Every Christmas for the past… oh… seven years or so, we’ve partnered with the Treehouse Wearhouse to provide FREE NEW GAMES AND TOYS to Seattle area foster kids and their families during the holiday season. It’s something I’m very personally proud of and I’m happy to be doing it again this year.

TO PARTICIPATE: we ask that you bring in your old, games, toys and collectibles to us between now and December 22nd. We actually take these used items and sell them. Then we take the money raised from those sales to buy new items from ourselves at steep discounts that we then give, for free, to the Treehouse Wearhouse.

I explain this carefully, using a lot of commas and italics, because last year we had a large number of wonderful, well-meaning people get confused, buy used games from Value Village and then drop them off directly with us. That actually doesn’t work very well because we don’t give the kids used games (they can go to Value Village themselves for that), we buy them new games with the monies that we raise from the projected sales of the donated games (and frankly, used kids games from Value Village really just don’t have very much of a resale value on the open market.)

SO! Like I said before, just bring in your old games, toys and collectibles. The ones that you already have sitting around in your closet. Then we’ll sell them and use the proceeds to buy the kids new games.

It’s JUST THAT EASY. At least for you. You get a clean game closet just before Christmas (you see what we did just there together?), we get a bunch of fun used games to sell in 2016, and Seattle’s foster kids and their families get great free hand-selected family games for their Christmas.

And say, did I mention that we also have a great selection of new and used games, toys and collectibles for all of your holiday shopping needs this season as well?

So come on down, donate some used games, pick up some new or used games, take advantage of our amazing free wrapping system (when available, time permitting) and make a difference in your community all in one fell swoop. You’ll have a great time and be glad that you did.