Our CanToo-ers are a creative bunch, and every participant is different when it comes to approaching their fundraising commitment. Whether you’re a butcher, baker or candlestick maker – everyone has a talent/hobby they can leverage for fundraising!
Meredith, Eliza, Immy & Cam were four friends from Sydney’s trendy Inner West who participated in our 10km and half marathon run programs. Together they organised a clothes swap and Meredith took us through the process of organising their fundraiser.
Clean Out Your Closet For Charity
I’ve hosted clothes swaps with friends before and was already considering having a small clothes swap to fundraise for CanToo. I told my idea to the manager of SWOP in Newtown and she offered to donate clothes – so I thought I could do it on a much larger scale! I spoke to U Turn Fashion and they were keen to donate clothes too.
We didn’t want to overcomplicate it, so basically you brought a bag of any size, emptied it at the front door (where we had volunteers sorting), and then filled up your bag with new threads. If people didn’t want to bring a bag of clothes, we charged $10 and they got a bag to fill.
The Logistics
I thought about the size of the event and how I wanted it to look. Then looked at all the council venues in the Inner West and narrowed it down to a few with the right capacity. In the end, it came down to the availability of the venue, and Marrickville Town Hall was available on the right date.
The venue cost was the most expensive, even though they gave us a 50% charity discount. The benefit of having it at a much larger venue though was that we could sell more tickets.
Venue: $1250
Food/Drinks: We budgeted around $200.
Everything else was donated – so actually we didn’t spend much money at all!
Ticket sales were made easy through Humanitix. Humanitix is a charitable events platform that donates all profit from ticketing fees to partner charities, such as CanToo!
Sourcing Quality Clothes
I spoke to SWOP and U Turn and they thought it was a great idea. It was really easy for them to donate, as they had a lot of stock. I’ve spoken to some fantastic CanToo-ers who donated clothes even though they couldn’t be at the event.
Tips to Create Your Own Event
Get the word out there and make it fun!
We leveraged the social media of SWOP and U Turn Fashion to get the message out about the event. They’re also putting posters in their change rooms and at counters to let their customers know.
We spoke to the Inner West Courier and they ran a story with a great photo, as well as included it in their ‘what’s on’ section. If people are excited about it, they’ll want to be involved. We’ve made an event that we would love to go to, and excitingly lots of other people wanted to join us!
