Now that Value Village is well established in St. Albert, I feel obliged to remind the residents that this company is just that; a privately held for-profit thrift store chain, not a non-profit organization. I would like to urge the public to donate their goods to charities such as the Salvation Army Thrift Store (located in Tudor Glen), the LoSeCa Foundation Thrift Store (Campbell Business Park), Goodwill Industries (Tudor Glen beside the Medicentre – drop-off only), CPAA (the Cerebral Palsy Association of Alberta), the Canadian Diabetes Association or any other charity of your choice.
According to the website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savers Value Village, or Savers Inc., as it is known in most of the USA and Australia, is an international company, with more than 315 locations throughout the United States, Canada and Australia, and receives its merchandise by paying money to non-profit organizations for donated clothing and household items. The company’s commercials claim that they support local charities by donating to them, but in reality many of the contracts these organizations signed with Value Village provides a very small return compared to the (perceived) large amounts of money Value Village/Savers retains.
Furthermore, on May 21, 2015, the Minnesota Attorney General filed suit claiming that the corporation was misleading the public. The Attorney General pointed out, for example, that Savers pays only a very small percentage to the non-profit charities which partner with Savers (and for items other than clothing, nothing).
Another website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Savers#Neutrality includes the following comments: The description of their donation model is incorrect.
• Only soft items, like clothing or stuffed animals, benefit the store's non-profit partner.
• Hard items like books, housewares, and furniture are pure profit for the store; the non-profits don't see a dime of that.
• While they might boast about paying non-profits by the pound, they are only partially truthful – anything that weighs a substantial amount is worth nothing to the non-profit.
However, shopping at Value Village is beneficial to the charities that sell their donations to them, so by all means shop at Value Village, but please donate your goods to a charity of your choice.
Elsie Sansregret, St. Albert
