{"id":3520,"date":"2019-11-25T22:48:09","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T22:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/?p=3520"},"modified":"2022-04-17T19:35:29","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T02:35:29","slug":"ec-056-applying-lean-six-sigma-to-boulder-hospice-care-thrift-shop-donations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/ec-056-applying-lean-six-sigma-to-boulder-hospice-care-thrift-shop-donations\/","title":{"rendered":"EC 056: Applying Lean Six Sigma to Boulder Hospice Care Thrift Shop Donations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_4473\"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-3520-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/earthconsultants\/earth-consultants-audio-podcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/EC056_Lean_Boulder_Hospice_Thrift_Shop.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/earthconsultants\/earth-consultants-audio-podcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/EC056_Lean_Boulder_Hospice_Thrift_Shop.mp3\">https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/earthconsultants\/earth-consultants-audio-podcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/EC056_Lean_Boulder_Hospice_Thrift_Shop.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1px !important;\">Podcast: <a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/earthconsultants\/earth-consultants-audio-podcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/EC056_Lean_Boulder_Hospice_Thrift_Shop.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/?powerpress_pinw=3520-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/earthconsultants\/earth-consultants-audio-podcast.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/EC056_Lean_Boulder_Hospice_Thrift_Shop.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"EC056_Lean_Boulder_Hospice_Thrift_Shop.mp3\">Download<\/a> | <a href=\"#\" class=\"powerpress_link_e\" title=\"Embed\" onclick=\"return powerpress_show_embed('3520-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Embed<\/a><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_embed_box\" id=\"powerpress_embed_3520-podcast\" style=\"display: none;\"><input id=\"powerpress_embed_3520-podcast_t\" type=\"text\" value=\"&lt;iframe width=&quot;320&quot; height=&quot;30&quot; src=&quot;http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/?powerpress_embed=3520-podcast&amp;amp;powerpress_player=mediaelement-audio&quot; title=&quot;Blubrry Podcast Player&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; scrolling=&quot;no&quot;&gt;&lt;\/iframe&gt;\" onclick=\"javascript: this.select();\" onfocus=\"javascript: this.select();\" style=\"width: 70%;\" readOnly><\/p><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/feed\/podcast\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In this podcast,  I share the audio from an interview I did with Lynn McCullough and Joe Wojniak (pronounced why-knock). Lynn runs the TRU Hospice Thrift Shop in Boulder, Colorado. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TRU Thrift Shop sells donated household items and clothes to raise money to provide hospice care services for those in need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe is her brother, and he volunteered to help them improve the workflow, reduce waste hauling charges, and increase revenues with Lean and Six Sigma methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also discuss the future of this podcast, and how I will be changing the name in the future, but still focusing a lot of attention on environmental improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/ec-056-applying-lean-six-sigma-to-boulder-hospice-care-thrift-shop-donations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Read full show notes<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/itunes\/\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe or rate this podcast<\/a>   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Links<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.trucare.org\/truthriftshop\/\" target=\"_blank\">TRU Hospice Thrift Shop<\/a><ul><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" label=\"Donation Guide (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.trucare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/TRU-Thrift-Donation-Guide-022822.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Donation Guide<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"TRU Community Care (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.trucare.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">TRU Community Care<\/a><ul><li>Lynn McCullough (<a href=\"mailto:thriftshop@trucare.org\">email<\/a>)<\/li><li>Joe Wojniak<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Lean Six Sigma for the Environment (free online course) (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/business-performance-improvement.thinkific.com\/courses\/lean-six-sigma-and-the-environment\" target=\"_blank\">Lean Six Sigma for the Environment (free online course)<\/a><ul><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" label=\"WASTE Walks online course (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.udemy.com\/course\/reducing-environmental-impacts-with-waste-walks\/\" target=\"_blank\">WASTE Walks online course<\/a> (free with coupon code)<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Earth Belt Certification (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/earth-belt-certification\/\" target=\"_blank\">Earth Belt Certification<\/a><\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"LeanSixSigmaForGood.com (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.leansixsigmaforgood.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">LeanSixSigmaForGood.com<\/a> (future podcast title)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Transcript<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Today,\nI&#8217;ve got a couple of guests with me, Lynn McCullough and Joe Wojniak. They&#8217;ve\ndone some great work applying Lean and Six Sigma methods to nonprofit. Lynn, do\nyou want to introduce yourself and talk about TRU Community Care and the work\nyou&#8217;ve done at the thrift shop you\u2019ve got going there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yes. I&#8217;m the\nthrift shop manager. We opened our thrift shop in 2005 to be a fundraiser for\nthe programs of TRU Community Care. Our organization provides or end-of-life\ncare to those in our community, whether they have the ability to pay or not. We\nopened the store to receive donations and try to raise some money, and we&#8217;ve\nbeen working towards that end ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; And where in\nColorado are you guys located?