The opening of a new attended donation center near Lake of the Woods in Orange County is making it a lot easier for people to donate their gently used clothing and household goods. The new center is located in the Market Place shopping plaza on State Route 3 about 20 miles west of Fredericksburg. 

This new site is Rappahannock Goodwill’s fourth attended donation center, and the busiest one so far, says Ted Smith, Goodwill’s vice president of donated goods. It is averaging about 200 donations a week. 

Smith says Goodwill plans to open four more attended donation centers in 2010. All the attended donation centers are open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. People can also drop off donations at any of Goodwill’s stores. 

It’s easy to spot – the donation centers are a truck trailer with the blue Goodwill logo on the side, parked at the edge of a shopping center parking lot and staffed by a full-time attendant. This one is near a Bloom grocery store, along with a CVS drug store and a Dollar General store. "It gets a lot of traffic from people coming from the grocery store," says Goodwill attendant Jimmie Clatterbuck, who helps unload donations and writes receipts for donors. "Regular shoppers can see our truck and then know that it’s an easy place to drop off a donation." 

Other donation centers are in North Stafford on Shelton Shop Road, the Salem Fields Shopping Center in Spotsylvania County and on Route 3 west. There are also four unattended donation locations: Goodwill offices on Princess Anne Street in downtown Fredericksburg, the recycling center near the Goodwill store in Tappahannock, the regional landfill on Eskimo Hill Road in Stafford County, and at the Belman Recycling Center in Fredericksburg. 

For more information on donating to Goodwill, call 540-371-3070.