Donation Drive for Veterans

For Stephen’s organize an activity, he collected new items for the Minneapolis VA health care system. He worked with the Andover YMCA to set out collection bins to collect the items needed.

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Stephen describes his project in his own words:

“ After taking time to weigh the event options available for the exercise, it was decided upon to do a collection of materials needed for the Minneapolis VA health care system. My first choices of arranging park and trail clean ups were not feasible based on the number of people that would be available to help. The idea for a donation drive came after reading a monthly email from the DAV (Disabled American Vets) in which, there was a call out for donations of sweatpants and sweatshirts (although this later changed, see lessons learned). I live very close to the Andover YMCA and community center building. This provided a targeted area where I felt the surplus of those materials would be amply available. I started the coordination efforts by getting the project a greenlight. I had a face-to-face meeting with the Director of diversity and inclusion and veteran affairs of the YMCA of the North, to make sure there would not be any objections or legal problems running a donation drive from one of the YMCA’s branches. After getting the OK from the corporate office, I had another face-to-face meeting with the Branch Executive for the Andover site where I pitched my idea. I met with custodian staff, member services folks and building engineers to obtain the collection materials (bins and carve out a space) The verification phone call to the MNVAHCS was made and email correspondence exchanged with VA staff to verify needs and donation center. (which changed the original idea some.) Then another later meeting with the AYMCA branch Exec to present a formal proposal drafted on paper, detailing out support, space, dates, and material resources for her to sign off. The donation station was set up at the main entrance doors to capture both YMCA patrons and users of the community center facilities. flyers were posted and distributed. After one week all donations were collected and taken to the MNVAHCS donation collection site, The DAV clothing drop, and Goodwill for items left over.”

Want to try to organize an activity like Stephen’s? Here is his advice about what you should do:

Verify, make sure to contact the agency to whom you intend to collect for to verify what they need. The initial DAV email that I used for my idea seemed like a call strictly for Sweat suits, this was not the case. Due to Covid, they could not accept used items, which changed the dynamics of the donation drive. The MNVAHCS staff did provide a detailed list of needed items which I used for the flyer that outlined items sought for donation. Any donations that did not meet their needs were distributed elsewhere, used clothes to the DAV and other items to the Goodwill.
Verify, make sure to have a back-up plan if someone is unable to come through with any part they may have volunteered to do. In this case I had a volunteer (graphic designer) who intended to help create a web version of the flyer to post to the Andover YMCA website, but it fell through and was not able to be done on time which impacted advertisement of the event some.
Clear the pathway by obtaining permissions well ahead of time and reassure all manual labor or administrative efforts and responsibilities will be handled by yourself or designated persons. This helps ease the answer “yes” when asking for materials, space, time, and permissions.
Adapt and improvise, if the initial plan changes, move with it and make the best of what you can!
Embrace WIFM (What’s in it for me) when possible. Car washes and bake sales do well because people get something in return. Donation drives asking for cash and/or new things are difficult barriers to hurdle so the cause must be one that is deemed worthy.