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; We&#8217;re in\nBoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Boulder,\nexcellent. And Joe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; I got interested\nin Lean improvement techniques stuff through reading Lean Six Sigma for Good,\nand after talking to Lynn, she identified some areas for improvement that we\ncould work on at the thrift store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; How did you get\nconnected with Lynn at the thrift store?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Well, Lynn is\nactually my sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; That&#8217;s a good\nconnection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Lynn, maybe we can\ntalk about we had a Lean tool that kind of helped us with this, with the ease\nand impact matrix. That kind of facilitated a discussion about different things\nthat could be done. What&#8217;s great working with Lynn, she has this long idea list\nof all the great improvements that can be done, so maybe Lynn, if you can, you\ncan give your perspective of that discussion and deciding upon how much effort\nit takes for particular improvement versus the benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; I think that was\nwhere Joe and I started talking is I just was at a turning point with the store.\nWe had grown the business, things were going well, but things were kind of\ngetting out of control. Donations were pouring in at a speed that we couldn&#8217;t\nhandle with the staff that we had or the volunteers that we had, sales were\nsuffering because we were getting bogged down in the sorting room, and being a\nnonprofit, there was really no way to add extra human hours to the problem. We\nhad hit a point where we were at our limit with staff hours as well as\navailable volunteer hours, so it was time to refine our process is a little bit\nbetter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can honestly say, when I first started talking to Joe about\nit, I was in just this complete state of overwhelm, not really understanding\nhow to fix the problem but at least being able to see what the problems were. A\nbig problem was that it was hard for me to describe to volunteers coming in\nwhat could they do to help. When you walk into a sorting room that is\noverflowing with stuff, it&#8217;s hard to explain to someone how can you make a\ndifference in this moment. I think one of the first turns the conversation took\nwas that I felt like the sales floor was in pretty good shape, we were selling\nthings, fairly organized, but the sorting room was really the point of\ncontention. Staff had been receiving and sorting donations out in the parking\nlot, out in the elements a lot, and sometimes just the best we could do would\nbe just to bring everything in at the end of the day and fill up whatever\nlittle aisles we might have had. So that was the first big like, okay, this is\nwhere we can have an improvement made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe, did you want to mention how you helped me figure out\nsome of these things we started to quantify or should I just keep talking about\u2026?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Sure. After\nidentifying that the donation room is where we wanted to work, we had some\nhands-on waste walks, or kind of kaizen events, kind of going to the donation\nroom itself and kind of worked through the sorting and pricing. If I&#8217;m\nremembering right, there&#8217;s other four or five departments in the sorting room?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yes, exactly. We\nhave it broken up into pretty much as clothing, books, things that have to be\ntested, and hard goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; And so the inflow\nof the donations, Lynn was absolutely right, it was just a large amount of\nmaterial coming in every day and it was just hard to get through all that at\nthe same rate that material was coming in. We kind of walked through and kind\nof did a back-of-the-envelope look at basically line-balancing &#8211; how much\nmaterial was coming in, what&#8217;s the max, how much can be sorted in each area,\nand where does it go after it&#8217;s been sorted basically. It can go to the shop\nfloor if it&#8217;s in good condition and has been priced, and then if not, there&#8217;s\nseveral different streams that it can go through. What I thought was neat,\nLynn, was you have an area for other nonprofits to pick up materials that they\nmight have a use for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; That&#8217;s right. We\nstarted a giving room and we were able to partner. There&#8217;s a lot of other nonprofits\nin our area that do good work, so we were able to offer items that we&#8217;re not\nable to sell to shelters and soup kitchens and children&#8217;s programs and schools,\nand so that&#8217;s kind of a nice thing to not have to throw those things away. It&#8217;s\nalso been a nice networking thing to get to know some of the other nonprofits\nand what their challenges have been and how, in some ways, they can help us as\nwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; That&#8217;s one of the\nstreams. You also work with a clothing recycler?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yes, exactly. All\nthe clothing that can&#8217;t be sold can be sent to a textile recycler, so we&#8217;re\nable to recoup a little bit of money from that, and then they&#8217;re able to sell\nthe clothing to other markets. We&#8217;ve also been able to partner with scrap metal\nrecyclers as well as eco-cycle, and our area does the single-stream recycling,\nand they\u2019ve helped us figure out book recycling as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; So you almost\nhave to be an expert in the recycling system and what is allowable to help\npeople, the customers and donors, decide what they can do with their items if\nyou don&#8217;t take them and then what you can do with the donations that don&#8217;t\nsell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah. We made a\ndonations guide that was helpful for people. We can send them on to other\nplaces that can take the items if we&#8217;re not able to. We&#8217;ve also piloted a\nprogram where people can make donations for us to take and dispose of items for\nthem that they just maybe don&#8217;t want to make that second trip to the hard to\nrecycle center, so it&#8217;s been working out pretty well with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Yeah, I think a\nlot of frustration with residents is that they feel like they have to take so\nmany different trips to each specialty area. Anywhere that they can reduce that\ndown and say, &#8220;Can someone just tell me what to do? I can&#8217;t figure it out,&#8221;\nthat can really be a nice little benefit for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Exactly. And\nit&#8217;s been helpful, too, because it helped us start the conversation with our\ncustomers. When we first opened our business, I really was just kind of trying\nto get the word out and really taking just about anything, trying to figure out\nmyself what is sellable and what is not sellable. Over the years, what people\nwill buy does change, especially with technology items. Something, in 2005,\nthat we could sell, like CDs were commanding really great prices in 2005, and\nnow we&#8217;re struggling to sell CDs, things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we&#8217;ve been able to start a conversation with the customers\nso they\u2019ve become aware, &#8220;Okay, I can&#8217;t just bring you everything. You can\nhelp me, but I&#8217;m not just going to dump it at the door. I&#8217;m going to come\ninside and talk to you.