Charitable Freebies

Kalahari

Hi,

Hopefully I'm OK asking this here it is freebee related.

Does any of you valiant MSers have any ideas about how to get charitable donations for free (well obviously if they're donations).

I work for a local Charity community group and we're trying to get donations for our christmas fair. The likes of raffle prizes, freebies to give out, things to sell on stores, decorations to put up etc...

The trouble is we seem to keep hitting brick walls when approaching local (and national) businesses for donations. I'm not asking any of you guys for anything just for ideas of who to ask or if anyone is in a similar position, who have you had results with?

We are a registered charity and any request for freebies we ask for will be done disclosing our full details including charity number.

durham_girl

The shop I used to work in always used to get hit up for freebies.

I would suggest going into the shop first and speaking to the manager. Usually they have a bit of leeway and may be able to give a donation there and then. Make sure you take your registered charity number and any bumph about the charity. Try and get them talking and be very nice to them, it's harder to say no to a nice person!

If this doesn't work, contact the shops Head Office and ask to speak to the PR or Marketing dept. With this option, you need to have a carrot to wave at them, they don't care about the charity but they do care about free advertising. Is there a leaflet you will be distributing that you can add names of shops that have donated? If suitable you could offer to hand out free samples. The main thing is to make sure they know that by them giving a donation, you will promote them.

Hope this helps and good luck!

MissGolightly

Having organised a few charity days at work (wear it pink, the big coffee morning and the like) and holding raffles, what I normally do is call all of our suppliers and customers, most of them will stump up some vouchers, or a bottle of something nice. Do any of the volunteers in your charity hold paid jobs, where they could ask their employers etc.?

I know with Tesco, they are limited to helping out their sponsored charity for the year in any big way. But they are able to hand out small gift vouchers for charity events.

I have also asked co-workers to donate something for a raffle, and they have brought in anything from a box of chocolates to a clinique gift set (unwanted xmas pressie)

Unfortunately it seems that the people you have asked are being a little tight-fisted, but if you persevere and put on your sweetest phone voice I am sure you will find help.

davester

Freecycle might have some stuff that might be useful,

lorweld

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Savvy_Sue

We have found our local Coop and Waitrose stores to be friendly (local charity).

When I was doing this for the school PTA, I found that nothing beat writing a letter to all the local shops, hand delivering it, then going in and asking face to face. Hard work, but it was the only way.

Absolutely ask staff and volunteers to work on any contacts: we used to get a meat voucher from the butcher, fish and chips and Chinese takeaway vouchers from parents who owned those businesses, and anyone doing Avon, BodyShop or similar sales should be good for something if asked nicely and given some publicity!

If you have any local tourist attractions, they used to be good for a ticket - we found Birdworld would always send tickets, can't remember if Legoland did.

This company offers 'free' paintball sessions you can raffle or auction. I'm a bit wary of them, however, because I think you have to pay for the paintballs on arrival, and I decided when we had this in a charity auction that it wasn't worth bidding for by the time I'd paid for the paintballs. But then I was sufficiently MSE to check up on this beforehand.

Of course you then need to write a 'personalised' thank you letter afterwards, so that they'll give again next year ... Mailmerge is a wonderful tool, used with a good proof-reader!