just gave me an errand. So did the other guy who two days before dumped THREE gigantic bags of stuffed animals on our nonprofit’s porch. My point is here is ask. Just ask. “What do you guys need?” We need things donated for sure, but emptying your kids’ closet and just dropping it on our doorstep is not what we need. We are choking on stuffed animals already. We need cash to keep our services going, maybe a new vaccuum cleaner (you know, kids are messy). We need a plumber to put a tap in the side of our building so we can hook up a hose and water our trees. Just ask. We don’t need you to swing by after your garage sale and dump the stuff that didn’t sell off because “we could use it.” Yes that happened too. Uh huh. So today my little car is filled with garbage bags. Full of stuffed animals. I could be doing my job and recruiting people to represent a child’s best interest in court, but I’m busy driving junk to Goodwill with my own gas, so I won’t be doing that this morning.