&#8221; We&#8217;ve been able to start sorting the donations\nwith our customers, which was a huge change for us. We were used to people just\ncoming in and dumping at the door, dumping outside the door and just leaving. And\nso now we&#8217;re talking with our customers, we&#8217;re helping to educate them, they&#8217;re\nfeeling happier and feeling like their donation is able to do more good because\nthey&#8217;re able to start refining what they are bringing to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; That&#8217;s\nsometimes counterintuitive for people, too, because it&#8217;s going to take a little\nlonger to interact and go through this stuff with them there. But to your point,\nthe education is really valuable for the next time and future trips and their\nability to educate their friends and family, so that kind of investment does\npay off, in the long run, I can imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Exactly. And\nthat was something, like when I started working with Joe, I was saying, &#8220;We\ndon&#8217;t have time for this. We can&#8217;t do this. I don&#8217;t see how this can ever\nhappen.&#8221; I think that&#8217;s what a lot of people running any type of nonprofit\nbusiness, they feel that way, &#8220;We don&#8217;t have the resources to do this.&#8221;\nBut when you can make a plan, then you actually realize, okay, this is, in the\nlong-run, saving me time, and it really is. Our customers start to become our\nadvocates and our partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Lynn, didn\u2019t you\nalso start almost limiting the hours that you would accept donations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yes, so that was\nlike a really scary moment. I had told Joe there was just no way that we can\nclose our doors for donations because once somebody maybe gets disappointed, I\nwas worried they wouldn&#8217;t come back. That\u2019s was a really scary thing to do, but\nI took the risk after we gathered the data and realized we need to do something\nso that we can handle the donations and honor them in the best way. So we\nclosed the doors for donations on Mondays and we started limiting the number of\ndays we&#8217;re available to receive donations. We did a plan where we let everybody\nknow in advance that&#8217;s what we were doing, and I think that was the key part so\npeople kind of knew this was coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The surprise, for me, was limiting our donations days, it\ngave us that extra time to catch up and it didn&#8217;t turn people away. They still\ncame and brought donations, so it didn&#8217;t hurt us in any way other than we were\nable to get more sellable items out to the sales floor. Our sales have actually\nbeen better since we&#8217;ve limited our donations hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Yeah, I can\nimagine that would be kind of scary to try out. What, ultimately, lead you to\ndecide to give it a shot? because\nI think that is a barrier a lot of people have with improvement is I don&#8217;t know\nif it&#8217;s going to work or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Joe had kind of\npainstakingly worked with us as far as getting the staff to count the number of\ndonations coming in and the number of donations going out to the floor, just\nkind of roughly, and number of donations going out to trash. I could kind of\nsee like we were really spending a lot of our paid staff time, especially on\nthe receiving end, and not enough time on the output side. So that&#8217;s kind of\nwhat gave me the confidence and, to be honest, I was just sort of at a breaking\npoint. Something was going to have to change. We really couldn&#8217;t go on the way we\nwere going, so I think sometimes that helps the argument is to look at the data\nand then say, okay, it&#8217;s worth the risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; And you got\ninto that pressure of not feeling like you&#8217;re able to catch up and willing to\ntry something new. That&#8217;s great. I guess, how did that go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; It went really\nwell, and we actually limited the number of days we send our truck out into the\nneighborhood as well, and that was also another scary thing. I think the\nhardest thing was getting staff buy-in at first. It was hard for me to present\nto them that this was going to be a positive thing and that nobody&#8217;s in trouble,\neverybody&#8217;s doing a good job, but let&#8217;s see what we can do that might be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once people, staff and volunteers, started to see that it was\nworking, then that they really got behind it, but it was just getting that\nfirst few steps going was pretty difficult. I think Joe remembers a couple of\ntough days in the sorting room, trying to get the machine going. But especially\nonce the volunteers started having their workspaces back, they started seeing,\nokay, I can see how my four hours is really to make a difference, then they all\nstarted adding their energies to it. One of the best things were the\nconcentrated sorting times. Joe helped bring in groups of people and just being\nable to have a group of 10 or 15 people, for four hours, in a concentrated way\nwas able to open up the receiving area so that the donations receiving person\ncould have a workspace. I know that sounds funny, but we literally didn&#8217;t even\nhave a workspace to receive donations at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; No, I\ncompletely understand. I&#8217;ve been to a couple of different donation-based\nnonprofits and space is a premium. There&#8217;s a desire to hold onto everything. You&#8217;re\ntrying to keep things out of the landfill and find a home for it and, &#8220;Maybe\nsomeone else will come in tomorrow and get this,&#8221; or, &#8220;Someone will\nneed this someday or we might need this someday for a future project.