FEMA: Never donate clothing (it is never needed) | Hacker News Reader

FEMA: Never donate clothing (it is never needed)

fema.gov

51 pointscarabiner29 comments

The headline doesn't quite match the article or the contents of the article. It says "USED clothing is never needed" (emphasis mine).

Yes, HN guidelines are generally to avoid modifying the source for headlines like this unless it is impossible/impractical otherwise. Doing so risks either accidental misrepresentation or editorializing, which is a bit of what happened here.

I imagine that applies to most single used items, it takes a lot of time to sort, and time is the one thing you have the least of in a disaster.

FEMA tips for helping disaster recovery efforts: volunteer time and donate cash.

One imagines that if a manufacturer was willing to donate a pallet-load of new items, they would be accepted.

True I wish I could edit the headline. But to be fair, 99% of the time people are trying to donate used clothes and not a fresh , unopened stack of Hanes white t shirts.

This headline is distinctly untrue in the case of Western North Carolina; I was assisting in recovery efforts as a part of the NC Baptist Mission and one week post-disaster we were specifically being asked by the affected population to replace food in our deliveries with as many clothing items as we could find.

I wonder if it's to-do with the fact that clothing is bulky and FEMA would be transporting donations from all over the place, leading to a really ineffective cost:benefit ratio. I believe you that clothing was what was needed in your efforts, but that doesn't necessarily mean that shipping sweaters from California is the best way to meet that need. As the article says, cash is best because "Organizations on the ground know what items and quantities are needed, often buy in bulk with discounts and, if possible, purchase through businesses local to the disaster, which supports economic recovery."

Isn't there a difference between donated old and new retail clothing? Whereas canned food is more or less the same donated or purchased new at retail?

If clothing is needed in a disaster situation, I don't see how a new retail sweatshirt and jeans would be much more impactful than a used sweatshirt and jeans, given people have enough sense to not donate clothing with non-cosmetic issues - i.e. faded ok; rips/holes not ok).

Furthermore, if you have some money to spend on the effort, buying new cloths is a really poor choice among the options for spending it, for all the reasons they mentioned: organizations on the ground know what items and quantities are needed, often buy in bulk with discounts and, if possible, purchase through businesses local to the disaster, which supports economic recovery.

I don't know. Either things that people say they want are paramount, or not. Unless they are starving, people would say no to "used food" like a hamburger with a bite taken out of it too.

I suppose it depends if you are trying to help with people's wants or needs in a disaster situation. If 10 new sweatshirts and 100 used sweatshirts get airdropped into a disaster area, and all 10 new shirts get taken and 0 used shirts, then FEMA is right, cloths are not needed. However, if the cloths being new help people psychologically cope with the disaster, that's certainly a factor to consider.

So the thing is, you need someone to sort donations. Not just for quality but for what they are, so that you can send appropriate things to appropriate disasters. A retail sweatshirt and jeans might be exactly what North Carolina needs, might be barely passable for right now in Los Angeles, and would be less than useless in Los Angeles six months from now. You also have to have someone go through all the donations to figure out what is and is not a non-cosmetic issue and discard the useless because, as someone whose spouse worked for Goodwill, I can tell you that you can not count on people to have sense enough not to donate damaged and useless goods. Then you have to have someone physically get the things from where they were donated, filtered and sorted to the disaster. A whole network of someones, actually, because there are a lot of places a donation can originate. Trucking stuff into a disaster area is a challenge as well, and may be impossible depending on the nature of the disaster in question and where the stuff is coming from. A new sweater is no better than a gently-used but fully functional one if a sweater is what's needed and they're both already on-site. But for a disaster response that's scaled nationally and designed to respond to minor and major disasters of disparate types with varying needs, cash is 100% king.

Is your comment at me? Because it seems like we agree.

i.e. donating new cloths is not any better than used cloths and neither are all that helpful; donate cash instead.

It's intended to clarify and emphasize for readers

The HN headline doesn't reflect the statement. Do not donate used clothing.

I imagine that (at disaster scale where there is immediate need) it's easier/cheaper to find/keep and to manage/distribute conex boxes full of new clothes, than to ever deal with sorting, sanitizing, and distributing used clothes.

I further postulate that this is true even if the labor chiefly consists of unpaid volunteers.

Do not self-deploy to a disaster area - it helps no one if you also need to be rescued.

If you volunteer to help someone else, you can't do it on your own terms alone, you have to be aware and willing to work with what other people need. This might sound obvious, and the people who really need to hear this may not accept it.

Makes sense, for disaster response and logistics at scale.

On a small and local scale, such as for refugees who're being helped getting settled in your city, reportedly sometimes clothing donations is what they want.

A few/several years ago, someone (who I knew to be genuine, and especially savvy about societal issues) asked for clothing donations, for a refugee support group. They had specs for kinds and sizes they needed.

So I asked the person if the people wouldn't rather have money donations, so they could go to the stores in town, and buy whatever clothes best met their needs and preferences. But there was some problem, maybe the logistics of getting them to the stores(?), and they really did want clothing donations.

The helpers seemed to be serious about it, and followed through. I happened to have some new ordinary clothes that didn't fit me well, and the helpers even came and picked up them up.

I think sometimes guidance like this is more about the organization than the customers. This is true for all sorts of things: application development, disaster relief, etc.

>This is true for all sorts of things: application development

Do you mean I should stop dumping my old clothes in the app dev team's cubicles? Their gratitude has always been lacking anyway.

Hu… I always thought used clothes go the QA Team.

Really, our gratitude seems lacking after the 9th pile of Patagonia half-zip sweater vests?

I imagine that clothing is most of what people who don't want to donate cash are donating. Makes sense

Sell the clothes for cash and give that. Lest the west coast flames are given more to feed from.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/best-intentions-when-disaster-r...

I have it on good authority that cash is also flammable.

Then Zelle it bro.

Coins. Just don't dip the pennies in oil.

Imagine you go through a natural disaster and someone donates bedbug infested clothing

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