Our young mens/young womens groups do a fair amount of service work that is frequently aimed at non-members. My son just completed his Eagle Scout project which was service aimed at a community and not necessarily an LDS crowd.

Doing baptisms for the dead is initially doing service works involving time and effort instead of money for non-members…at least until the ordinance is performed.

I need to state that I don’t live in Utah and so my perception might be different from those that do; neither better nor worse than anyone else’s, just different.

– Everything’s free; please take it away.

I’ve set out lots of things on my driveway, all labeled “Free!” and just walked away. Sometimes it takes minutes and sometimes it take a day or two, but all that stuff disappears. Playsets, TV cabinets, toys, dressers, electronics, etc.

I spent only enough time to put it outside, and I made as much money as I would have if I’d tried to nickel and dime people for it. Someone directly benefits; I don’t have to haul, store, or babysit anything; it’s all win-win in my view.

In my experience, Utahns have absolutely no idea how to conduct a true yard sale. They certainly can’t hold a candle to Wisconsin and Illinois who have reached God status when it comes to organized street sales. (shut down the whole neighborhood to traffic and come complete with carnival rides, popcorn and raffles…NO JOKING). However, as a missionary, it was the ultimate dream tracting day! One could rack up all those contact and invite stats while bartering for a nice cheap skirt or blouse, and once in awhile even snag a call-back appointment.

My friend worked for hours on his moving sale recently– cleared $70 on it. He says everyone wanted to dicker him down, and it was totally not worth the work.

Think I should suggest that to my Stake President next Sunday when I see him?

(Just for the record, so I don’t become an offender for a word . . .)

The Good, Better, Best discussion is a good one with many useful applications, but it can be abused when we start talking about how other people should live. There are literally countless number of ways how each of us could be making a better choice than we are currently making. Do I really need a TV? Do I need a computer? Why did I buy them instead of giving that money to charity? If I buy a different car, should I sell the one i have or give it to charity? But do I really need a car at all? Should I let homeless people stay in my guest room? Why don’t I move to a 3rd world country and use my resources to help starving and sick children first-hand?

So it’s pretty easy to drive by a garage sale and think, “Why don’t they just give it to charity? They don’t need the money.” But it’s much harder to look at our own lives and see what small (or large) things we could be doing better to help those around us.

Again, I didn’t mean that to sound so harsh, and I know we all are judgmental about some things. I guess I’m judgmental about being judgmental about garage sales.:)

I’ve heard the argument before that Mormons (or Christians in general) should donate rather than have garage sales. I can see that point, but it seems shaky ground. Since when did selling something I no longer have use for become greedy? To take it to the extreme, should I donate my car when I’m done with it instead of donate? How about my house? Of course there’s a difference between my car and my random junk, but the principle is still the same. Thrift is a virtue usually promoted in the church. If I can buy something for $100, use it for a few years, and then sell it for $10, it really only cost me $90 (ignoring complications like inflation). So it’s like if I find something for sale 10% off. Am I greedy if I buy something on sale and fail to donate what I would have paid to charity?

As to the donations to “Goodwill” etc. being thrown out, we have been asked in our area to make more donations to Deseret Industries (which is pretty far from where we live, so they gather them at the church, also not very close by) because one of the most important parts of what DI does is provide employment to the disabled and disadvantaged. Sorting through the good and bad donations is valuable work. I have also seen workers’ eyes light up when we’ve donated something really good (I’m pretty sure those things never hit the shelves, which is fine with me!)

Not really; that’s not how fast offerings work, but that’s a story for another day. In fact, the church has quite measurable overhead, but they don’t publish it. (I believe every non-profit should publish full financial reports, so I’m not just picking on the church.)

Re: “Our Salt Lake City location had a much smaller percentage of charitable contributions than our other locations.”
Again I see the SLC/Utah = Mormon presupposition here. If there were anything in the “bloggernacle” I would change, is that.
I don’t know which charity you’re talking about, but I’ll assume it isn’t Deseret Industries.
Were other possible factors taken into account? Like competition between charities? Maybe there are more charitable orgs per capita in SLC (due to “additional” church-run ones like DI), reducing the overall donation rate at yours.

Re: “Still, every time I see a yard or garage sale, I always think that it would be better to donate those goods to charity rather than trying to make a buck by “casting your pearls before swine” (loose interpretation there).”