&#8221; It&#8217;s\nhard to realize that you can&#8217;t collect everything and keep everything. I\nunderstand that\u2019s very difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah, and then\nthe other side to that, why it was really great to streamline our systems, is\nsince we do use volunteers to run the store, we really can&#8217;t exist without our\nvolunteers and that labor number of hours is variable. People may take time off\nto travel; they may take time off because it&#8217;s a holiday, so the hours are\nreally variable. So if we can have a system that can run itself with fewer\npeople, then it&#8217;s much easier to keep things going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Yeah, that flexibility\nis really key for any kind of organization for efficiencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; And so having the\ndedicated receiving area set up, since we&#8217;re working with our customers, we can\nreceive donations with one person. It used to take three people to be able to\ngo out to someone&#8217;s car, get the stuff, bring it where it needs to go. Now,\npeople are bringing it in themselves, we&#8217;re chatting with them, and we can,\nmost of the time, get it done with one person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Yeah, especially\nsince they&#8217;re helping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Exactly, and\nthat was another thing. I was very happy to see that the customers were really\ninterested in learning, they were happy to help, they enjoy learning more. So\nthat was the other thing I was a little concerned that maybe customers would\nsay, &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t want to help you,&#8221; but they were. They were happy\nto help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; I think you&#8217;re attracting\na very special group of people that would come and donate and want to see your\norganization succeed. I am surprised, but then also probably not too surprised\nas well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah, I agree. People\ndo want to support the programs and, at their heart, that&#8217;s why they&#8217;re here\nand it&#8217;s just sort of getting to that point where the donations really are\nmaking a big difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; In some ways,\nthat practice is combining things that used to happen in two separate steps,\nreceiving and then sorting. So now it&#8217;s almost like receiving and sorting all\nin the same step now that the customers are that involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Exactly. It&#8217;s\nbeen a while and things have been running so much more smoothly, I have to kind\nof go back in time and think about it. But it&#8217;s true, we were just having\npeople bring things in and leave it anywhere they could, and then we had to go\nback and deal with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; So when someone\nwould drop off something that you didn&#8217;t accept or was hidden and the bottom of\nthe bag or underneath something, you guys have to deal with that cost and deal\nwith, if you have to throw it away, you have to have a bin available and get it\npicked up and pay for all of that, correct?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Exactly. We have\ndumpster hauling fees every week. If we have large items that we can&#8217;t sell, we\nhave to haul it to the dump, so there&#8217;s a lot of costs associated with things\nwe can&#8217;t sell. By being able to intercept more of the things at the door, that\ncertainly has helped our bottom line. We haul less now, which has been really\ngood for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Would that mean\nthere were sorting process changes or were there other things that were done to\nlower the costs there on the hauling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah. Another\npart of that was developing a sorting guide that would\u2026 Joe took pictures of\nthings that were either desirable or undesirable and he helped to write a guide,\nthat was more from the volunteer point of view, to show an incoming volunteer,\nin a very cooperative way, what are the things that are usable, what is a good\nway to approach this. Helping to raise the understanding of volunteers of what\nwe can sell has been helpful. That did translate to the sales floor<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was slowly realizing, with help from data, that we were\nfilling the sales floor with low-value items that just really weren&#8217;t selling\nor were selling for very low prices. So by helping to retrain the volunteers, we&#8217;ve\nbeen able to get them to come around to pricing desirable items at more of a\nmarket value and not pricing things that just aren&#8217;t going to sell. You kind of\ntouched on that a little bit, Brion, about that wishful thinking thing like, &#8220;Well,\nmaybe someone could use this,&#8221; but kind of doing that reality check like\nis this going to justify the space it takes on the sales floor? every item has to sell to justify the\nspace it&#8217;s taking up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Yeah, that&#8217;s\ntrue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; That helps quite\na bit as well just to have in a nice way. Because with volunteers, you always\nwant to keep them inspired, keep them feeling good and not coming down like, &#8220;Why\ndidn&#8217;t you do this better?&#8221; but just bringing them along with the thought\nprocess of, &#8220;I think we could do this. We need to make sure that this\ndoesn&#8217;t go to the sales floor.&#8221; And then one thing with our volunteers\nthat helps them a lot is that they know that most things are being recycled, so\neven if we&#8217;re not going to sell it, it&#8217;s not necessarily going to be thrown\naway. That helps them with the mental feeling of wanting to make use of\neverything that they possibly can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; One thing that\nyou had going on, on the shop floor, that I was really impressed by was the\nstock rotation. Maybe we can describe that a little bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah. I had kind\nof realized that, early on, you can&#8217;t just put stuff out to the sales floor;\nit&#8217;s not all going to sell. You hope it does, but not everything sells. Most of\nyour thrift shoppers are regulars, so they come in multiple times a week and\nthey&#8217;re going to buy things when they first to them and the things that sit are\njust going to sit. And so everything we put out to the sales floor has a month\ncode or a month color and that way, we know, in the slower time, it&#8217;s every\nthree months, we&#8217;re completely resetting the sales floor. We go through it\ndepartment by department and pull off the unsold items. In busier donation\ntimes, that might get compressed to culling every two months or every month, but\nwe&#8217;re making sure that customers coming in are going to see new things each\ntime they come in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; The shop floor is\npulling materials in from the donations room through that cycle happening, so\nyou really get a nice material flow going between donations being dropped off,\nsorting, pricing, and then going to the floor or going to wherever the next\nappropriate spot is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; And it&#8217;s a\nbalance that has to happen. That\u2019s sort of what I hadn&#8217;t realized is, over the\nyears, we just sort of shifted into this really out of balance sequence where\nnot enough was making that full cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; How do you\ntrack and look at donations versus sales? You mentioned some data that Joe was\ncollecting and helping with. Do you guys have a way to track that in some way?