Every purchase made at 165 Capitol St in Augusta, Maine does double duty: it clears out someone’s closet or attic, and it helps pay for hospice care for Maine families who cannot afford it themselves. That is the model behind the Andwell Hospice Thrift Store, the retail arm of Andwell Health Partners, a nonprofit, Medicare-certified health system headquartered in Lewiston that provides home health, hospice and palliative care, behavioral health counseling, and pediatric therapy across much of the state. Andwell recently united with Hospice of Southern Maine, broadening the reach of the same mission that funds this storefront: making sure that a lack of insurance never determines whether a dying patient gets compassionate, personalized end-of-life care.
The Augusta store functions like a well-run community thrift shop, stocked from donations dropped off by neighbors and sorted by staff and volunteers into secondhand clothing, housewares, small furniture, books, and the kind of everyday household goods that turn over quickly in a donation-driven store. Because inventory depends entirely on what comes through the door, the selection changes week to week, rewarding repeat visits from bargain hunters and anyone furnishing a home on a budget. Net proceeds from every sale flow directly back into Andwell’s charitable care fund. In a recent year alone, that fund and others like it allowed Andwell to provide more than 1.6 million dollars in free care to uninsured and underinsured hospice patients and their families, a figure that underscores just how much a five-dollar lamp or a rack of donated coats can add up to when multiplied across a whole storefront’s worth of shoppers.
The store keeps a five-day-a-week schedule built around when Augusta shoppers are most likely to stop by: Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., a later evening window on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday back to the standard 10-to-4 stretch, and a shorter Saturday morning slot from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. for weekend errands. The shop is closed Sunday and Monday. Shoppers with questions about drop-off donations, current stock, or store hours can call ahead at (207) 621-0351. Donation-based thrift stores tied to hospice and home health nonprofits are common across Maine, but the direct line from a bag of donated clothes to a specific, quantifiable amount of charity care is part of what distinguishes Andwell’s approach and gives donors and shoppers alike a concrete sense of where their money and their giveaways actually go.
Augusta itself, as Maine’s state capital, draws a steady mix of state workers, longtime residents, and visitors passing through on Route 201 and the surrounding Capitol Street corridor, giving the thrift store a broad and constantly refreshed customer base to draw both donations and buyers from. For anyone new to the idea of hospice-affiliated retail, the concept is straightforward: rather than routing all fundraising through galas or mail appeals, the organization keeps a storefront open where the public can participate in the mission simply by shopping or donating, no separate donation drive required. The Andwell Hospice Thrift Store is a nonprofit secondhand shop in Augusta, Maine, where every purchase helps fund free hospice and palliative care for uninsured and underinsured patients across the state.
