Saturday bag sales help keep donations local

MARQUETTE — Thrifty shoppers in the Marquette area have an opportunity to save some cash while helping out their community.

The Salvation Army Thrift Store in Marquette has been holding bag sales every Saturday for almost a year now. Shoppers can stop by between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., fill a grocery bag with certain tagged items, and take them home for only five dollars. The sales help keep donations and dollars local.

“We started doing our bag sales every Saturday in May of 2014,” said Tricia Coker, assistant manager of the thrift store. “We run a rotating schedule of colors. It’s a six-tiered schedule, and when we hit the bottom of it, when a color hits its sixth week, we do a bag sale at the end of that week to try and help us clear that color out, otherwise we end up recycling some of those items, sending them off to other areas, and we’re just trying to see our community use the items that they’re donating.”

The money raised by the Thrift Shop goes toward the plethora of services that the Salvation Army provides.

“All the money we raise goes into the programs we use to help our community — the utility assistance, the food pantry, the lunch program, different housing problems for people with fire or domestic violence. We help them get back on their feet. So all of the money we raise here goes right back into our community,” Coker added.

Some of the money is also used to help provide job skills training at the shop itself. Click here to visit the Salvation Army Thrift Store’s Facebook page.