Linda Klinker has one of those cars.

“It is so smelly,” Klinker says of her Honda CRV. “Before people ride with me, I have to spray it down with Febreze. And there are always hand sanitizers in both doors.”

Linda Klinker: Pig Farmer? No. Linda Klinker: Fish Monger? Of course not.

Linda Klinker is known as the Can

Anybody who has ever heard the jingle that comes from the hatchback of Klinker’s car knows her true identity. Linda Klinker: The Can Lady. As one of the founders of the Lawrence-based nonprofit Cans for the Community, it is a good bet that when you ride with Klinker you also are going to ride with a pile of cans en route to a recycling center.

“I’ve embarrassed all of my family at this point,” Klinker says.

But they may overlook all the embarrassments now because Klinker these days has another title: magician. As the leader of Cans for the Community, she’s pulled off quite a trick since the organization was founded in 2005. She and a group of about a dozen volunteers have taken the simple idea — collect cans, sell them and give the money to local nonprofits — and turned it into an organization that just recently topped the $150,000 mark in donations given to local charities. They estimate they’ve collected 10 million aluminum cans in the process.

And you thought that trick you do with an aluminum can on your forehead was impressive.

There has been a strategy of getting to the mind-boggling number of 10 million cans. (And no, it hasn’t involved multiple cases of Mountain Dew and frequent trips to the restroom.)

The strategy: Be a little “can crazy.” Cans for the Community is run by a board of eight people, and there are probably another half-dozen individuals who are active volunteers. No one gets paid. The organization has no office. On almost any day of the week you’ll find a volunteer driving somewhere to pick up cans. The group has a dozen “can houses” set up in parking lots of grocery stores and other high-traffic areas around town where people can deposit their bags of cans. But the group also collects cans from about 90 Lawrence businesses that have recycling containers inside their offices.

But the can collecting doesn’t stop there. Nearly all the members of the group have been known to pick up an aluminum can almost anywhere. Klinker tells how she was visiting her daughter in Oklahoma City, and they were headed to a fancy dress shop. Klinker spots a crumpled aluminum can on the sidewalk.

“My daughter said: ‘I hope you’re not going to pick that up and take that in there,'” Klinker recalls. “So, I picked it up and put it by the door so I could get it when I left. I guess that is why I have to hang out with can people. They get me.”

There has been one other strategy that has been important to the organization’s success.

“We tell people that small bags turn into big bags,” Klinker says.

In other words, every can matters. That has never been more important than now. The city started its curbside recycling program in mid-October. Cans for the Community has noticed a definite decline in the number of cans it is collecting. In the first month, the organization was down about 100 pounds. The second month down about 400 pounds. The third month down about 600 pounds. In January, the numbers are indicating Cans for the Community could be down about 800 pounds.

“It is concerning,” Klinker says.

The organization collects about 36,000 pounds of cans per year. It sells those cans to the 12th and Haskell Recycling Center, a local business that Klinker says has provided a lot of support to the organization. In 2014, it received about $22,000 in revenue. It then took all of that money and gave grants — usually of $500 to $1,000 — to Lawrence nonprofits. But that model only works if the cans keep coming into the blue can houses instead of being tossed with the other curbside recycling that city crews pick up every other week.

“It may be that instead of giving out about $2,000 a month to nonprofits, we’ll only be giving out $1,000,” Klinker says. “I can tell you that there are a lot of nonprofits out there that can use the money.”

Indeed, that’s how this entire venture got started. Klinker used to work in the Lawrence nonprofit industry. She saw a handful of nonprofits collected cans as fundraisers. But she and a group of friends wondered what would happen if they took the can collecting idea to a broader scale and funded multiple nonprofit organizations instead of just one.

The answer: 10 million cans and a whole lot of happy organizations. The group has provided funding to about 80 organizations since 2005, giving multiple grants to several of the nonprofits.

Besides the money, there is another aspect the nonprofits appreciate. There’s no paperwork. Nonprofits don’t have to fill out any “grant application.” Instead, board members for Cans for the Community come to the monthly meeting with their nominations for worthy organizations, and “whoever gets the most votes wins that month,” Klinker says.

Cans for the Community also doesn’t put any requirements on how the groups spend the money. Klinker remembers giving a $1,000 grant to the Social Service League, and one of its leaders asked sheepishly whether they could use the money to pay the store’s heating bill.

“I told her ‘of course,’ and she almost cried,” Klinker says. “She said nobody every gave them money for those type of needs.”

The group hopes to keep doing so in the future.

“We’re trying to remind people that this is about more than just cans,” Klinker says. “We totally support curbside recycling. It is easy and it is great. We just want people to set their cans aside and bring them to us.”

But let’s be honest, taking your aluminum cans to one of the Cans for the Community dropoff locations isn’t going to be as convenient as simply throwing them in the big blue recycling cart that the city has given every household

“But if you go to the grocery store, we have a dropoff box at almost every grocery store in town,” Klinker says. “So it is not that hard.”

And it also is a great opportunity to practice a little magic. You can turn cans into dollars that help those in need. The best news is that’s magic we can all do.

And trust me, it feels a lot better than that trick with your forehead.