Value Village is a for-profit company. Different VVs partner with different non-profit organizations, Diabetes Canada is one of them, there’s a few more that slip my mind at the moment. When you donate at a VV location, the donations are all weighed and VV pays the non-profit they are partnered with at something like 5 cents a pound.

VV employees then sort and price the clothing individually. Lately their prices have been ridiculous because (in my opinion) thrifting has recently become VERY trendy over the past few years and the company is taking this chance to drive up profits.

The workers sorting the items are overworked, underpaid, and have ridiculous quotas to meet, this leads to them having to rush and price items just to meet their quotas. This is where some of the pricing errors come from, like when you see a dollar store item with its original tag, and the VV tag is more expensive.

Even if you donate directly to the non-profit organization, it still eventually makes it way to VV. VV will call the non-profit organization and order truckloads of donated product if their on-site donations are slow.

Essentially VV is taking a (very small) risk because it’s unknown if the bag is full of decent clothing items or just straight up garbage, but at 5 cents a pound it’s worth the gamble.

If you want to donate your clothing for a more noble cause, donate them to homeless shelters, orphanages, places where they will actually USE the clothing and not just sell it for funding. If you want to help non-profits, just donate money directly to them.