\nI know that&#8217;s a lot challenge for a lot of the donation nonprofits, especially\nthe smaller ones that don&#8217;t really have a way to track coming in and what&#8217;s going\nout other than maybe dollars or categories of dollars. What&#8217;s your current\nsystem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; For a long time,\nwe&#8217;ve been able to track our sales and I think most businesses do that where\nyou can say, &#8220;I sold this much of this department,&#8221; but it was\nimportant for us to kind of look at\u2026 Part of it is more just visually looking\nat the piles, like how much of this pile did we end up keeping, how much did it\ngo to the sales floor, and then, ultimately, how much got culled off the sales floor.\nSo it&#8217;s a little hard to put hard numbers on, but you can certainly do rough\nestimates, and I think that was what was really helpful for me. And Joe can\ntalk more about that, I think, than I can. Like the tables and the grass, Joe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Yeah. For each\nsorting area, it&#8217;s basically its own department and we just looked at, roughly,\nwhat&#8217;s the quantity in versus quantity out and where are the largest imbalances.\nWhere are the largest number of quantity of items coming in and then they just\nkind of get stuck in the donations room?\nthat&#8217;s really what we&#8217;re working to try to prevent is just try to keep\nthings flowing through the donations room. It&#8217;s a middle area and it&#8217;s not\nreally helping anybody to have a lot of material there. What&#8217;s useful is to get\nit to the sales floor, get it to the giving room, or get it to the recyclers. If\none of the recyclers shows up and the bin is not full, they\u2019ve wasted a trip,\nso kind of working out the timing of let&#8217;s make sure our recycling bins outside\nare full when the truck comes up to pick it up. I&#8217;m trying to think what some\nof the largest areas were where we showed an imbalance. Was it furniture? I&#8217;m pretty\nsure it was the kind of bulky items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah, I think\nfurniture. That was one of the things I was really blind to because furniture\nis a huge part of our business and that&#8217;s why we bring our truck out to the\nneighborhoods and pick up the furniture, but we had hit a point where our\nbackroom was full of furniture, the sales floor was full of furniture and not\nso much was selling. The way we really improved that was Joe shined a light on\nit and we talked about what can we do about this. I worked with the driver\nassistants and we trained everybody a little bit more about what is the\nfurniture that sells for us, what is the furniture that doesn&#8217;t sell for us,\nhow can we talk to customers about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We updated our donations guide, we produced a fee schedule. So\nif you&#8217;re just in a bind, if you&#8217;re moving and you don&#8217;t have time to deal with\na couch that we just said no to, you can make a donation to cover our costs\nplus a little bit and we can still take it from you. It&#8217;s kind of a win-win\nthat way and we take the pressure of the customer who maybe just doesn&#8217;t have\ntime to deal with it. It helps us because, in the past, we might just feel like\nwe had to take that couch that we weren&#8217;t going to sell just to be nice, but\nthen we were also having to go to the dump and pay money to dispose of that, so\nthat was a huge difference to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; I think that&#8217;s\nimportant because you&#8217;re adding value for the customers. They&#8217;re in a bind and\nyou&#8217;re helping them out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah, and it\nmakes us feel good, too, because then they, at the end of the day, feel like,\nokay, I did help hospice in some way. Even if they couldn&#8217;t take my item, I was\nstill able to help. That was a really big change for us and that helped quite a\nbit. We&#8217;re able to just bring in more furniture that we know we can sell, so\nthe furniture is taking up a lot less space in the sorting room now so more\nroom for other work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the other changes was kind of inspired by the changes\nin furniture. The volunteers in the book department got together and spent a\nlot of time figuring out more about what are sellable books, were not sellable\nbooks, what can we do with the books that we&#8217;re not going to sell. So they were\nkind of inspired by what they saw us doing in furniture to try to do a similar\nthing in books. The book department, at one time, was completely overflowing\nwith books and we really didn&#8217;t know what to do. We could price books very\nquickly, but we would very quickly overflow the sales floor with books that weren\u2019t\ngoing to sell fast enough. And so we were able to develop a plan to sort faster\nwhat comes in, get a better standard of what we know will sell and what won&#8217;t sell,\nand also volunteers who are skilled in understanding what will sell better on\nAmazon so we&#8217;ve been able to expand online sales to take pressure off the sales\nfloor. We&#8217;ve really been able to raise a lot more revenue with books that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; And then don&#8217;t\nyou also sell kind of unique items on Craigslist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah. Actually,\nwe kind of did a bunch of different things to take pressure off the sales floor,\nreach more customers. Unusual items that we think may take longer to sell,\nsometimes it&#8217;s because it&#8217;s a larger piece of furniture, we&#8217;ve been able to get\nit listed on Craigslist. Craigslist is nice because we can list for Boulder\nCraigslist or Denver Craigslist so we can reach a bigger audience that way and\nit&#8217;s often free or very inexpensive to list, so we&#8217;ve been able to pull in\ncustomers from further away that might be interested in the things that we have.\nThose kinds of things, like we were able to do more with eBay and Etsy and that\njust has helped because we can reach more people that way. Maybe the local area\nisn&#8217;t interested in it, but someone else would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Do you do\nanything with pricing at all? like\nif there&#8217;s an item that&#8217;s been there, is there any kind of discount for the age\nof the item or do you just use the colors and then you cull out items that have\nbeen there too long?