BERLIN – Community members gathered yesterday to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Atlantic General Hospital Thrift Shop.
The thrift shop, located in the Berlin Shopping Center on Old Ocean City Boulevard, has raised more than $1.5 million for the hospital during the past decade.
“It’s been great for the community and it’s been great for us,” said Michael Franklin, president and CEO of Atlantic General Hospital (AGH).
The thrift shop, which was expanded within the past five years to include furniture as well as clothing and household goods, is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The shop is operated entirely by volunteers.
“A lot of you don’t realize this is purely volunteer-run,” Franklin said. “No paid staff works here.”
Instead, Jane Wolnik, the thrift shop’s volunteer coordinator, schedules which of the shop’s nearly 60 volunteers are going to work when. Franklin said it was Wolnik and the other volunteers who kept the shop running smoothly and enabled it to provide financial support for the hospital.
“These volunteers have done a great job,” he said.
Todd Ferrante, president of the AGH Foundation’s board of directors, praised the work ethic of the volunteers, who each generally spend 18 hours a month in the shop.
“It’s been a great big help to our hospital,” he said.
Wolnik, like many of the shop’s volunteers, has spent years donating her time to the store. She and the other volunteers sort through donations, inspect items to make sure they can be resold and affix them with price tags. The store’s affordable prices, she says, are what keep customers coming back.
“You can’t beat our prices,” she said, adding that special sales were also offered throughout the year. “People line up outside.”
She said the store was fortunate in that it received plenty of donations from the community. The resale of those items typically brings in $14,000 a month. Aside from business expenses such as rent and electric, all of the shop’s proceeds go to AGH.
“The success of the thrift shop speaks for itself,” Wolnik said.
The store’s 10 years in business were celebrated with a reception Thursday. In addition to comments from Franklin and Ferrante, the shop received proclamations from the Worcester County Commissioners (read by Commissioner Bud Church) and Sen. Jim Mathias (read by Commissioner Chip Bertino).
