Jewelry, housewares and even a bicycle are on offer in just one corner of the Atlantic Community Thrift Store in Clarksville.

Jewelry, housewares and even a bicycle are on offer in just one corner of the Atlantic Community Thrift Store in Clarksville.

The Atlantic Community Thrift Shop (ACTS) has been a notable part of the Bethany Beach area and Clarksville community for more than 35 years this year, founded in 1987 and incorporated as a non-profit in 1989, and is serviced by a group of 75 volunteers from all walks of life. The ACTS store provides a place for the growing region to bring old clothing, household goods and furnishings to the community thrift shop for resale. Located on the Clarksville curve on Route 26, with its large metal warehouses, the ACTS thrift store and charity has seen just about everything.

The donations and charitable giving provide about $300,000 per year to the region.

“We give away a monthly stipend every month to many of our charities,” which accounts for $15,000 per month for organizations in need, said Karen Lesperance, president of the ACTS organization. “We give to Freeman center for the children’s program. We recently bought the Lucas devices for the fire departments, and they are $15,000 each, for the Millville volunteer and for Dagsboro volunteer fire department. Meals on Wheels gets $6,000 every single month from ACTS here in our area.”

Karen Lesperance said that the thrift shop has received boats, cars and other high-value items, including family heirloom jewelry.

“We have been able to host auctions to get the best price,” she said. “If we look something up and think it has a higher value, we might not just put it out in the shop but find an online way. The most unusual item was a World War I helmet, which was of very high value and a customer helped us place the item on eBay. He was able to get $200 for that historical piece.”

“We have had some risqué stuff come our way, too, and we are not quite sure what to do with it,” she said with a laugh.

Last week, ACTS celebrated one of its own original volunteers and closed the shop on Wednesday for the funeral of Irene Marvel, 93. Marvel passed on July 15, and the entire ACTS community wanted to share in her life at a service at St. Georges United Methodist Church, also in Clarksville, which was her congregation.

“She did a great deal of volunteer work at Saint George’s United Methodist Church and was a devoted member,” according to Marvel’s obituary. “She also volunteered for many years at ACTS, the thrift shop on Route 26. Irene was a kind and compassionate woman. She was a wonderful role model to her family and others, and a great influence on many lives in our community.”

“She was one of the original founders of ACTS,” said Lesperance, “and she was a wonderful resource. Ms. Marvel was a cashier for us and spent all spare her time with us until COVID, every Thursday and every Friday. She was there well over 25 years, every week.”

Just this spring, ACTS donated $40,000 to Camp Barnes — which is run by the Delaware State Police, offering summer camp at no cost to families — for renovations and upgrades to the camp. DSP representatives said that “ACTS is a huge supporter of Camp Barnes,” where ACTS has targeted giving the past several years. The camp is for boys and girls ages 10 to 13 years old, and it has remained basically unchanged for some 60 years.

Now, with funding from ACTS, much-needed camp renovations will take place, according to Detective Jeff Barnes of the DSP.

“We are overwhelmed with donations because we have so many new folks in the area,” said Marcy Ference, also a volunteer. “People also do not know that we are all volunteers or where we use the money from these sales. It’s a very interesting place, and we love working here.”

“We have really cleaned up the property,” said Lesperance, who has served as president for 15 of its 35 years. “We added the property next door, expanded, and paved the lots. We had the two houses on the property torn down, adding more room for parking. The metal building was completed or the furniture room, which is a three-bay garage. Then we put the little yellow shed over there.”

The expansion was necessary. On a given midweek drop-off day, there can be as many as 100 to 120 cars and trucks waiting in line to deposit thrift store items.

“It never stops,” said Lesperance of the donations. “You cannot just drop goods at the gate, but people do it anyway.”

It is a community resource for families, said the ACTS president. Lesperance was nominated for a Jefferson Award for community service and giving.

“ACTS supports Lord Baltimore Elementary School, and we go to B.J.’s and support the fall backpacks for students who might need it,” she said of the school-supplies drive for children in need. “We do Selbyville elementary, as well, because both of the schools need these supplies. This can run from $1,500 to $2,000 per month for the backpacks, and we do this the entire school year season.”

“We often do not charge anything for clothing if they need it.”

One of the greatest ways volunteers can be rewarded is through scholarships. Students in Indian River School District high schools may contribute up to 50 hours of volunteer time, during their service hours or after-school time, and can receive a $2,500 college scholarship their senior year. If the students return during their college freshman year summer or at any time during college matriculation, they can be eligible for up to $2,000 additional scholarship funding for one more year.

“We love our high-school kids,” said Lesperance, who noted that most of ACTS’s 75 active volunteers are senior citizens. “We have siblings who volunteer, and everyone in the family gets a $2,500 college scholarship,” she added.

“We just provided a student named Kendall Coleman a full $5,000 college scholarship because she started volunteering her freshman year of high school, and it was based on merit and her extra time commitment.”

ACTS has fully recovered from a brief four-month mandated closure during the pandemic, when all non-essential stores in Delaware were shut down. The thrift shop had to be closed during the lockdown from March to June of 2020.

“We made money really well after our comeback,” said the ACTS president. “The State and the Bethany-Fenwick Chamber of Commerce helped us re-open and gave us the permission to have up to 35 people in the store. We had spread out our campus with several properties on our grounds for the actual furniture store, the clothing shed, which allowed us to spread-out.”

The new income and the pent-up demand for a thrift store for resale of Bethany area residents’ items meant new money for even more charity. The ACTS organization has also recently given to a local therapeutic riding program. It has been a strong supporter of “What is Your Voice” — a program working against domestic violence.

Jan Lesperance, Karen Lesperance’s husband, works with a treasurer, a giving committee and the ACTS board of the non-profit to help balance the books. He is an accountant and uses a spreadsheet to ensure all of the income is deployed to community charities, along with the ACTS treasurer. As a non-profit with 501(c)(3) tax status, the goal is really to zero-out the resale proceeds with the charity gifts.

ACTS was founded by women’s clubs and religious giving organizations at seven area churches: St. Ann Catholic Parish, St. Georges United Methodist, St. Martha’s Episcopal, Mariner’s Methodist, the Millville United Methodist Church, Ocean View Presbyterian Church and Ocean View Church of Christ. All of the congregations were active in the area 35 years ago and founded ACTS together. Later, it was incorporated as a free-standing not-for-profit.

“We do this volunteer work for our community, and we want to keep it that way,” said Lesperance. “We are the only thrift store that is all-volunteer and part of a non-profit.”

Mike has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern and is a 25-year member of the National Press Club. He has won four national writing awards for editorial work. He is a native of McLean, Va., and lives in Millville.

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The Coastal Point is a local newspaper published each Friday and distributed in the Bethany Beach, South Bethany, Fenwick Island, Ocean View, Millville, Dagsboro, Frankford, Selbyville, Millsboro, Long Neck and Georgetown, Delaware areas.