St. Vincent de Paul — Madison microloans are offered between $400 and $2,500 at low interest rates to help people with one-time emergency expenses. Thank you for providing neighbors in need an alternative to predatory payday or auto title loans. Your support is making lasting change in the lives of many families.
Between January and May, 2024:
- 14 loans were provided to neighbors in need
- $21,803 was provided in microloans to neighbors in need
- The most common needs neighbors use microloans for are vehicle repairs & housing assistance.
Want to hear from someone who received help through microloans? Watch Terri’s Story of Hope here: /terri-story-of-hope/.
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Donate to Help Uninsured Patients
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When you shop at St. Vinny’s Thrift Stores, you help our neighbors in need! By simply choosing to “Round Up” your total at checkout, you’re contributing to programs that support local families each month.
What is Round Up?
Round Up is a simple concept. When you make a purchase at St. Vinny’s Thrift Stores, you have the option to round up your total to the nearest dollar. For example, if your total is $9.75, you can round up to $10.00, donating the extra 25 cents to support one of our charitable programs.
Each month, Round Up highlights a different service. This means that each month your spare change goes directly to a new cause, allowing you to help our neighbors in need in various ways throughout the year.
You are supporting:
- St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Program: Customized case management support to families who are headed by single adults and who have recently found permanent housing
- Little Drummer: Annual toy drive for families who have received help from our home visitors throughout the year
- Food Pantry: Fresh produce, meat, dairy products, pantry staples, pet food, personal-care items and household cleaning products to neighbors in need
- Recycle the Warmth Blanket Drive: Annual blanket drive to collect bedding, blankets and sheets to provide to low-income families
- Air Mattresses: Low-income families receive furniture vouchers to our stores at no cost to them
- Youth Service Scholarship: Scholarship for local students who may not otherwise be able to afford post-secondary education
- Lacy Garden: 1.25-acre sustainable garden in Fitchburg that provides produce to our pantry
When you Round Up at St. Vinny’s Thrift Stores, you’re not just making a purchase; you’re making a statement. You’re showing that you care about the well-being of our neighbors and are willing to contribute to building a better community. So next time you shop, consider “Round-ing Up” your total! Your small change will make a big impact.
At St. Vinny’s, we take your donations seriously!
Every piece of clothing, book or furniture item you donate makes its way to the St. Vincent de Paul Processing Center in Madison. Once there, it is inspected, priced, hung (if needed), and placed on a semi trailer for delivery to one of our seven thrift stores. A team of about 80 people (55 on any given day) work here. Each type of donated item has its own sorting room: electronics, softlines (clothing, linen), hardlines (knick-knacks, kitchen goods), books, furniture.
Centralized processing at our warehouse means our thrift stores operate like traditional retail. When staff receive new goods at their stores, the items are already sorted, priced and ready for sale! Centralized processing allows us to randomly distribute goods across our stores.
After staff diligently inspect each donation, items are sent to one of these four places:
- One of our St. Vinny’s Thrift Stores
- Dig & Save Outlet Store
- St. Vinny’s Online Store
- Recycling
Recycling Efforts
When you donate goods to St. Vinny’s we make the most effective and sustainable choice to use those goods to their fullest potential. The large majority of items we receive are either sold or given away through charity right here in Dane County! When you shop and donate to St. Vinny’s you help your planet, help you budget and help your neighbors in need.
If an item does not sell at one of our six thrift stores, we send it to Dig & Save Outlet Store. There, we let the community decide what is usable, what is sellable and what is not. Dig & Save Outlet Store is a “pay-by-the-pound” store where clothing is $1.50 / lb. and miscellaneous goods are $0.60 / lb.
If an item does not sell at one of our six thrift stores and does not sell at Dig & Save Outlet Store, we recycle it. We recycle as much as we can and are constantly working with local and national outlets for sustainable options.
We recycle items such as:
- Books
- Clothing
- Handbags
- Shoes
- Cardboard
- Scrap metal
- Plastics
- E-waste
- Christmas lights
- Insulated wire
- Tablets
- Batteries
Fun Facts
- In 2023, we recycled 225,000 lbs of clothing each month.
- Our Processing Center distributes 170 racks of clothing to our stores each week.
- Dig & Save Outlet Store receives 3 shipments (trailer shipments) of goods each day.
- The International Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is an associate member of UNESCO and a special adviser to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It is also part of the Global Catholic Climate Movement and is aligned with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations in its Agenda 2030. (https://www.ssvpglobal.org/about-us/)
Watch our store webinar for more information on our sustainability practices: Why Do St. Vinny’s Thrift Stores Exist?
As we evaluate the Society of St. Vincent de Paul — Madison Food Pantry use month-by-month since 2019, we see a remarkable pattern.
2019
- Pantry use remained steady throughout the year (blue line).
2020
- In 2020 (red line), pantry use reflected the changing landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout its first year.
2021
- In 2021 (yellow line), as federal funds – particularly advance child tax credit and stimulus payments – became available to families, pantry use dropped significantly to lower than historical use throughout the year. Presumably more people had money to provide for their family’s food needs.
2022
- In January 2022 (green line), pantry use began where it left off the month before with an upward trend.
- We had a record-breaking day with 205 families served on August 26 and eclipsed that record on September 29 with 215 families.
- A slight dip in September followed historical trends, likely due to the return of children to school where breakfast and lunch are available to them.
- October is traditionally our busiest month. Each Thursday in October set a new record.
- November is generally a busy month at the pantry, with the days before Thanksgiving being some of the highest each year. Thursdays continued to be record-setting days through the Thursday before Thanksgiving becoming our then largest-ever day with 277 families.
- Instead of tailing off in December as has been our history, we served the most households in a single month than ever before, with 2,568 households using the pantry that month.
2023
- January 2023 (black line) was our largest-ever month, even though there were no record-setting days.
- February had a slight dip, still far above even the high months of 2020, and likely had fewer visits due to the length of the month and three Thursdays (typically our busiest days) with blizzard-like conditions.
- March jumped to 2,854 visits, the highest ever by more than 300 visits. This reflected the end of pandemic-era accelerated FoodShare benefits (SNAP) going back to pre-pandemic norms, a decrease in benefit of about $100 per person.
- April still exceeded 2,450 visits for the month and reflected two fewer pantry days in April than in March, with an average of 153 visits per pantry day.
- June hit a new high with 2,858 households served.
- The new “normal” over the spring and summer months saw pantry visits landing between 2,600-3,000 per month.
- The last four months of the year saw new pantry record days every month through December; peaking at 3,154 households in October.
2024
- January 2024 (teal line) totaled 2,881 households even being closed for three days due to inclement weather.
- February exceeded 3,100 visits in one month for the second time in our history.
- April holds the record for busiest single month with 3,236 visits.
- May saw a similar number of households get food from the pantry – 3,214.
- June 2024 was similar to June 2023 numbers with 2,951 visits.
How You Can Help
Each week, hundreds of households turn to the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry for food. There are many ways to help. If you care about ending food insecurity and giving back to our community, then volunteer, give goods or donate!