NMH Supports Community Partners With End-Of-Year Sales

As the school year ends and students hurry to pack up their belongings, move items to storage, or send things home before departing campus, certain things naturally get purged along the way. With 630 teenagers from 30 states and 60 countries racing to begin their summer break, the items left behind in their wake — clothing, shoes, bedding, and furniture — can pile up quickly.

In response, the NMH community has embraced the old adage, “One person’s leftovers are another’s treasure,” through the annual Green Sale and Clothing Sale initiatives. Unwanted items, gathered from across campus dormitories at the end of each spring semester, are cataloged, sorted, and offered to the wider NMH community for purchase at steeply discounted prices, with proceeds and leftover items donated to support the work of local nonprofit organizations.

The first Green Sale and clothing donation initiatives began around 2007, according to Craig Hefner, a science teacher and former chair of the NMH Sustainability Committee, who spearheaded the early efforts.

"Students who were leaving, especially those who were getting on a plane, would just leave most of their stuff in their room — and get a fine for not cleaning the room — or toss everything in the dumpsters," he recalled. "Hundreds of perfectly good items were thrown away. It was tragic how much perfectly good merchandise was put into the landfill."

In response, Hefner and a handful of workjob students began collecting the left-behind items from dorms at the end of the spring semester, which Hefner would resell to new students at the beginning of the next school year for a dollar. Any clothing or bedding collected was donated to local Goodwill locations or the Salvation Army.

"It has been a very successful and popular program [since then]," Hefner said.

The current sale and donation model began in 2021, said Kensey Batchelder P’19, ’26, director of work and service learning. Since that time, proceeds raised by the sale have increased nearly every year, reaching more than $9,000 in total.

Summer workjob students play a central role in the operation, according to Batchelder.

“The students are integral in processing the sheer amount of items that are left in the dorms,” she said. “If we didn't do it, [plant facilities staff] would have to remove and deal with all of these items, and they're on a tight timeline with setting up and cleaning for Reunion Weekend.”

This year’s sales earned $2,849, which was donated to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

“We wanted the money raised to go to a good cause that benefited the local community, and the food bank can do so much more with the dollar amount,” Batchelder said, noting that, when paired with additional financial and resource donations from other partner organizations, the food bank can spend three dollars per every dollar NMH donates. “With so many people struggling with food and financial insecurity in western Mass, it's the perfect site to receive the finances.”

Food Bank of Western Massachusetts Executive Director Andrew Morehouse, who recently spoke to NMH students about his organization’s work, emphasized the important role community partners like NMH play in helping the food bank fulfill its mission to provide food resources and work toward ending hunger in the region.

“Without our community partners, we couldn’t provide the equivalent of more than 14 million nutritious meals and other forms of food assistance to about 125,000 people every month,” Morehouse said.

Clothing items left over from the sale were donated to the Hatfield chapter of the Knights of Columbus, which laundered and distributed the clothing and bedding materials to homeless shelters in Holyoke and Springfield.

In addition to working with the Knights of Columbus, NMH also donated clothing and bedding to the Boys & Girls Club of Brattleboro and a local church this year. The clothing items donated to the BGCB will help it open a “clothing closet” at its Teen Center in downtown Brattleboro, said Julia Menges, program director.

“This donation helps our mission by creating resources for our youths and families,” Menges said. “A lot of our teenagers don’t have access to the regular supplies that they need. Being able to give them clothes to use for a school concert, garments they can wear while working in trade programs at the school, or just things they can be comfortable in at home help to make them more comfortable in who they are as a person and boost their social confidence.”

The unsold furniture from the spring Green Sale is stored at NMH over the summer and offered for sale to returning students at the beginning of the next school year. Proceeds support the Ecoleaders student organization.

The Clothing Sale and Green Sale initiatives “touch on our commitment to sustainable practices, acting with humanity and purpose, and engaging with our local communities,” said Batchelder. “With just a bit of work, we can repurpose the things that students leave behind and give life to the items a second or third time, keeping them out of landfills, and providing local folks with very cheap — or free — items that they need.”