Storage Solutions for FUNDrive® Success

When you get started on your FUNDrive®, you hope bags and bags of donations start rolling in from your community. But now where to put all that great stuff?

See how three groups were proactive in figuring out storage solutions for a FUNDrive® win!

Jodi Lee is the fundraising coordinator for the Sacred Hearts Academy Project Grad 2023 in Hawaii. Jodi Lee knew that their strong community would pull in a lot of donations to support the students of the Sacred Heart Academy, she also knew that their organization was going to have a hard time storing all those donations in various garages until their drop off date. But Jodi and her team didn’t let their storage hurdle derail them, instead she reached out to her community to see what solutions they could offer – and their community delivered in a big, and creative, way! A fellow member of their organization worked for a shipping and logistics company and had a spare shipping crate that wasn’t being used and offered it up as storage for their donations. The shipping crate made the perfect holding space for the gently used clothing and household items they collected, keeping the items, safe, dry, and out of Jodi Lee’s garage. When their FUNDrive® drop off day rolled around, they had stored 10,396 pounds of donations, raising $1,300 for the students of Sacred Hearts Academy.

Fundraising during the best of times can be tricky, but during the COVID pandemic it has been even more difficult, as Maureen Innes at Best Friends of Big Brothers and Big Sisters in Ontario, Canada knows. With her province in lockdown, Maureen and her team had to be innovative in order to ensure their FUNDrive® was a success, and storage wasn’t an issue. Maureen knew that several members of her team could store things, but she wanted to make it even more streamlined, so she started asking around for other storage ideas. In no time, Lori and Terry, two of the group members, offered up the use of Lori’s husband’s car repair garage. The garage was a great location to store all their donations, but to make it easy for their community to donate, Lori had a trailer parked in her driveway for community donation drop offs. Once that trailer was full, she and Terry drove it over to the car garage. This creative storage solution paid off, allowing the nonprofit to store over 16,000 pounds of donations, which they turned into $3,335 for Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Here’s another great story and storage solution from Tara Matheson, fundraising organizer for Copper Hills High School Softball. Local businesses often advertised with banners hung on the outfield fence during games. Tara contacted a local storage company and offered to hang a banner advertising the storage service. In return, the storage company gave the team a free storage unit for three months and offered a unit for half off the rest of the year. With storage off their plates, the team could focus on collecting community donations, a task they hit out of the park, raising over $2,000 for team equipment.

Use one of these creative storage solutions for your next FUNDrive or see what you can come up with. Get started today!