Eight Steps To Plan and Run A Successful Winter Coat Drive

Hosting a fundraiser like a winter coat drive directly benefits members of your community and makes a serious impact. But it takes a lot of effort and planning to create a successful coat drive.

Between planning the event, spreading the word, and then actually fundraising and allocating funds as needed, a winter coat drive can quickly snowball into avalanche-inducing stress levels.

Luckily, you don't have to be stuck out in the cold as you plan your next coat drive. Collecting winter coat donations and monetary donations alike should be simple and straightforward.

In this post, we'll cover:

1. Researching & connecting with nonprofits
2. Promoting your coat drive
3. Planning for monetary donations
4. Creative & strategic ways to promote
5. Asking for volunteers
6. Reaching out to companies and businesses to support
7. Sharing about your success
8. Raising money to increase your impact

How to plan a successful winter coat drive

For low-income families and the homeless, winter presents an additional set of challenges. Winter coat drives help combat the cold weather and make a huge difference, particularly since proper winter-ready apparel can be expensive. Whether you're supporting senior citizens, children and families, or the homeless, your winter coat drive is going to help so many people — if you know how to plan and run it effectively.

A winter coat drive can be no-cost if you just use social media and word-of-mouth to promote. Otherwise, expect low setup costs for things like printed flyers.

Once you know you want to take action this winter, it's time to get planning. Here are 8 steps you should take to plan the most successful coat drive possible.

1. Research nonprofits in your area

The best place to find out about what your community needs is nonprofits already working to support people in your area. Head to Google and make a list of potential nonprofits to contact. Then, start reaching out!

Once you connect with someone at a local nonprofit, ask about their needs, when they need the coats, and what's most important to them. They'll likely have important insights about where the most need lies — children's coats, adult sizing, and even additional items like hats, socks, and gloves.

The nonprofits you connect with will also be able to give you direction for when you should host and finish up your coat drive. Many people have a misconception that fundraisers should only center around the holidays during the season of giving.

But really, temperatures begin to drop as early as October and November in some places, so it's essential to find out when the highest peaks of need are in your community and plan accordingly.

Unsure where to start with researching nonprofits in your area?

Consider:

• Women's and children's shelters
• Food pantries
• Homeless shelters
• A general search for "X area community nonprofits"
• Searching your town, city, county, or state's website for resources
• Reaching out to local schools
• Elderly caretaking agencies

2. Start planning how you'll promote your winter coat drive

Any successful fundraiser starts with strong promotion and getting the word out — and a coat drive is no different. Once you've gathered up information from your new nonprofit partner, you can be super specific in the messaging around your coat drive.

Share particular sizes, notes about the quality of the coats (things like zippers needing to work, no large tears, and more), and even include information about the nonprofit you'll be supporting. Including details about why this is an important cause — and how the need directly impacts your community — helps prompt people to support, as well.

You'll also want to figure out where you'll physically be collecting the coats. It's so important to include information about how people can get involved and support your winter coat drive as you promote it and spread the word.

Some people place collection bins in different areas of their community, and others have one set drop-off location for a period of time. If you do set up collection bins, make sure to clearly label them with bright signage and include relevant details, too!

3. Plan for monetary donations

Say someone doesn't have a gently used coat and doesn't want to purchase a new one but still wants to support your coat drive. Providing a way for supporters to contribute financially can help increase participation and expand your impact.

Pool gives organizers a dedicated place to collect, manage, and spend fundraiser money with trusted volunteers and team members. Create a Pool for your coat drive and invite organizers to join so everyone can collaborate on fundraising efforts and keep donations organized in one place.

There are a number of benefits to raising money during your coat drive:

• If some of the coats you receive aren't up to par in quality, you'll have room in your budget to replace them.
• You can increase your impact by purchasing additional coats to supplement what you collect.
• You can provide any remaining funds directly to the nonprofit or community organization to use where they're needed most.

Big or small, financial contributions can help your coat drive serve more people in need.

4. Get creative and strategic about promoting your coat drive

Most importantly, promote early and often. You'll want to consistently share about your coat drive for the best results and biggest impact on your community. You won't bother anyone by sharing on social media, hanging signs, or talking about it in person — people are busy, and most of us want to help, but forget as life gets hectic.

Continuous promotion helps more people remember to follow through and support your cause. As you create promotional materials, flyers, and social media posts, make sure to clearly explain how people can contribute, where they can drop off coats, and how financial donations will be used to support the drive.

Be creative! Reach out to your child's school and see if they'd be willing to send home flyers about the coat drive and allow parents to drop off coats at school. If you attend a church, do the same. You can even see if community groups, neighborhood organizations, and local businesses would be willing to help spread the word.

Don't be afraid to go big, too. Reach out to local newspapers, community newsletters, radio stations, and television stations to see if they're willing to feature and support your coat drive. More often than not, they'll be happy to spotlight a community initiative that helps local families stay warm during the winter months.

5. Ask for volunteer support

People can support your winter coat drive beyond donating coats and other items or money to back the cause. At the end of your successful winter coat drive, you'll have tons of collecting to do — and then the sorting begins!

You'll want to group together items of different sizes. Especially if you're collecting items from multiple locations and/or over a long period of time, organizing everything is essential. It'll make life much easier for the nonprofit and help get these important winter items in the hands of those in need quickly.

Gathering volunteer support before it's actually time to collect, sort, and organize your coats will ensure a seamless, smooth process. Reach out to friends, family, and neighbors; post on social media; you can even include details about volunteering on the promotional materials you create for the coat drive itself.

6. Reach out to companies and businesses for support

Big corporations sponsor fundraisers often, especially in their local communities. But small businesses may also be willing to support your coat drive in surprising ways. For example, a local bakery and coffee shop may offer a free cup of coffee to everyone who brings in a coat or donates.

There's no harm in asking, and you'll be pleasantly surprised by how willing businesses are to support your coat drive.

Consider asking local businesses to support your fundraiser financially or help cover the cost of winter coats and other cold-weather essentials. You can also invite business owners or community leaders to join your Pool and participate in the fundraising effort. Getting the support of local companies and businesses can seriously boost the impact you're able to make.

7. Plan to follow up and share about your success

You've hosted a successful coat drive, and you're feeling overjoyed about the impact you've been able to make on your community — let others share in that feeling! This helps reward those who supported you and sets up next year's fundraiser to be even more successful with repeat supporters.

You can even reach out to your local newspapers or news stations to share about your accomplishments — this helps encourage others to support community initiatives in the future.

8. Increase the impact of your winter coat drive by raising money

Winter coat drives are an opportunity to clear out our closets of last season's trends or coats we don't plan to wear anymore. But if you have participants who have over-cleared their closets, encourage them to make a financial contribution!

That way, they can be involved and know that their donations will be used to purchase new coats and other winter items, like hats, gloves, socks, and scarves.

What is Pool?

Pool is a dedicated place where you can collect, manage, and spend money for your coat drive. Sign up at Poolmoney.com and invite members to your Pool to collect donations from anyone.

As the organizer of the coat drive, you can either send the money collected straight to the nonprofit or use Pool's digital debit card to purchase the supplemental items.

If you have volunteers, invite them to the Pool to manage donations. You can also give them spending permissions to allow them to spend money directly from the Pool with the Pool debit card — delegating the task of purchasing supplemental winter clothing to one of your volunteers.

Now that you've made the first step towards making a huge impact on your community, get out there and start collecting those coats!