Collecting Stuff
From Freegle Wiki
How you find stock for your event depends on how much you'll be giving away and what access you have to your venue beforehand.
Think about:
- what type of items you want
- how many items you want
- how you'll transport them
- how you'll dispose of them if they're not taken at the event
Plan ahead and the event will go much more smoothly.
Ways to collect stock
- Collecting from individual members yourself - if you want to give away lots of stuff, collecting it all yourself from individual Freegle members is either very laborious or downright impractical. It's time-consuming and you need fairly consistent access to personal transport - public transport isn't practical for large quantities.
- Storing at home - if you have space at home, start building up a collection by posting requests for items as admins on your community. Saturdays and Sundays are both days many people are happy to drop things off, given enough notice. Be wary of giving your address to too many people.
- Storing at the venue - if you can store stuff at the event venue itself, you're in a good position. It makes setting up the event far easier than storing everything off-site. You could post admins letting people know someone will be at the venue at a certain day and time, so anyone wanting to donate items can drop them off. This works well, and lets you cull items that are just rubbish - too tatty or worn out to have any chance of being taken by visitors - since you'll inevitably end up with some of those.
- Asking people to bring items on the day - a popular approach, though it's still vital to have a reasonable number of items ready for the first browsers, since it takes time for you and your volunteers to sort through donations as they arrive and check they're appropriate and meet any legal or other requirements.
Before you collect items, have a plan for what to do with them if the event is cancelled or they're not taken on the day. Some can be freegled by you and your volunteers, but larger amounts might need storage until another event, or a trip to a charity shop - or you could arrange for a charity shop to collect everything, on the understanding they take it all rather than picking and choosing.
