Oddz & Endz to distribute over $173,000 to 22 Cook County non-profits from 2024 sales
Jan 28, 2025 08:44AM ● By Content Editor
Photo: Oddz & Endz Facebook Page
From Oddz & Endz - January 28, 2025
Oddz & Endz, your “more than a thrift store on the North Shore” store, proudly announces its 11th annual profits distribution of $173,731.64 to 22 Cook County Non-profits.
Forty-five adult volunteers, seven middle school parents, and six middle school students invested more than 8000 hours total in the store’s community-building mission in 2024.
Oddz & Endz’ identifies their threefold mission to provide a place for the Cook County community to donate useable household goods, to sell those donated goods at accessible prices, and to distribute annual profits to volunteer-designated local community non-profits. In order to accomplish this mission, the store received more than 2400 donations of useable goods from our generous community and resold those goods in roughly 17,233 transactions over the course of the year.
Six Cook County middle schoolers and their parents generated nearly $7,000 for the much anticipated March 2025 trip to Washington, D.C., by volunteering at Oddz & Endz. Students and parents volunteered two hours a week throughout the summer and into the fall, tackling tasks from receiving and sorting donations to dusting shelves, cleaning toilets, mopping floors, shoveling snow, moving furniture, cataloging books, setting up displays, and storing bins and bins and bins of Christmas items.
Individual volunteers determine the local non-profits that receive funds in the annual payout, so recipients may change from year to year. Each volunteer may designate up to five Cook County non-profits that are currently and actively pursuing their own beneficial missions in the community.
This year’s recipients include:
Oddz & Endz Great Expectations School
Library Friends Hamilton Habitat
American Legion Auxiliary Unit 413 ISD 166 (Washington D.C.)
Arrowhead Animal Rescue Music Collaborative
Care Partners North Shore Health Care Foundation
Cook County Higher Education Oral Health Task Force
Cook County LEP Renewable Energy SMC Giving Tree Program
Cook County Empty Bowls SotW Episcopal Church -
Cornerstone Community Church Good Samaritan Fund
Evangelical Free Church Violence Prevention Center
First Congregational Church Food Shelf
Grand Marais Playhouse
Total volunteer hours worked annually are divided into total annual after-operating expenses profits, providing an hourly rate figure. Individual volunteer hours are multiplied by the hourly rate. Volunteers then determine how much of their “earnings” to give to each of the non-profits of their choosing.
Oddz & Endz invites community volunteers to invest with us for these or other non-profits not included in this year’s distribution. Call Oddz & Endz at 1-218-877-7060 for more information about volunteering on behalf of your favorite non-profit.
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We are so grateful for the support of our community! Every donation, every purchase, every volunteer hour invested matters in the lives of our families, friends, and neighbors in Cook County! Each year we pay our basic operating expenses and then distribute what remains (the profits) back to the community through the services of other local non-proifts.
Would you like to see how you've made this community engagement grow over the last decade? Here are the numbers:
From Oddz & Endz - January 28, 2025
Oddz & Endz, your “more than a thrift store on the North Shore” store, proudly announces its 11th annual profits distribution of $173,731.64 to 22 Cook County Non-profits.
Forty-five adult volunteers, seven middle school parents, and six middle school students invested more than 8000 hours total in the store’s community-building mission in 2024.
Oddz & Endz’ identifies their threefold mission to provide a place for the Cook County community to donate useable household goods, to sell those donated goods at accessible prices, and to distribute annual profits to volunteer-designated local community non-profits. In order to accomplish this mission, the store received more than 2400 donations of useable goods from our generous community and resold those goods in roughly 17,233 transactions over the course of the year.
Six Cook County middle schoolers and their parents generated nearly $7,000 for the much anticipated March 2025 trip to Washington, D.C., by volunteering at Oddz & Endz. Students and parents volunteered two hours a week throughout the summer and into the fall, tackling tasks from receiving and sorting donations to dusting shelves, cleaning toilets, mopping floors, shoveling snow, moving furniture, cataloging books, setting up displays, and storing bins and bins and bins of Christmas items.
Individual volunteers determine the local non-profits that receive funds in the annual payout, so recipients may change from year to year. Each volunteer may designate up to five Cook County non-profits that are currently and actively pursuing their own beneficial missions in the community.
This year’s recipients include:
Oddz & Endz Great Expectations School
Library Friends Hamilton Habitat
American Legion Auxiliary Unit 413 ISD 166 (Washington D.C.)
