The purpose of this blog post is to help existing customers increase their charity donation capacity in the local area.

As you may know, a large part of Warp It is designed to facilitate the passage of surplus corporate assets into the charity sector, and so far we have helped our customers donate over £2m worth of assets.

Did you know? We offer our services to charity for free.

If assets are not claimed internally, they can then be advertised free of charge to the charity sector (here’s how to do this).

One of the problems we face is spreading the knowledge of our free service so that we can scale up the involvement of charities. Our customers have plenty of assets to give, but often there are not enough charities on the system to take their quality freebies!

The Boost

All throughout the summer we have been working hard to increase the number of charities on the system. Getting in touch with all those charities directly is time consuming, so we have been working with the Community Voluntary Services (CVS) in each area.

Community Voluntary Services

Most cities towns or regions have CVS who represent all the local, smaller charities.

We have been getting CVS’s to set up their own warp It portals where they invite their members to join. Like www.warp-it.co.uk/VCAS.

• The CVS then get all their members to join their Warp It portal.
• Then the CVs sends customers friend requests.

This has been working very well in a number of cases, for example, VCAS in Sunderland have won awards through their Warp It work, and saved their members over £100,000.

Over the summer we have been contacting CVS all around the country to get them onto the Warp It system. This is a long process, we have to find the right person, we need to pitch our services, we need to get agreement from their boards and committees. We then need to train them up.

Help Us!

If you would like to increase charitable donations in your area by getting your local CVS onto the Warp It system, we could do with some help to speed things up!

We would like you to help us out by sending them an email encouraging them to join, and emphasising that you have surplus assets you would like to give to their members.

This would help speed up the process, and it’s a great PR opportunity for you and them!

Before we give you the template...

Have you considered using your social media channels, like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to increase your charitable donations? Your charitable partners don't necessarily need to be CVS or charities, there are plenty of clubs, community, and faith groups who require support.

Here's a great example from the University of Sussex:

How Do You Do It?

1) Please use the email template below and fill in your details.

2) Get in touch with us to tell us you are interested and we can give you the main contact detail to send the email to.

3) We will come back to you with the name of the main contact.

4) You can then send the email.

5) We will follow up with the CVS via phone and add them to the system, train them how to use Warp It, and send you a friend request so that you can link up with the local charities.

If you currently work with any local charities and would like them to have access your portal then please get in touch - charities@warp-it.co.uk or call 0800 0488755.

Email Template

Subject - [Institution name] would like to donate surplus assets to you for free!

Dear XYZ

My name is [customer name] I am the [job title] at [institution name].

The reason I am getting in touch is to discuss the donation of surplus corporate assets like furniture from [institution name] to your members.

We use the Warp It furniture and equipment reuse portal to redistribute our surplus assets around our estate and to our partners.

The service is free of charge to CVS and charities like you and we would like to encourage you to join as the CVS, so that we can link up with your members in a legal, safe and efficient way and so we can donate surplus assets.

You can read more info here about the benefits and registering.

I hope we can link up soon!

Here's an extra resource to help make this happen.