Can I Donate Board Games and Puzzles in Charlotte?

Yes. Give My Books Network accepts board games, jigsaw puzzles, card games, and family game sets from Charlotte homes at no cost, packed in with a book donation or collected on their own.

Your Local Pick-Up Partner is a locally owned family business, not a courier. Games ride perfectly well in the same box as paperbacks, so nothing needs separating before your service day.

What About a Missing Piece?

A game missing one piece is usually still worth passing forward, and a puzzle missing one is usually not. That is the honest line, and it is worth applying at your kitchen table rather than hoping someone downstream fixes it.

• Board games missing a single pawn or a die: keep them in, they are easily substituted.
• Games missing cards, boards, or rulebooks: less useful, but rules are often findable online.
• Puzzles: complete ones only. A 1,000-piece puzzle with 999 pieces ends in disappointment.
• Anything mildewed or water-swollen from a garage flood: leave those out of the box.

Tape each box shut before it goes out. A game box that opens in transit scatters across the back of a vehicle and stops being a game at all.

How to Pack Games and Puzzles for a Charlotte Pickup

Tape the boxes, stack them flat, and put them in a container you can lift. Give My Books Network sends a Local Pick-Up Partner to collect what is packed and waiting between 8 AM and 8 PM on your scheduled service day.

1. Enter the ZIP code and choose a service day.
2. Tape every game and puzzle box shut. Painter's tape is kinder to the lid than duct tape.
3. Stack them flat in a box or tote. Partners do not bring boxes.
4. Keep every container to a weight one person can carry.
5. Have it all outside by 8 AM in a covered spot.

Pollen in April, Ice in January

Charlotte weather decides where the boxes wait, not whether the pickup happens. In April the pollen comes down in a yellow-green film for two weeks and settles into every seam of a cardboard box left on an open porch, and a game box never quite looks the same afterward.

Keep everything under the roofline: the covered entry, the carport, or just inside an open garage. Same rule on the rare ice-storm weekend, when the city stops for a day or two and a box left at the end of the driveway freezes to it. Under cover, out of the weather, ready by 8 AM.

Who Ends Up Playing Them

Partners sort games offsite after collection. Many are redistributed through the Give ME Books program to organizations that ask for them: after-school programs, senior centers, shelters, community centers, and classrooms building a rainy-day shelf.

Some items are resold by the partner, which is what pays for the vehicle and the sorting hours. The American Library Association's book donation guidance makes the same point about condition mattering more than category. The few that nobody will play again may eventually be recycled as a last resort.

How Pickup Works From Ballantyne Out to the Matthews Line

Coverage runs across the south side, and booking works the same in every ZIP code. Enter your address, choose a service day, and set the taped boxes out by 8 AM under the covered entry.

Cul-de-sac subdivisions out toward the Matthews line produce a steady stream of these pickups, usually the week the kids finally admit they are done with a game. Nobody needs to be home. The boxes are gone by evening.

What It Costs in Charlotte

Nothing. No fee, no per-box charge, and no minimum, whether it is two puzzles or a closet shelf of games from a Ballantyne playroom.

The one limit: Give My Books Network and its Local Pick-Up Partners are family businesses rather than 501(c)(3) nonprofits, so no tax-deduction receipt is issued. Tape the boxes, set them out, book the day, done.