We are four people, a committee and a store. Knowing what we are not is most of how the work stays honest.
We do not respond to emergencies. There are organisations equipped for that and we are not one of them, and turning up to one with boxes of books helps nobody.
We do not give cash to individuals or households. Every request of that kind is declined, gently and without exception, and the coordinator will point you towards where such help is actually administered.
We do not run medical appeals and we do not raise money for an individual's treatment. Those appeals need scrutiny we cannot provide and a named person at the centre of them, and both of those are things we have decided to stay out of.
And we do not offer sponsorship of a named child, ever, in any form. A child is not a product, a photograph of one is not a receipt, and any arrangement built that way ends with a household being written about in order to keep the money coming.