Arguably the best thrift store in town. Shop here with a clear conscience. Have found excellent furniture and very good clothes.
Agency helped me when homeless as best they were able. They also administer the energy assistance program to help low-income people pay their electric bills. While I don't particularly enjoy filing the annual paperwork for that, I probably couldn't live without it, and absolutely wouldn't be able to write and post this review at home.
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Best people on the entire planet earth. If your going throug hard times, give these people a call and it WILL change your life FOREVER :) thank you MVAC for the massive amount of support you've given me
Rarely smells anything like a thrift store. Great people work there plus so many volunteers who give their time so selflessly. Amazing management--they always seem to jump in wherever they're needed.
They are very helpful and can provide a lot of relief for people going through troubling times. Never have I been made to feel anything less than a welcome, respected person. I look forward to when I can give back to this community service.
New to Mankato and have been checking out all of the Thrift/Discount Stores and this was my first trip to this store and I am willing to give it a second chance, maybe! It was difficult getting help from the worker even though it was slow inside the store and I was treated rather poorly. Some of the clothes were nice but a lot pretty low quality and not great prices. Some furniture but more was in poor or unclean shape. Bought one item and like I said, my first trip here and willing to try again. Checking out more places as we learn this town,
This thrift store is clean and well organized. Some of the prices are a bit high for what they consider name brand items. There is one staff member who is very rude and acts like you are bothering her if you ask her a question or ask to have an item stored behind the counter while you continue to shop. I asked her to put a fish tank behind the counter because my basket was full. She did it with a large sigh. Then when I got to the counter, she called another worker to check and she left. I had the impression she may be the manager. There were already a couple of people waiting behind me when my cashier called for assistance. She came back and told the other cashier to page another worker. The other person didn't come so she checked out one person, then walked away from the register to go find the person who was paged. Eventually she came and was very nice, so the visit was somewhat salvaged.
A friend had purchased a very heavy hide-a-bed and I of course I have a two-wheel trailer so that's reason I was at Minnesota Valley Action Council I was very impressed with the two of the people that work there they helped us load that heavy coach into the trailer and I was very much appreciated
An astounding and helpful place in so many areas. But, I feel like I need to do *a lot* of research to understand what their overall community goal is, if they follow up on cases until success is proven, and exactly how their funding works! In not a bad way, it's almost too good to be true. I hope they continue to do well, but they *MUST* manage to afford just another employee or two. The margin principle from business studies heavily applies at places like this.
If they are overbooked and the great, smiling staff is doing their best to hide stress overload... it's just a profound loss to everyone to short or imbalance key elements, thus overloading the system until a valuable (actually critical) safety net place like this loses a few gears here and there. Or worse: starts having simple, less strong souls get their case lost in the cracks! I really like this place. They'll need and deserve whole-hearted support in this ultra-strong economic boom time. Let's all keep this great thing going!! :-)
For the record I've been here four times, about three totally separate things, half all involving only others and their donating and complex queries about how it all operates. The lowest-level employees knew too little about very basic questions regarding the car system and were too quick to give referrals to difficult-to-reach #'s. That was the only flaw I've encountered yet!
To an employee I'll just call "A" for the record... Thank you so much. Your comprehensive set of ideas and knowledge helped tremendously. It is just life that it all didn't work out perfectly by any means. But, I knew you had my back and that there might be some great people out there who could answer what you couldn't. You really pushed on and emphasized the most critical points. Thank you, and thank you again. Your whole-hearted attitude is what earned this 5 star full write-up of a review on a day where life is just plain busy. You're what we should all strive to be. How you are so at such a young age is beyond me. May you succeed throughout your time there and your life after. Feel free to screenshot this if this review somehow, someday makes it across your phone or desk. :-D
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