The largest charity of this sort (that accepts donations of goods) in my area is Goodwill. I imagine they throw away 90% of what they get because it doesn’t have immediate resale value, or because it would be too expensive to refurbish for resale (not talking broken, just needing polishing, tightening, cleaning, etc). I’ve seen them filling trucks with donated goods to go to the dump.

Let’s take this case: a shirt (that no longer fits) with a missing button.
If I give it to goodwill, it will go to the municipal textile recycling center and broken down into component cotton fibers. They won’t take time or effort to put a button on it. I get to feel good because I gave it to a charity. I can cut out the middleman by just putting it in the recycle bin, and the city takes it away.
If I sell it at a garage sale for $.25/pound, someone who has very little to spend on clothes may buy it, and combined with their labor (to replace the button) have a shirt that might have cost them 20x more at a low-end retailer. I spend 4 hours of my life at the garage sale and got $.25. That’s not really a “capitalist experience” worth repeating. The buyer, on the other hand, spent just as much time shopping as at a retailer, but spent 20x less money.

So which situation is better for the most parties involved here?

Even if the shirt had a button, and Goodwill decided to re-sell it, they’d charge $1-$2 — 4x to 8x what it would go for at a garage sale.

Re: “And is it better to donate to charity than to hold a garage sale?”
Better for whom?
Better for the donater/seller’s soul? Debatable. Maybe they are learning to love God and their neighbor this way. Maybe not.
Better for the donater/seller’s finances? Unknown, it depends on what is donated, how much the tax deduction will net at tax time. Income from the garage sale could be similar to tax savings on items (since you can deduct more item “worth” than you’d ever get at a garage sale).
Better for the recipient’s finances? Debatable. If the goods were given via the charity, rather than purchased then probably yes. If the person had to buy the same donated item at the charity store, then maybe not. I know in my shirt example (but without missing buttons), I’d pay a lot less for a shirt at a garage sale than at the Goodwill, which is in turn less than the retailer.
Better for people who make a living running charities? Absolutely. Without a steady stream of goods to resell or give that they haven’t had to spend money on producing or acquiring, the charity wouldn’t be around.

Re: “Do Mormons donate less to charity than non-Mormons? If so, why?”
I assume by that you mean, “to charities that are not church related.” Maybe. My tax software keeps telling me I donate more than 2.5x the national average for my income bracket in charitable donations, both monetary and non-monetary. I’m a data point of one, but without my church-related contribs, I would probably be close to national average. I think I’ll take a year off of church donations, but keep my others tha same, juts to see.

If they do give a lower overall percentage to non-church charities, it could be cause everyone’s charitable giving is done by their own personal priorities, and they “believe in” the church charities’ missions, goals, and methods *more than* other orgs. For example, I know that when I give the bishop $X via fast offerings for a family in the ward who’s needy, 0% of that is administrative overhead, and it goes to the family immediately. When I give $X to UNICEF, 12-14% of that is administrative overhead, and I’m prioritizing efficiency over national name recognition.

If in all their charitable giving, do Mormons give a greater percentage to their church-sponsored charities (perpetual ed, humanitarian, deseret industries, local fast offerings, tithes) what’s less-charitable about that? I know people who are passionate about AIDS/HIV research who don’t care a fig about diabetes. I’m not going to tell them their AIDS charities are less worthy than diabetes charities and can’t be counted as “donations to charity.” I won’t tell a Catholic that when they are giving to Catholic charities or soup kitchens, they are “donating less” than to my favorite ‘community charities.’

To Ray’s point, I wonder if we, as Mormons, feel like we are all used up and have no more to give. We’ve consecrated so much time and money to the church that we don’t have time and energy left for other types of charitable giving. OR conversely, maybe we are accustomed to the type of charity that doesn’t involve getting our hands dirty (we write a check instead). OR we only help our own (e.g. church welfare is a more trustworthy institution to us than local women’s shelters).

Amen, sister.

“Why do Mormons enjoy selling their own castoffs and searching for “bargains” among other castoffs rather than donating these items to charity?”

“Still, every time I see a yard or garage sale, I always think that it would be better to donate those goods to charity rather than trying to make a buck by “casting your pearls before swine” (loose interpretation there). It also seems a little unsavory to me to show the world your discarded objects.”

The above are clearly using garage sales as evidence of a lack of charity.