Giving & Donating
What Happens to a Donated Sofa Between Your Door and the Shop Floor
A large donated item passes through collection, safety checks, storage, cleaning and pricing before anyone can buy it. Each stage…
Tushar Jaiswal
Contributing writer, Goodwilly
Tushar writes about giving and where donated money actually lands.
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14 articles
Giving & Donating
Why Fewer, Larger Donations Beat Spreading Money Thinly
Splitting a charitable budget across a dozen organisations feels prudent and usually is not. Processing costs and attention both…
Giving & Donating
How to Read a Fundraising Appeal for What It Is Actually Asking
Appeal letters follow a well-worn structure with a purpose behind every element. Recognising the parts makes it easier to decide on…
Giving & Donating
Why Charities Ask You to Confirm Your Tax Status
Donation forms in many countries carry a declaration about tax that has nothing to do with the charity's curiosity. It changes how…
Giving & Donating
Choosing Between a Cause Down the Road and One Far Away
A given amount of money buys very different quantities of benefit in different places. So does the ability to see what it did.
Repair & Reuse
The Economics of Repair Versus Replacement, Honestly
Repair is not automatically cheaper and the comparison is frequently framed dishonestly in both directions. The numbers depend on…
Repair & Reuse
What Makes an Appliance Repairable and What Makes It Disposable
Two machines doing the same job can differ entirely in whether a failure ends them. The difference is visible in the design before…
Giving & Donating
Giving to a Disaster Two Months After It Leaves the News
Emergency appeals raise most of their money in the first fortnight and spend most of it a great deal later. That mismatch is what…
Giving & Donating
Sponsoring a Child, a Goat or a Well: What the Metaphor Hides
Proxy gifts turn an abstract donation into something a donor can picture. The picture is usually a marketing device wrapped around…
Giving & Donating
Why Charities Keep Writing to You After You Gave Once
The letters, the emails and the phone call are not a failure of manners. They are the visible end of an economic model that only…
Repair & Reuse
Batteries Are the Reason Most Cordless Things Die
The tool, the toothbrush and the vacuum all still work. The cells inside them do not, and whether that is fixable depends on…
Repair & Reuse
Service Manuals, Exploded Diagrams and Where They Hide
Most household repairs fail at the disassembly stage rather than at the fix. The document that prevents that usually exists…
Repair & Reuse
Why Bicycles Are the Most Repairable Machines Most People Own
Almost everything on a bicycle is a standard part, visible, and removable with a handful of tools. Very little else in a household…
Repair & Reuse
Storing Things You Intend to Repair Is How They Become Waste
The broken item put aside for later usually deteriorates, loses its parts and eventually gets thrown out anyway. The delay is the…