No luck getting a donation appointment? Here are some other ways you can donate your creative materials to ACR or share them locally!

The past year has been doozy!  It’s been 16 months since we moved into our new home in Windsor Park and 15 ½ months since we made the difficult decision to close our doors to the public for the first time during the pandemic.  Over the last year, we have sought to be adaptable and responsive and to find innovative ways to keep creative materials in the hands of the Austin community during a time when creative expression was sorely needed.  We prioritized finding new ways to safely accept donations and to keep usable materials out of the landfill despite having far fewer volunteers in the center and extremely limited ways to move materials out the door. Bringing the value back into previously loved arts and crafts materials takes many hands, and throughout the pandemic, we haven’t always had enough.  We rely heavily on volunteers to work alongside our paid staff members - this allows us to handle many types of items that other thrift stores can't and to keep our prices low, keeping creativity accessible.

We know many of you have frustration with our current donation appointment model.  We hear you and we feel it, too.  Until the time comes when we can fully swing open our doors and accept all the thousands of pounds of amazing materials that we know you have, we would love to offer up some solutions that may help

1. Large donation appointments.  If you have more than a trunk full of materials to donate (at least 6 bags or boxes), we invite you to schedule a large donation by emailing us at info@austincreativereuse.org.
2. Pool your donations!  If you don’t have enough to qualify for a large donation yourself, you can pool your donations with friends, family, neighbors or co-workers and then email us to schedule a large donation.  Or, you can even go one step further and host a community donation drive.  We’ve got all the resources you need and can potentially even help with transport.  You can find all the details here. 
3. Share with your neighbors.  We would love to accept your donations, but if our limitations make that impossible right now, we still think the most important thing is that your no longer needed materials stay out of the landfill!  We encourage you to try rehoming them in your neighborhood Buy Nothing Project or a neighborhood listserv. You never know - you might have a crafty neighbor on the block who is ready to learn something new!

 It’s been a challenging year, but we’ll continue to move forward the way we always have - hand-in-hand with our community. Please hang in there with us while we continue to work hard to inspire creativity, cultivate community and make reuse dreams come true.