Preamble: In the UK, I buy and sell used goods to Oxfam; in the US there is no equivalent. I tentatively proposed exploring such a store for causes even more effective than Oxfam.
I suspect Oxfam is an order of magnitude more effective than the other places I could donate goods (British Heart Foundation), even if it might be still much less efficient than GiveWell charities, and I don’t agree with much of its advocacy. Oxfam also doesn’t take many goods (furniture, electronics).
Q1: Are there any better alternatives to Oxfam for this in the UK, and anything remotely effective for donating/buying used goods in the USA?
I’m trying to donate a bunch of Economics and Statistics textbooks. At University of Exeter, there’s a textbook drop for Hospicecare, but obviously that’s not a highly effective charity. I could donate them to Oxfam, but I’m not sure they will put textbooks online to get a good price; I suspect they end up as local dead weight.
Q2: Is there anywhere effective to donate textbooks in the UK or US? I could put them on Ebay individually for charity, but that takes a long time. The textbook merchants seem to sell these at about $80 each and buy them back at $0.50. So maybe that’s their street value and I’m wasting everyone’s time … or maybe I’m missing something.
(Was hesitant to waste EAF time asking this question but at least 1 person +1′d it in a Slack so I thought I’d try.)
I’m probably in a different in situation because I’m working now but:
If it’s a valuable item, I’d sell it (and potentially donate the money, or use it for whatever else I use money for!)
If it’s not especially valuable but someone else might find it helpful, I donate it somewhere convenient or give it to a friend, not worrying about any positive impact beyond the item being reused
I’m also working and shouldn’t let this effort distract me too much. Maybe the way I wrote it made me sound like a student? The textbooks are built up over years of teaching and getting free copies of these things.
This seems in the right direction, at least for clothing: https://www.planetaid.org/faq