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Get a room full of people to clear out one closet each.

Organize a clothes drive

One person clearing a closet fills a bag. Fifty people doing it fills a barrel.

A clothes drive is the simplest fundraiser there is. Nobody has to write a check, buy a ticket, or give up a Saturday. They bring in what they were already going to get rid of, and it turns into funding for training volunteers who fight poverty in some of the world's most vulnerable communities.

We run drives with offices, schools, apartment buildings, worship houses, and neighborhood groups across the Bay Area. We bring the barrel, we collect it when it's full, and we handle everything after that. What you bring is the people.

Long rails of donated shirts sorted by colour, from white through red to green.
What we bring

You supply the closets. We supply everything else.

A heap of brightly coloured t-shirts.

A donation barrel

We deliver a collection barrel to your lobby, break room, or entrance — wherever your people actually walk past. It arrives ready to use.

Pickup when it's full

Call us and we come and empty it. Running a longer drive, or filling faster than expected? We'll swap it out as often as you need.

Something to put on the wall

A flyer and a short guide explaining where the clothes go and what to bring, so you're not fielding the same three questions all week.

There's no cost, no minimum, and no contract. If your drive brings in two bags, that's two bags that stayed out of a landfill.

How it works

Four steps, and most of them are email

  1. Tell us when and where

    Get in touch with your location, roughly how many people you expect to reach, and the dates you have in mind. A week or two is plenty for most drives; a month suits a school year or a building.

  2. We deliver the barrel

    We drop it off before your start date and give you the flyer to circulate. Put the barrel somewhere unavoidable — beside the elevator, not in a storage room.

  3. Tell people what to bring

    Clothing, shoes, bedding, towels, handbags, and accessories. Clean, dry, and good enough that you'd hand it to a friend. The clearer you are, the less sorting anyone has to do later.

  4. We collect it

    One call and we take it away. Everything goes to our Richmond facility, gets sorted, and follows the same path as every other donation we handle.

Why it's worth the effort

A drive does three things at once

A large pile of donated shoes in many colours and styles.
Environmental

Keeps textiles out of the ground

Americans send 2.4 million pounds of textiles to landfill every hour. A garment worn again is one that never had to be made — and one that never releases methane rotting in a landfill.

Global

Funds work against poverty

We own and operate every barrel and box we place, and donate all net proceeds. The clothes your group collects help train volunteers doing community-based development work around the world.

Local

Gives people something to do together

It costs nobody anything, everyone can take part, and it's visible. For a team, a class, or a building, it's a shared effort with a result you can actually point at.

Pick a start date. We'll bring the barrel.

Tell us where you are and roughly when you'd like to run it, and we'll sort out the rest. If you're not sure whether your group is big enough, get in touch anyway — most of them are.

Start a drive

Ready to put your old clothes to work?

Whether it's hosting a Box, organizing a collection drive, or just dropping off a bag — every pound counts.