11 Jul How to Organize a Donation Drive

Organizing a donation drive is a fun and easy way to help Goodwill fulfill its mission of providing jobs and training to people with disabilities or others who have trouble finding and keeping jobs. It’s also a great way to get the entire community involved. Everyone has items that they no longer want or use and a donation drive can help clear the clutter while giving back.

A good time to organize a Goodwill donation drive is during a community cleanup or neighborhood-wide yard sale. How it works: Goodwill provides a temporary donation center, like a box truck or donation trailer, that we setup in a central location in your neighborhood for collecting items that didn’t sell at your neighbors’ yard. A central location could be the pool parking lot, common area, clubhouse parking lot, or a street. An attendant would be on duty to help load donations and provide donation receipts.

Goodwill can also help you inform your neighbors of this great service. When you organize a donation drive, we provide yard signs with the date, time and location where the Goodwill truck will be, as well as provide flyers with this information and a list of acceptable/unacceptable items for donation. You can distribute these flyers to residents or even send out an email blast. We encourage donation drive organizers to include information about the donation drive on their community website, Facebook page or their community newsletter to spread the word.

Getting Started

Here are some tips when planning a community wide donation drive:

1. Get the entire community involved. Work with your homeowners’ association or property management firm.
2. Set your date and call Goodwill ahead of time. Dates book up fast! April and September are our busiest donation drive months
3. Know your neighborhood. We will need to know roughly how many people are in your neighborhood to help us determine what size truck to send.
4. Advertise. Let other area neighborhoods know about your yard sale and donation drive!
5. Enjoy! You and your neighbors will enjoy clutter-free homes and the great feeling that comes from knowing your donations will help people in the community with jobs and training.

For more information on organizing a donation drive, contact me via e-mail or at (615) 346-1601.