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; We run a bunch\nof half-price sales throughout the month. Twice a month, I run a 50% off\neverything in the store sale and that really helps reduce numbers. And then we\ndo smaller sales too. We might do a clothing bag sale. We try to time that at\nthe end of the month when the clothes have been on the sales floor the longest,\nso we&#8217;ll say, for $8, you can fill a shopping bag with any clothes that you\nwant, that kind of stuff. We don&#8217;t, right now, have really much ability to\nautomatically do discounts, so it&#8217;s all done by hand, like we go through\ncollectibles and redline things to make them half-price. We&#8217;re hoping, someday,\nto have a system where the discounts could be more automatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; But the discount\ndays really do bring a lot of foot traffic into the store it seems like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah. The 50% off\ndays, people line up. We&#8217;ll have 50 people waiting for the store to open, so\nit&#8217;s a really fun day to move a lot of stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Do you have to\nstaff differently those days?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; What I do, on\nthose days, is I try really hard &#8211; I send out a sales email to the volunteers\nasking if they can help, so I do try to bring in extra help on those days. Our\nregular volunteers would normally do a four-hour shift on cashiering, but on a\n50% day, the volume is so high that two hours is an awful lot, so we try to\njust make sure that there&#8217;s enough people coming in. It&#8217;s not always perfect\nbut we do the best we can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Did you say it\nwas completely volunteer or do you have some staff members?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; We do. We have\nfive paid staff members and we&#8217;re open seven days a week and we rely on a core\ngroup of volunteers. We have a little over 100 volunteers that help us out and they&#8217;re\nanywhere from retirees to students to families, a little bit of everything. We\nwork with a food stamps program as well as community service through the court\nsystem as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; And it seems like\nyou work with people, the volunteers, to find out where they have an interest\narea or a skill. It seems like, for each area, you have almost an expert or\nseveral experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; That&#8217;s right.\nThe nice thing about meeting people who want to volunteer, they&#8217;re usually\ninterested in the mission and then you kind of get to know them as time goes\nby. A lot of our volunteers are retired, so they&#8217;ve had a lifetime of\nexperience. When I get to know people, I like to show them a little bit of\neverything in the store, but I can tell when their eyes light up. I can see\nwhen they&#8217;re interested in something and then we talk more about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of our electronics volunteers are retired engineers and\nthey can certainly teach me a lot about how to fix and value electronics. We\nhave a lot of retired teachers that volunteer, so they can help me a lot with\nhow to make signs more clear to people and how to get our systems a little more\nnavigable to someone coming in. It&#8217;s really kind of cool to meet such a great\ngroup of talented people and find out what they love to do and, usually, what\npeople love to do is also what they&#8217;re really good at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Pretty cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; I was kind of\nimpressed that you have an arts and collectibles area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yes, and so we\nhave some volunteers, a lot of them have previous either careers in art, like\nour art expert is a retired art teacher, and some of our volunteers are retired\nfrom running antique stores themselves, so they really know a lot about early\nAmerican depression glass or collectible things that would be hard to find. Not\neverything has a label on it that you can Google, and so that&#8217;s been kind of my\njoy is I get to learn from all of these great people that come in to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; I think you\nmade a good point on leveraging their skills and knowledge, too, instead of\nhaving them back sorting clothes when they could be out pricing valuable\nantiques and cool collectible items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Exactly, and\nsometimes it takes me a while to realize what somebody&#8217;s skill is because some\npeople are more upfront about their skills and some people, it takes a while to\nget to know them, but I have had that experience. I had a wonderful volunteer\nwho hung clothes for me for two years and hated every moment of it and never\nlet on to me at all. One day, she realized that I needed help with\nadministrative stuff, like organizing and making forms and distributing copies\nof things, and once she got into that, she just blossomed. She had so much fun\nand she was like, &#8220;I always hated the clothes,&#8221; and I was like, &#8220;Wow,\nthanks for telling me.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But you see a huge difference when somebody is happy with\ntheir work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; It is kind of\namazing the finds that you guys make. Is there any particular finds in the last\ncouple of weeks that kind of stick out for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Well, we&#8217;ve been\nvery lucky, actually. We&#8217;ve been finding some great collectibles. We had a nice\nold Japanese enamel jewelry box with a jade top come through that we were able\nto sell for $70. This time of year, we&#8217;re trying to go through all the artwork\nand things that maybe we&#8217;ve been sitting on because we don&#8217;t know what to do\nwith. We&#8217;ve had some nice original oil paintings come through that we&#8217;ve been\nable to sell for good value, like in the 200s. The other kind of nice line is less\nglamorous but we are able to recoup revenue when we find scrap items, like\nscrap silver and scrap gold, so that&#8217;s been really helpful lately to raise\nrevenue. It&#8217;s just broken jewelry that has precious metals as part of it, so\nthat&#8217;s another layer that we work with as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Let&#8217;s talk\nabout the mission a little bit. How does your store support the mission? as things are getting better, it\nsounds like things are picking up a little bit, what is done with some of the\nfunds? I&#8217;m assuming you guys are providing those funds to another group or you\nguys are providing some