Letter: House of Manna thankful for contributions, but recently sees too many unusable items

The board and staff of the House of Manna thank the residents of Dickinson and surrounding communities for their generosity over the years in providing donated items for the needy.

We are a Christian, non-denominational, non-profit charitable organization whose purpose is to help those in emergency situations such as victims of a fire, a family breakup or loss of employment.

We are available to help anyone who may fall through the cracks in our social system. We are partially funded by United Way to pay for our building rental. We ask for free-will donations from our clients to pay for other expenses such as utilities.

We accept donations of useable clean clothing, household goods, linens, furniture in good condition, some food items and small working appliances.

We cannot take refrigerators, freezers, washers, dryers or stoves.

We ask that donations be delivered between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday or Friday.

Those unable to drop off donations during these times can call 701-483-5733 and make other arrangements.

We ask that donations be delivered during the hours we are open, as unsupervised drop-offs have become a huge problem for us. Items that should have been either put in the trash or have been taken to the landfill are being dumped at the House of Manna daily.

In addition, we have people going through donated items that have been dropped off outside when we are not open leaving clothing and other items scattered about the premises.

Cleanup of this and solidified items takes significant time that wonderful volunteers could devote to other projects.

Weekly, we must first discard unusable items and clean up the area surrounding the HOM. Each week a large garbage container is filled to capacity with items that should have not been dropped off in the first place.

Since this problem continues to escalate, the House of Manna has installed a multiple camera monitoring system and adequate signage.

We are fortunate in that most of the items donated are good, useable items being brought to us when we are open.

However, because of the increase of unusable items that are being discarded on our site, we have no choice but to pursue appropriate actions when we observe violations on our monitoring system.

House of Manna is asking the community to please support our efforts to be a positive resource to the Dickinson area.

House of Manna Board President Pat J. Severson, Dickinson, and volunteer Jerry Schneider, Dickinson

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