Suggestions for managing charitable clothing drives

December 1, 2015 8:17 AM

I'm working with a charitable organisation right now that is, among other things, collecting clothing and goods for refugees around Europe, whether on the move or in refugee/asylum centres. We have been working on setting up efficient systems for managing collection including volunteer management, sorting and inventory. However our biggest problem is communicating our collection point.

We have been donated storage space in a semi-industrial area.

We don't give out the drop-off location publicly, but give it out privately to individuals as they ask for it, usually by email or facebook PM but sometimes by phone. Publicly we list a nearby landmark so people have a reasonable idea of where we are. The reasons for this are:

* we want to be onsite when they drop off items so we can sort them and hand back anything we don't want/need/ask for;
* when we give out the location, we also confirm that they are bringing only the items we ask for, in good condition, etc;
* we don't want people coming outside of collection hours and leaving bags of goods outside the building.

It's also a loaned space and we don't want to damage our goodwill by having random people roaming the area whenever they want.

This works...fine, I guess. But we spend a lot of time responding to phone calls, emails or private messages on Facebook from people wanting the address. We have also had a couple of complaints from people implying that they wouldn't donate goods because of the inconvenience of waiting for someone to give them the location (because the occasional 15-minute wait between sending a message and having it responded to is unfathomable in the age of technology).

If anyone has been in a similar situation and has solutions which would a) free up volunteer time from responding to queries, and b) would get donors the information they want promptly, but c) keep people from trying to access the location outside of our collection times... it would be greatly appreciated.

posted by tracicle to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

Set up a simple Twilio app that responds to an SMS or phone call with the drop off location during operating hours but gives a different message when you are closed...you'd need someone who has some programming skills but it's a very quick app to whip up (basically just follow this tutorial.) MeMail me if you don't have anyone with the skills on hand.
posted by kelseyq at 8:27 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

That sounds like a feature to me, not a bug. the type of person inconvenienced to the point they won't donate Is the type of person hat is also going to be donating things they want to donate and not things you need. Consider it a useful filter. We ran into so many people who were completely intent on donating baby stuff and stuff for women, despite the fact that what we needed most was men's underwear. I seriously considered making mattresses of all the diapers we had because we needed bedding more than a billion diapers and pads.
posted by Iteki at 8:47 AM on December 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

As a fellow organizer-of-charity-drives: stay strong. The system is working as intended and you would come to sorely regret having caved. You might consider asking other businesses/organizations to host dropboxes for you if you don't mind dealing with all the unwanted things you'll receive, but really what you're doing is a hard thing and it does take an incredible amount of time and effort to keep it on an even keel.
posted by teremala at 9:38 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Don't list a phone number, or use a phone number that only goes to a burner phone number that's passed to one volunteer on shift. And use a volunteer email address with a group inbox on gmail (set up a gmail and let every volunteer have delegation access to it) that gets all the mail forwarded from the Facebook too, and just use a scheduling app like doodle to give everyone shifts (3 hours to 1 day) to handle the queries, and then handover to another volunteer, so no one volunteer gets burned out, if you have enough people to spread it out, and also to avoid duplication. Use canned messages in gmail to standardise the info so people can quickly answer queries. Then it's just click, reply.

If this is a short-term under 30-days project, sign up for a trial of a customer service app and pay use that to handle the enquiries with your volunteers.

Does your website have a list of items asked for AND items that are specifically NOT wanted? It's good to have this highlighted, and to have this repeated by email contact (not as an attachment - text inline is better). People sometimes need it reminded. Then when people turn up with a trash bag of used broken mugs, you know that they are not misinformed, they chose to ignore everything and are not in good faith and can be turned away.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:20 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]