Donating old or worn hotel towels serves multiple purposes. If you donate used hotel towels in bulk, you can write off the charitable donation on your tax returns. You also save a pile of worn fabric from entering a landfill. Your towels go for a good purpose even if they have tears or holes. If you live in a town or city with many hotels and motels, you can organize a linens drive, going to businesses and collecting clean towels for charitable donations.
Instructions
1. Collect hotel towels for charitable donation. You may want to print a card or a flyer announcing your charitable drive and the organizations and individuals it benefits. Distribute the flyers directly to hotel and motel managers, or send digital flyers via their websites. Bring along bags or boxes to carry the towels in.
2. Sort the hotel towels. If you receive towels in pristine, laundered condition, you will want to keep them separate from the other towels. Sort through the remaining towels, separating them by condition. Do not dispose of towels with rips or holes because many charities accept donations of used hotel towels to use as rags.
3. Clean the worn hotel towels. Unless management informed you that the towels have been thoroughly cleaned, you do the charities a favor by laundering the towels. Use hot water, strong detergent and a shot of bleach. Dry the towels on a high setting. These laundering strategies help reduce the chances of donating towels that carry bacteria or bedbugs.
4. Choose charities interested in donations of old hotel towels. Some large charities nationwide that typically want and need towel donations include Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Local homeless shelters are other potential beneficiaries of used hotel towel donations. These organizations, however, typically want towels in better condition. For ripped or distressed towels, contact your local animal shelter, wildlife refuge, animal rescue center or other organization. They use clean towels in poor condition as bedding for animals they rescue.
5. Keep a record of the worn hotel towel donations if you donate in quantity to a particular charity. The receptionist, bookkeeper or person in charge of accepting donations should have a receipt book handy for filling out charitable donation information. Make sure the person signs and dates the receipt so that you can accurately record the deduction on your taxes.
Tags: hotel towels, charitable donation, towel donations, used hotel, worn hotel