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It’s funny you use the term “skimming” because that’s the internal Goodwill term for stealing. But to answer your question, yes. The sorters are instructed to take the better quality items directly out of the donations and send them to the Shopgoodwill operation. 99% of the items on Shopgoodwill.com never saw the sales floor. The Goodwill in your area may operate on a different process, but I’d say the way we worked was normal for most Shopgoodwill stores.
Jay,
The items come from donations removed from the stores during sorting. I would go to the area stores and train the sorters to pull certain types of items. The items never saw the sales floor in the stores unless a manager found something nice that the sorters would miss. The sorters would box the items for us, and slowly make up a pallet which went to the warehouse. When needed, I would order pallets from the warehouse, which they would send 20-30 at a time (basically one per day). My helpers (all people with disabilities) would then break down the pallet and I would sort the items I wanted, the rest went back to the warehouse to be distributed to the store it was sent from.
We sold some low quality items, basically our process required only a $5 sale per item. At the time (mid 2010s), selling all items at auction was our process.
I recently had to evaluate the same decision. I decided that working for two more years would help my family slowly transition to an eBay only lifestyle. That being said, we are also working on reducing our external power costs by changing our home via renewable energy and removing grocery costs by growing a garden and raising meat animals.
My point is, don’t just think about the funds you will need to replace, but also think about potential ways of removing costs, especially if you find yourself with more time. Not everyone can do it the way I plan to, but there are always small habits we can change to reduce the cost of living.
