This Thrifting Thursday, We would like to take the opportunity to give our readers the much anticipated behind the scenes on what a week is like at Thrift for Good! This way, you can understand how your donations are processed from A to Z.
As we are headquartered in the UAE, our work week beings on Sundays, or rather, Scheduling Sundays – we go over all the work for the next five days, and coordinate with all volunteers. Being organized is key to having a hassle free week; we have so many items coming in and going out that the best way to stay on top of things is to do just that – plan everything out and stay on top of things.
Next, we have our Magical Mondays – no, seriously! Mondays is when the magic really happens here! Our amazing Founder, Jen, gets into the Thrift for Good van and collects the donations we have scheduled in Dubai every Monday! These are then stored at the Box Storage warehouses at DIP, until we can get to sorting them. Gulfran, our sponsored driver from Cracknell, also collects and delivers the orders made up until Sunday evening.
On Thorough Tuesdays, volunteers come together to sort all of the donations. Ace Hardware kindly donates their used boxes, so we can store merchandise after sorting it. Sorting refers to dividing all the collected merchandise into numerous piles; depending on their utility and condition – if they are irreparable/stained, they are sent for upcycling with Nafsi Online or Peahead.Eco. Should they need a wash or if they will be sold online, we send them to Amaze Us Laundry. Others are boxed and stored for market. Lastly, towels are prepped to donate to dog shelters, children’s clothing is sold through yallakids.ae or donated overseas, and sometimes clothes/items are donated locally on a needs basis.
Welcoming Wednesdays are one of our favourite days as this is the day we get to see our many partners in delivering the sorted items. The team also uses Wednesdays to finalize what is needed for the upcoming weekend markets/events. This can often include drawing up plans with Emirates NBD and/or Mace Foundation, who help us with volunteer support for flea markets (pre pandemic ofcourse!) and are pivotal in helping us expand our reach!
We also use this time to liaison with Shop Retold –a boutique second hand store on Umm Suqeim that collect donations in-store for our cause. Bags of the Future is another one of our strong partners, supplying us with the reusable shopping bags we use for our packaging.
Universal Express collect and deliver the second batch of items of orders for the week.
We have our Thrifting Thursdays! Our primary focus on Thursdays is to make sure this blog gets to you, as well as making sure everything on the sales end of the business is running perfectly! Thursdays are also reserved for any other marketing activities, such as our giveaways, auctions, and live social media events with our partners!
The weekends are reserved for pop up sales, flea markets and other events! We are just starting to open up again to hold a sale every weekend, so you can come see us in person.
All throughout the week, it goes without saying that a large part of our job is just keeping in mind that whatever we do is for a good cause, a cause bigger than us collectively – which is why, we keep our partners, Gulf for Good, at the centre of everything we do! All our profits go to them – which is what we’re here for! They help underprivileged children with this money, and we definitely don’t think there could be a better way to spend our profits. We also offset our carbon emissions by planting trees with Tree-Nation.com on a monthly basis. We want every step of our process to give back and do good.
If you feel like being a part of a cause as noble as this, please consider shopping feel good fashion, donating your used items, and/or volunteering to make it happen!
That’s it for this week folks – Keep thrifting and making a difference! :)