Proposal talk:Donation of goods

Feature Proposal - RFC - in-kind_donation

Uncommon English term "in-kind"

While "in-kind donation" is an English phrase, it is not commonly used and it also includes donations of services.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_kind "in kind refers to goods, services, and transactions not involving money or not measured in monetary terms,"

"consisting of something (such as goods or commodities) other than money" (Merriam-Webster: "first known usage 1973).

"(of payment) given in the form of goods or services and not money" (Cambridge)

This might be difficult for mappers to understand.

I believe this proposal is focused on donations of things: physical objects which have some value, also known as "goods," "items", "stuff", "things". If that is the case, a better value for the tag might be something like "goods_donation=" or something with one of those other common words for objects.

But perhaps the key should instead include the type of things, since mostly people will say "donate used clothes", "donate used books" or "donate used furniture" rather than talking about all possible objects: internet searches for those specific phrases find more results. --Jeisenbe (talk) 17:02, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

I read the email thread and there are a number of different concepts within the discussion:

1. Shops that accept donated items with any expectation of nothing in return. In UK & Ireland, these are often called charity shop but there are also businesses that pay money in exchange for accepting disused clothing and/or items.

2. "Recycling" containers where residents can drop off disused clothing at the same location as items destined for recycling and/or landuse. I have some thoughts for this specific case below.

3. Swap "boxes" where residents can drop off/take items they no longer need. Think "Little Free Library" locations but for items other than books.

In the case of #2, the sorting process is generally a) send high-quality items to donation recipients; b) send lower quality items for recycling and c) send to landfill if not usuable / recyclable.

A possible solution would be to use amenity=reuse and reuse_type=container with similar terms as for amenity=recycling.

Dónal (talk) 16:42, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Arguments and comments from the Tagging E-Mails

I'm not a native English spearker and personally never heard of "in-kind donations" before, so maybe a short description/definition might be needed/helpful. --Hauke Stieler, Sat Feb 15 17:44:48 UTC 2020

'In kind' in relation to payments or similar means 'consisting of goods or services, not money'. --Steve Doerr, Sun Feb 16 13:28:13 UTC 2020

While "in-kind donation" is an English phrase, it is not commonly used and it also includes donations of services, rather than just goods.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_kind "in kind refers to goods, services, and transactions not involving money or not measured in monetary terms."

"In Kind: consisting of something (such as goods or commodities) other than money" (Merriam-Webster) - also says "first known usage 1973".

"In Kind: (of payment) given in the form of goods or services and not money" or "If you do something in kind, you do the same thing to someone that they have just done to you." (Cambridge)

This might be difficult for mappers to understand, unless this phrase is more common in British English than it appears (I'm an American English speaker).

I believe this proposal is focused on donations of things: physical objects which have some value, also known as "goods," "items", "stuff", "things", like those that you can commonly give away at a second_hand shop or charity shop.

If that is the case, a better tag might be something like "goods_donation=", "second_hand_donation=", "donation=second_hand_goods" or something with one of those other common words for objects.

But perhaps the key should include the type of things, since mostly people will say "donate used clothes", "donate used books" or "donate used furniture" rather than talking about all possible objects: internet searches for those specific phrases find more results. --Joseph Eisenberg, Tue Feb 18 17:13:07 UTC 2020

In British English the phrase has the same meaning as you describe.

The most common usage is in taxation terms when an employee receives a benefit that is not money. Examples can be a cars, housing. --Philip Barnes, Wed Feb 19 08:40:49 UTC 2020

OK, so "in-kind" is usually referring to a type of payment, in good or services, rather than a type of donation.

I'm sure the charity shops have to account the value of donated second-hand clothes as "in-kind" donation income for tax purposes, but that's not how an oridinary British person would talk about donating some used books or toys, right? --Joseph Eisenberg, Wed Feb 19 08:47:22 UTC 2020

In kind is not the phrase we would use, we would call it a donation. --Philip Barnes, Wed Feb 19 09:11:41 UTC 2020

A donation could be money (probably the most common type) or something else. If I wanted to distinguish the latter from the former, I might well choose to talk of a 'donation in kind'. It's not what one might call a 'fixed expression', such as one might expect to find in a dictionary, but it's an obvious collocation based on the documented meanings of 'donation' and 'in kind'. --Steve Doerr, Wed Feb 19 20:55:32 UTC 2020

My concern is still that it might be hard to translate "donation in kind" from English into some languages, and that people with limited English vocabulary might not understand the phrase.

Automated translations by Google from "donation in kind" gets this:

Spanish: "donación en especie" - literally "donation in species/type/kind" which also appears to be used as a legal term about goods/services

Indonesian: "sumbangan dalam bentuk barang" - "donation in the form of goods" - rather formal but intelligible, though services are not mentioned

Those are the other languages that I know. Other languages:

German: "Sachspende"

Dutch: "donatie in natura" literally "donation in nature", from French?

French: "don en nature" - literally "gift in nature/kind" which seem to be a phrase

So "donation in kind" will work for western European languages (and Indonesian), though it would be nice if someone can check how it works in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, etc.

However, "donation of goods" works as well or better in most of these languages:

"Donation of goods" translates to:

• "sumbangan barang" (Indonesian)
• "donación de bienes" (Spanish)
• "don de biens" (French)
• "donatie van goederen" (Dutch)
• "Spende von Waren" (German)

Those seem clearer to me; they are pretty much literal phrases that mean "donation of objects with value".

Also, the phrase "donation of goods" in English is easier to understand, since it does not require interpreting an unusual use of the noun "kind", which usually means "class, sort, variety or type of something" in modern English, except in the phrase "in kind". --Joseph Eisenberg, Wed Feb 19 22:48:47 UTC 2020

> German: "Sachspende"

is a precise and accurate term (no wonder, the OP has translated this to English).

> "Donation of goods" translates to:

> * "Spende von Waren" (German)

no, "Spende von Waren" is not an established term, it doesn't sound natural (but would probably be understood anyway), the perfect term is "Sachspende". My guess is that also for the other languages, particularly Roman languagues with their reference to "nature", the established term is that and not the second alternative. No idea about Indonesian obviously ;) --Martin Koppenhoefer, Thu Feb 20 10:58:34 UTC 2020