November has been an amazing month for our partners and their clothing drives. We thought it might be a good idea to ask them some questions and have them share some things they learned from their experience.  We expect these tips to be quite useful for anyone who plans on hosting a drive in the future. For the first in our series, we have interviewed Lisa Wolff, the President of  the Board of Education for the Hopewell Valley Regional School District.  Hopewell Valley just recently hosted a district wide clothing recycling event and it was a tremendous success. The district was able to collect 8376 lbs of textiles over two weeks.  Here’s what Lisa had to say:

WC: Why do a coordinated District-Wide textile drive, rather than an individual school drive?

• Encourages Teamwork – Our district has 6 schools (4 Elementary, 1 Middle School, 1 High School).  Since we are “all in this together”, the schools all work together to maximize our outcome.   Parents of multiple kids can send in stuff to any school and do not need to choose which school to support.
• Better Advertising and PR -  A challenge for all fundraisers is advertising and getting heard over all the noise.  “District wide” initiatives are more likely to get press in local papers and in most media communications.  Individual school fundraisers often get lost since they have more limited appeal.
• Maximizes income and minimize resource usage – Wearable Collections will give you a little higher pay per pound if you supply your own storage and transport to the sorting location.  Our district used a box truck that picked up from all locations on the last day.   We could have not justified district staff & truck use for 6 separate textile drives.

WC: What are the keys to a successful district-wide drive?

• Start by getting district level support – Since I was already on the school board, I knew that our Alternative Resource Advisory Committee could help coordinate a fundraiser across multiple PTOs and could coordinate with the Facilities group in the district.  Most school districts have a forum for the Presidents of all school PTOs to exchange ideas.  Ours is called the District Parent Council (DPC) so I knew to involve them.
• Get buy-in and a coordinator for all participating schools – At DPC, I wrote up a single page letter of commitment for each participating school to sign.  The drive doesn’t require much work at all to drive success but there is a bare minimum.  For my group, I asked each coordinator to Work with the School Principal to:

1. Determine where items collected would be stored. (In most schools, the drop-off location differed from the storage location.)
2. Make signs advertising the drive and drop-off locations
3. Have dates of Textile drive advertised in both the Principal’s & PTO’s email listserv.

• Make it easy for people to donate – Make sure drop off sites are easy to find and access.  Provide lists of suitable items.  Letting donors know that stuff is accepted in ANY condition was a huge selling point!
• Remember to advertise the benefits -  Everyone loves this drive because it allows folks to clear out the house without loading the landfills and yet makes a positive contribution to the schools without opening their wallets. What’s not to love?

WC: This year’s drive was far more lucrative then last year’s.  Did you learn any lessons from year 1?

• Choose memorable dates – Last year, we ran a two week drive and ended the day before Election Day.  People forgot when it ended and were still bringing stuff in when it was already over.  This year, we only ran a 10-day drive but we ended on Election Day.  Since most of our schools are also polling places, this also made it more convenient because adults would already be coming out.
• Make it an annual event – As successful as we were this year, I am expecting our drive to be even more lucrative next year.  The buzz hits and folks know to start saving their items for our November Election Day drive.  Also, we can reuse the signage since it reads “Election Day.”
• Involve the Community – While most school fundraisers are supported by students and parents, an “Election Day” drive encourages members of the public to participate, thus effectively increasing your potential donor pool about 300%!
• Encourage Volunteers to initiate creative ways to help – One volunteer was so inspired by our Election Day drive so much, that she set up a tent and a giant sign at a polling place that was not located one of our schools and had filled the bed of a friend’s truck and drove the stuff over to the closest school.  That location was wildly successful.

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