services for people directly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yes. 100% of the\nthrift shop profits go to TRU Community Care. TRU Community Care, we started\nout as a Hospice of Boulder County, so hospice was really the beginnings for us\nand that was in 1976. But what we do is we offer hospice services but also\ngrief support to the community. We have, open to the public, grief services,\ngrief groups. We&#8217;re one of the only groups in the country that offers that. Our\ngrief groups can cover lots of different things. One of the really maybe more\ninteresting programs is Healing with Horses. They offer children who experience\ngrief can go and be with therapy horses as well to help work through their grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our organization also offers palliative care and then we have\nopened what we call the Pace Center, TRU Pace, and that&#8217;s a service to the\nelderly who aren&#8217;t in hospice, generally still live at home but need support\nservices so they can come to Pace Center and receive medical care as well as\nsocial interaction with other people, they do fun activities and things like\nthat. So a lot of different things that the money from the thrift shop goes to\nsupport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Do you run just\nthe thrift shop or do you also oversee that part of the operations as well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; I am just the thrift\nshop manager. It&#8217;s a big job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Yeah, I was\ngoing to say. I&#8217;m kind of glad to hear that, actually. It sounds like that&#8217;s a\nlot of work that&#8217;s going on in there too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah. There&#8217;s a\ngreat group in philanthropy that does other sources for fundraising for our\norganization. The thrift shop accounts for about a fourth of the fundraising\nefforts for the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Anything else? this is great. It sounds like you\nguys are making some great progress. Joe, can you just talk briefly about your\nbackground? you jumped right in\nand started giving some good tips and advice, but you&#8217;ve seen some of this work\nbefore, right? You have the background in quality. Can you talk about that real\nquick?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Sure, yeah. I\nfirst got introduced to Lean in electronics manufacturing and I did that for a\nfew years. More recently, I&#8217;ve been focused on quality and compliance in regulatory-related\nactivities. But the opportunity to volunteer and have an improvement focus, I\nfind rewarding and I really like the Lean techniques because you can see\nresults fairly quickly and it&#8217;s all pretty hands-on. You try something, you see\nif it works. If it doesn&#8217;t, then you learn from that and you try again. It&#8217;s\njust kind of a neat journey. It was really neat to see how one area starts to\nimprove and then, like Lynn mentioned, other volunteer areas start to improve\ntheir own areas on their own with their own ideas. That&#8217;s really ideal and it&#8217;s\njust great to see and rewarding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; I will say that\u2019s\nkind of the end result of all of this, is that the volunteers are happier, the\nstaff, our jobs are easier, we&#8217;re making more money, the customers are happier.\nThere&#8217;s a lot of nice outcomes to all of this work. I didn&#8217;t really expect that\nwhen Joe started talking about a quality improvement project. My first thought\nwas, &#8220;Wow, I don&#8217;t have time for this.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; &#8220;It sounds\nlike more work.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah, exactly, &#8220;It\nsounds like more work.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion: \u201cI\u2019m already too busy!\u201d That&#8217;s amazing and you can&#8217;t\nreally ask for anything better than that, than a win-win for everybody &#8211; customers,\nthe mission, the volunteers, the staff, the team, the environment. That&#8217;s\namazing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; It was a hard\njourney, but it was well worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; What&#8217;s the\nduration? I remember Joe talking about this last year sometime maybe. Maybe\nthat&#8217;s when you first clued me in on that, maybe you started that a little bit\nearlier than that. What kind of timeframe are we talking about? because I think some people have\ndifferent ideas about how long some of that work will take. When did you really\nstart kind of getting serious about this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; It started in\nthe summer of 2018 and I think that the project-project was about six months, but\nwe kind of are still working on things. It&#8217;s just been able to get us into more\ndetail as time has gone on, but I would say that the project was about six\nmonths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; So starting in\nthe summer last year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Is that right\nJoe or is that a year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Yeah, the summer\nof 2018, a really focused effort in that six-month period and then just regular\nfollow-up over the course of the past year or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; I wonder what\nit&#8217;s like for you, Joe, for time. How often were you over there? how much time were you spending\nduring that six months and then kind of ongoing? I think that would be really\ninteresting just to kind of hear the time commitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; It was about a\nfew hours every couple of weeks for me, and that would be a chance to take a\nlook at things in the donations room and talk to Lynn about how the last two\nweeks have gone, were there any adjustments we want to make for the next two\nweeks, and then that sort of thing. That was kind of the six-month intensive\nperiod was the two-week follow-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Same with you, Lynn,\non your end? I&#8217;m sure there was homework that was going on in between the times\nJoe would arrive, but just the meetings with him when he came in and him working\nwith your team, was that about a couple of hours every couple of weeks of time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah. I would\nsay the only thing that was really more would be the volunteer days that\nfollowed four-hour blocks, so there were a few of those. The time involved was\nfairly minimal from my point of view. I was talking to people about\nimplementing things, but really, from the beginning, Joe helped me get a\ncooperative feeling to the project so staff were also welcomed to bring in\ntheir ideas and react and things like that. So a lot of people were helping, so\nit wasn&#8217;t necessarily a ton