Sometimes one man’s trash is just trash. “Most people have no clue what’s involved with taking a garbage bag of stuff and getting it to the person who needs it,” said Lindy Garnette, executive director for SERVE Inc., a Manassas-based nonprofit that operates a 60-bed homeless shelter and food bank.

According to this story, “Eager for Treasure, Not Trash: Charities Sort Through Piles of Donated Goods, Some of Which They Can’t Use,” by Michael Alison Chandler in The Washington Post, these are some of the items donated this holiday season: 20-year-old golf clubs, old Victoria’s Secret Valentine’s Day gifts, puters, beta VCRs, broken toys, puzzles without all the pieces and unmatched shoes.

“Many of these gifts end up in the trash, or they are given to yet another charity — one with more storage space — such as the Salvation Army, which has its own dump trucks and daily pickups scheduled to haul away the unsellable stuff from its stores.

After all the sorting, cleaning, storing and transporting, gifts sometimes end up being more trouble than they are worth for strapped nonprofits, which have limited staff and resources.”

For more on how to give effectively so that nonprofits can function efficiently, check out Acton’s Impact World Hunger campaign. A huge part of what we do here is connecting the good intentions of charity passion with thoughtful economic understanding.