How to Have A Successful Clothing Drive Fundraiser

Clothing Drive Fundraisers are an excellent way to earn money for your non-profit.  It’s simple and there is no selling involved!  It’s green and good for the environment.

 

What is a Clothing Drive Fundraiser?

Your organization collects wearable clothing and shoes.  Typically your donors will give them to you in garbage bags, which is preferable.  Your organization raises funds by selling its collection to a textile recycler.  The textile recycler will buy the collection for a pre-agreed upon price-per-pound.

 

 

Maximizing Your Results

A Clothing Drive Fundraiser should actually be called a Clothing Drive Collection Fundraiser because the bottom line is that the more pounds you collect the more money you will earn.  It’s simply a numbers game.  One of the secrets to a successful Clothing Drive Collection is the key word “COLLECTION”.  Prior to the date of your Clothing Drive, your committee members should be collecting bags of clothing and shoes.  So the concept is that on your announced Clothing Drive date, you will get addition poundage on top of what you already collected during your drive.  In other words, what comes in on your final day is icing on the cake.

So here’s a simple plan on how to have a successful Clothing Drive Fundraiser and Collection:

• Announce to the world that you are collecting clothing and shoes as a fundraiser for your organization.  You should try to get all of your members, friends, family, neighbors and your community involved.

• This is the important part . . . if your goal is to get 5,000 pounds you should get as many committee members as possible to agree to be collectors.  They will agree to collect X amount of bags.  They will store those bags until the final collection day, and then transport them to one central location on the collection day.  For example, if your goal is to have 5,000 pounds, which is approximately 350 bags, and you have 10 members on your committee, each member would be responsible for collecting 35 – 40 bags.  In this example, if you had 20 members (collectors) each member would be responsible to collect 18 – 20 bags.  It’s simply a numbers game.

 

With this simple plan, if everyone does their job, you’ll more than achieve your goal, because you will have already reached your goal by collecting ahead of time.  Anything that comes in on the final collection would then be a pleasant surprise!

If you have decided to hold a Clothing Drive and Collection Fundraiser, you will find that the first one is the hardest.  Future drives will get easier because your donors will know to hold their unwanted clothing for your next drive.  We suggest that you hold drives twice a year, Spring and Fall (this is when the community typically cleans out their closets).

Happy Fundraising!