of time for me. I think it was more just mentally\nchanging the way you look at a problem that&#8217;s difficult. The real work was\nbeing able to slowly change how I did things, how I looked at things. I can\nremember meeting, after a couple of weeks with Joe, doing a check-in and just\nbeing like I don&#8217;t know how to change myself or how I&#8217;m doing this. That was\nthe hardest thing was changing old habits, but then what&#8217;s cool is you get\nmomentum and then the whole culture changes, people. Our habits now are the\nhabits that work better for us and that makes it so much easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Anything else? What\nelse you&#8217;d maybe like to share or any other examples or things we didn\u2019t cover yet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; The waste\nworksheets were pretty helpful and looking at what types of things we might do\nin the hands-on four-hour time block when we tried to get volunteers in. I was\nable to recruit some people from where I work to volunteer, and so just kind of\nthe waste framework was really helpful. We did focus a lot on solid waste\nstreams just because of the nature of the donations, but that was a very\nhelpful worksheet to structure and plan the activity with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; On the waste\nwalk, then that was part of that four-hour period and then you also mentioned\nthe impact effort, so after you guys identified some opportunities, and you\nsaid you also used that sheet to rank them and come up with the ones you wanted\nto dig into first. Is at all a part of the four hours I guess?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; The impact and\nease matrix was kind of at the idea session ahead of the waste walk activity,\nand then it kind of helps to talk out the ideas and trying to sort out they&#8217;re all\ngood ideas but you can&#8217;t do everything all at once. That&#8217;s where that\nprioritization by the quadrants was helpful, I thought. I don&#8217;t know, Lynn,\nwhat did you think?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Yeah, I think\nthat was really where I started to be able to hone in on some things that we\ncould focus on. It&#8217;s kind of coming back to me now. I remember just sort of\nunloading maybe 15 or 20 items on Joe about things I thought could be improved,\nbut then how do you make that decision?\nyou can&#8217;t do them all. How do you know what is the most important thing\nto start with? so it was a nice\nvisual way to look at what could, potentially, be the biggest gains, like what\nare the things that might not even take a lot of work to do, let&#8217;s start with\nthose and get a little success under our belt, and that did help. There are\nthings you can do very quickly that will give you a big gain and that was\nhelpful to be able to see that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Relying on maybe\ntwo or three tools or methods, it really drove the whole improvement effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Yeah, because\nI&#8217;m sure your brain is thinking of lots of different tools you could implement\nor try out and it&#8217;s hard to keep it simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Exactly, but keeping\nit simple helps us to be more effective. It&#8217;s not so much about using the tools,\nbut looking for the improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Where can\npeople get a hold or reach out to you if they have other questions or want to\nconnect? maybe the website or\nthrough hospice and the TRU Community Care, and then maybe contact information\nor ways they can connect. Do you have a social media account or something or an\nemail?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Absolutely, yeah.\nOur website is trucare.org\/thrift shop, T-R-U-C-A-R-E.org, and we are also TRU\nThrift on Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; And if they\nreach out to there, they can get ahold of you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Exactly, yeah. They\ncan email me, our email is thriftshop@trucare.org, and that would be resources\nabout volunteering as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Okay. And Joe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:\u00a0 I can be reached through LinkedIn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Okay. Thank you\nboth for your time and sharing. This is a great story and continued success as\nyou all evolve and improve and make more changes and find better ways to do\nthings. I think there&#8217;s a lot of organizations &#8211; I&#8217;m just kind of thinking &#8211; even\nlocally, here in Portland, that I know are going to pick up some tips from this\ndiscussion. I was also at a conference last month and talking to other\norganizations that are receiving in donations and they&#8217;re all having some\nsimilar struggles with that, so anything we can do to share those best\npractices and give people different ideas and ways to think about it, I think\nit can be really powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; Absolutely. Thanks\nfor the opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brion:&nbsp; Sure. Okay,\nthanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynn:&nbsp; All right, thanks\na lot. Bye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe:&nbsp; Thanks, Brion. Bye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this podcast, I share the audio from an interview I did with Lynn McCullough and Joe Wojniak (pronounced why-knock). Lynn runs the TRU Hospice Thrift Shop in Boulder, Colorado. TRU Thrift Shop sells donated household items and clothes to raise money to provide hospice care services for those in need. Joe is her brother,<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link\">\n\t\t\t\t <a href=\"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/ec-056-applying-lean-six-sigma-to-boulder-hospice-care-thrift-shop-donations\/\" class=\"btn theme-btn\"><span>Continue Reading <\/span><i class=\"icofont-long-arrow-right\"><\/i><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3523,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,16,45,10,15,430],"tags":[486,487,234,492,225,491,134,490,488,489],"class_list":["post-3520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-employee-engagement","category-lean-six-sigma-tools","category-podcast","category-solid-waste","category-transportation","category-volunteering","tag-boulder","tag-colorado","tag-donations","tag-earth-belt","tag-environment","tag-joe-wojniak","tag-lean","tag-lynn-mccullough","tag-tru-community-care","tag-tru-thrift-shop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3520"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4672,"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520\/revisions\/4672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leansixsigmaenvironment.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}