Our county prosecutors office has 1700, one thousand seven hundred, bike that it wants to give us. We don't have room to store that many while we triage and decide what is worth fixing, what can have usable parts stripped, and what will be scraped. So they agreed to keep them and give them to us a little at a time. Everybody wins.
On the issue of 'too much work for the value', we have a segment of our customer base that needs low cost transportation, bikes in the $40 - $60 range. Huffy, Next, fill the bill, but many need lots of work and some parts to be safe to ride. So sometime a member will work for a few hours on a $50 bike. But we help the community, and that is the goal. As well a supporting our sponsor. We also get donations of better bike that need little work for which we put a higher price on. They fly out the door, so it balances out in the end.
BTW, we also get the 'abandoned' bikes from the local university, that has the initials of PU.