Arrowhead Animal Rescue Music Collaborative
Care Partners North Shore Health Care Foundation
Cook County Higher Education Oral Health Task Force
Cook County LEP Renewable Energy SMC Giving Tree Program
Cook County Empty Bowls SotW Episcopal Church -
Cornerstone Community Church Good Samaritan Fund
Evangelical Free Church Violence Prevention Center
First Congregational Church Food Shelf
Grand Marais Playhouse
Total volunteer hours worked annually are divided into total annual after-operating expenses profits, providing an hourly rate figure. Individual volunteer hours are multiplied by the hourly rate. Volunteers then determine how much of their “earnings” to give to each of the non-profits of their choosing.
Oddz & Endz invites community volunteers to invest with us for these or other non-profits not included in this year’s distribution. Call Oddz & Endz at 1-218-877-7060 for more information about volunteering on behalf of your favorite non-profit.
******
We are so grateful for the support of our community! Every donation, every purchase, every volunteer hour invested matters in the lives of our families, friends, and neighbors in Cook County! Each year we pay our basic operating expenses and then distribute what remains (the profits) back to the community through the services of other local non-proifts.
Would you like to see how you've made this community engagement grow over the last decade? Here are the numbers:
YEAR DISTRIBUTION
2014/2015 - $12,688.00
2016 - $21,408.00
2017 - $34,393.00
2018 - $47,967.00
2019 - $33,000
2020 - $69,345 (two distributions that year because of COVID)
2021 - $48,601.98
2022 - $80,443.17
2023 - $110,000
2024 - $173,731.64!
Go ahead and pat yourselves on the back, Cook County! You did that!
Want to try and break the $200,000 barrier in 2025? If you're willing, we're willing. We'll need the same level of exceptional donations of great quality, highly desirable, readily saleable items, including household furnishings and decor items, craft supplies, canning jars, and books (but please check what genres we're able to take or be prepared to haul some types of books back home), antiques and collectibles, puzzles and games, linens and towels, dishes, framed art, and select outerwear like jacket and coats. We can use office supplies, DVDs, some functional electronics (again, please check before you go through the trouble of hauling them all the way out here), pet supplies, small, clean, functioning kitchen appliances, as well as pots and pans and coffee pots and baking bowls, etc.
Besides the amazing donations you've offered in 2024, we'll also need customers ready to find treasures they didn't even know they wanted. Come in, grab a cup of coffee and a cookie, and browse, browse, browse!
And, we can always use volunteers willing to invest in the mission of Oddz & Endz: keep good stuff out of the landfills, give good stuff a second chance to be put to use, and support the good work of other non-profits in Cook County. Call us or come by, and we'll answer whatever questions you have about volunteer opportunities at Oddz & Endz.
Again, Cook County family, friends, and neighbors, THANK YOU!
2016 - $21,408.00
2017 - $34,393.00
2018 - $47,967.00
2019 - $33,000
2020 - $69,345 (two distributions that year because of COVID)
2021 - $48,601.98
2022 - $80,443.17
2023 - $110,000
2024 - $173,731.64!
Go ahead and pat yourselves on the back, Cook County! You did that!
Want to try and break the $200,000 barrier in 2025? If you're willing, we're willing. We'll need the same level of exceptional donations of great quality, highly desirable, readily saleable items, including household furnishings and decor items, craft supplies, canning jars, and books (but please check what genres we're able to take or be prepared to haul some types of books back home), antiques and collectibles, puzzles and games, linens and towels, dishes, framed art, and select outerwear like jacket and coats. We can use office supplies, DVDs, some functional electronics (again, please check before you go through the trouble of hauling them all the way out here), pet supplies, small, clean, functioning kitchen appliances, as well as pots and pans and coffee pots and baking bowls, etc.
Besides the amazing donations you've offered in 2024, we'll also need customers ready to find treasures they didn't even know they wanted. Come in, grab a cup of coffee and a cookie, and browse, browse, browse!
And, we can always use volunteers willing to invest in the mission of Oddz & Endz: keep good stuff out of the landfills, give good stuff a second chance to be put to use, and support the good work of other non-profits in Cook County. Call us or come by, and we'll answer whatever questions you have about volunteer opportunities at Oddz & Endz.
Again, Cook County family, friends, and neighbors, THANK YOU!