by Melissa D. Ing

Created on: August 18, 2008   Last Updated: January 28, 2012

Organizing a food or clothing drive in your office is a fabulous way to help others in your community, while gaining some great free publicity for your work place. Nothing boosts company morale like organizing a drive, and in order to do a great one you need to do four things; choose what kind of drive you will do; make sure the drive is targeted to a specific group; set a time limit for the drive and make sure you get some of that great free publicity!

Food or Clothing drive

So many groups need help with food or clothing. Choosing either is great, a food drive works wonders before or after the Christmas season, or during mid summer when food banks and soup kitchens struggle to get donations. In terms of clothing, make sure what you donate is not out of style, clean and free or rips and damage. This is not the time for everyone in the office to drop off all the family's painting clothes!

Decide who to collect for

A brief trip through the yellow pages will show any work place just how many charitable organizations are out there. If you are new to doing drives, pick a smaller or newer organization to donate food or clothes to. Not only will they typically have more need for donations, but if no-one else has thought to help them this year or this season, you will generate more publicity for both of you.

When you have chosen where to target your drive, ask the organization what their specific needs are. Do they need non-perishable items of food more than clothing, or if it's clothes, are they for moms and children, or men trying to get back into the work force. It is no use donating item's no-one wants or needs.

Timing the drive

Many offices and corporations actively compete for the public's attention when they do drives, so timing is everything. While other drives may overlap with yours, staying specific will give you a competitive edge, while helping others. When you set up a drive set specific time limits; usually two weeks to a month is good, or you could get overwhelmed with donations.

Creating a temporary sorting and storage place within the office will be necessary, and make sure it is accessible to everyone participating in the drive. Sort everything accordingly; don't leave it to the agency you are donating to.

Getting publicity

Showing your organization in a positive light is always great, and you should begin garnering publicity as soon as you have picked an organization to help. Do let any charitable agency know that you will be contacting radio, newspaper and possibly television stations to let them know about the drive. Give bi-weekly or weekly updates to both the radio and charitable agency, to let them know how well you are doing.

The grand finale of the publicity drive should take place when you drop of the donations. Do make this a festive event, provide juice and cookies and have your staff where t-shirts with your company name. No matter how much publicity you crave balance it with helping, and remember not everyone receiving help wants to be quoted or appear on television.

Drive's are a great way to help others, and done properly they can be a lot of fun. Having participated in both, I can't tell you how good it felt to help people and see the looks on their faces when they received gently used clothing items, or baskets of food. On another note, the company I worked for received lots of positive community feedback, and you can't beat that!

Learn more about this author, Melissa D. Ing.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.