Can You Donate Board Games and Puzzles in Minneapolis?

Yes. Give My Books Network accepts board games, jigsaw puzzles, card games, and video games alongside books and physical media, all collected free from your doorstep by a Local Pick-Up Partner.

A Local Pick-Up Partner is the locally owned family business that runs collections in your part of the city. Enter your ZIP code, choose a service day, and set the games out. If no partner covers your street yet, the request enters the out-of-area pickup system, where a nearby partner may claim it.

Do Missing Pieces Matter?

Missing pieces matter, and being straight about them is the kind thing to do. A jigsaw missing six pieces is a small heartbreak for whoever opens it, and a game without its dice or its rule card is hard to pass along.

Nine times out of ten, a quick check is all it takes. If a puzzle has been done recently and everything went back in the box, it is fine. If it has been sitting since a snow day in 2019 with the lid half off, count the corners before you donate it. When in doubt, note it on the lid. Honesty travels well.

How Should You Pack Games and Puzzles?

Tape each box shut, then pack the boxes together into a larger container. Loose lids are the whole problem with games, and one strip of tape prevents it.

1. Tape the game box closed along the seam. Puzzle boxes especially.
2. Bag any loose pieces, cards, or dice and drop the bag inside the box before taping.
3. Stack the taped boxes in a tote or moving box so nothing slides out en route.
4. Keep it light enough to carry alone, and set it out by 8 AM in a dry, covered spot.
5. Cardboard game boxes hate wet snow more than books do. Use the covered porch, and add a bag over the top.

Why February Is the Right Time in Minneapolis

February is when the shelf gets audited. A long stretch of indoor evenings tells you exactly which games get played and which ones have not left the closet since the kids were small.

A snow day is the same lesson at double speed. Somebody pulls down eight boxes, the family plays two of them, and the other six go back up looking suddenly optional. Book the collection while that is still fresh in your mind, because by June the closet will have quietly closed again.

Where Donated Games Go After a Minneapolis Pickup

Local Pick-Up Partners sort every collection offsite. Many games and puzzles are redistributed through the Give ME Books program to community centers, after-school programs, senior centers, shelters, and libraries that have requested them. Some items are resold by the partner.

Resale is what pays for the free collection, and Give My Books Network would rather say so than pretend. Items that cannot be reused may eventually be recycled as a last resort, and an incomplete puzzle is often one of them. The American Library Association's book donation reference guide is candid about the same limits on what can realistically be passed forward.

What Game and Puzzle Pickup Costs

Nothing at all. No fee, no per-box charge, and no minimum, whether it is two puzzles from a Standish duplex or a closet's worth of games from a Nokomis basement.

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. What you get instead is a free collection, a shorter closet, and a puzzle that somebody else gets to do for the first time.