Learn how to quickly organize a donation drive for essential goods to support a current event or crisis. Follow these steps to make a significant difference in your local community or the affected area.
In my case, this was to help the victims of the Turkey/Syria Earthquake in February 2023. I knew they needed items fast but that this would be a long-term situation for them and that I had time to do a collection drive and still be of help. A lot of organizations would be sending items within the first couple of weeks but then this drive would help with needs a month or two out. Knowing that it takes time to get the word out, I just needed to start! God will figure out the rest as we go.
So maybe we should call this the unconventional way of planning a donation drive because we did not have everything figured out when we started. Below are the 8 steps the experts suggest for planning a donation drive. My comments are in red and reflect what I did. I have planned several of these types of drives and will say that I never have the full plan before jumping in and starting. If you do this, you must commit to seeing the whole plan through.
1. Define the cause: Determine the cause that you are collecting essential goods for and identify the target audience that you want to reach. It could be for a natural disaster, a crisis, or a local community need. In my case, this was to help the victims of the Turkey/Syria Earthquake in February 2023. My audience were adults with clothing and other essential items that they would like to donate for this purpose.
2. Determine the essential goods needed: Research the essential goods that are needed for the cause. This could include non-perishable food items, bottled water, toiletries, cleaning supplies, clothing, blankets, or first aid supplies. Since the Turkey/Syria collection was for an overseas site, I partnered with a distribution site that could get the items to where they would do the most good. Matthew 25 Ministries in Ohio (I am in Northern Wisconsin) had the infrastructure in place to get the items from the United States to Turkey and Syria for distribution. On their website, they had an extensive list of items they accepted, including pre-owned clothes, and I took that list to let people know what could be collected.
3. Set up collection points: Identify and set up collection points in high-traffic areas such as community centers, stores, schools, or places of worship. Make sure the collection points are easily accessible and properly labeled with the type of goods you are collecting. Establish a collection site and times you will accept donations. For us, we decided to do it at our local church and collect on Thursday nights from 3-7pm and Saturday morning 9-noon for 2 weeks. Considering my timeline was short to get the word out, the first Saturday not many came. The second Saturday was busy. Most of our collects came through the church on Sunday mornings.
4. Promote the donation drive: Promote the donation drive through social media, email, flyers, and word of mouth. Emphasize the urgency of the situation and the impact that the essential goods will make. Once you have your What, When and Where established- make a flyer and start promoting. Hang posters up around the area by having others help by taking a town or section they are responsible for. The more people you include in this part the better your promotions will be. Add information to any church newsletters and ensure posters get to area churches. Promote on social media and through friends. Write an article for your area newspaper to see if they would add it in for free. We did all these things, so the promotion did not cost anything.
5. Encourage donations: Encourage donations and provide regular updates on the progress of the collection and the impact of the essential goods. We did this a lot through church announcements, social media and just kept talking about it. Talking about it and being enthusiastic is infectious and word spreads! You cannot over talk about it. State your needs as well. For us we needed boxes, which someone donated. We needed money for the distribution, the donors gave money. We needed help packing items, people stepped forward. You also cannot say thank you enough!!
6. Plan for distribution: Plan for the distribution of the essential goods to the affected area or the local community. Identify a partner organization or a group of volunteers to help with the distribution process. This part, we totally put this out there on faith. We knew what we wanted and where the items were going, but logistics was another matter. To get to Matthew 25 ministries, the travel was to be 10 hours one way. Many phone calls were made to investigate different options to take the items there, U-Haul, moving trucks, shipping items, etc. We figured we had over 800lbs of clothes alone plus lots of essential items to send. Figuring 2 nights hotel, food, U-Haul, gas- the price to transport the items would far exceed $1200 dollars (we are a small church with $0 for spend). When I was asked how we were getting the items there, I just kept telling people that God had not figured it out yet.
Thankfully, we kept praying and being faithful and suddenly, out of the blue, a couple volunteered to take the items to Ohio for us! God is good. They were looking for a weekend away and thought this would be a great trip! On top of this, we had people donate money to help them with the trip expenses, which they had not asked for and we have over $450 dollars to give them!
7. Thank donors: Show gratitude to your donors by thanking them promptly and publicly. Send personalized thank-you notes or emails, and recognize donors on social media, newsletters, or events. Each person who has donated money, we have sent a thank you note for there generosity. As for all the items donated, we decided to add a thank you to our church sign rather than spending money on a newspaper ad. We calculated that most of our donations came in locally and that putting a thank you on the sign would be better for public recognition of our donors.
If we had felt our donations came from the newspaper outreach, we would have paid for the Thank you ad. You would need to analyze this area to make sure you thank your donors. We also will be adding a thank you in our church newsletter and of course say thank you on Sunday mornings.
8. Evaluate the campaign: Evaluate the success of the donation drive by measuring the amount and types of essential goods collected, the number of donors, and the impact of the essential goods. Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign and identify areas for improvement in future donation drives. We are amazed at how many donations have continued to pour in from area churches after our initial donation dates. We decided to continue to take donations through the month of March. We are now at the end of our campaign with loading of the trailer for the trip on April 19th. We think we have over 1000lbs of clothing plus boxes of essential items to send to help Turkey/Syria.
Upon review, the Thursday night collections were not well attended and, in the future, we will not do that time again. Saturday mornings were best or Sunday worship. Packing up the items was not as organized but it got done. The volunteers did step forward, it was just coordinating the times since this was also the season of Lent for us.
I hope our suggestions above help you move forward with your collection. I also want you to know that our church is small and only has about 30-40 people that attend regularly but for this cause, we partnered with all the area churches no matter their denomination to move this mission forward. We are all children of God and are stronger together.
God bless.
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