Holding A Successful Garage Sale To Raise Awareness Funds

There is an art to holding a successful garage sale and making LOTS of money. Any money you spend, you always reimburse yourself first out of the sale proceeds!!!!

Four weeks before your sale, email all of your friends, co-workers, and family members. Tell them you are having a garage sale where 100% of the proceeds will be donated to breast cancer. Also, ask if anyone would like to volunteer their time to help you to call you. In your email give suggestions on items:

• Furniture (Let them know if they have furniture to call you. You can rent a U-Haul truck for $30. If anyone calls, you can then schedule to pick up everyone’s furniture on the same day.)
• Clothes (men, women, children) – ASK for hangers
• Purses, briefcases, luggage
• Old CDs, cameras, electronics, computer equipment, lamps
• Kitchen stuff, small appliances, mugs, glasses, plates, bakeware
• Jewelry
• Christmas stuff
• Toys, sporting goods (golf, baseball, soccer, ski stuff, etc.)
• Pictures, picture frames
• Books, magazines
• Pillows, curtains, bedding, shower curtains, towels, placemats, napkins
• Cosmetics (people love to buy those miniature samples you get as free gifts at the cosmetic counters), hair dryers, hot rollers
• Baked Goods – If they don’t have any items suggest they make a batch of cookies or brownies. You can sell them for $1 each.
• Make a flyer for all of your neighbors telling them about the sale and to contact you if they have anything to donate. If you have time, deliver the fliers several blocks around your house.
• If you get so much merchandise that you don’t think you can hold it at your house look at renting a hall or other facility to hold the sale at.
• Place ads in your local paper 1 week before the sale. You also want to get some signs. You can buy blank signs at the Home Depot or Lowes. Get pink paint and paint pink ribbons with the words: All proceeds donated to Breast Cancer Awareness along with YOUR ADDRESS with the date of the garage sale.

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If you have a dollar store in your area, you can go in and get helium filled pink balloons to tie to the signs. You could also ask a store to donate the balloons for you.

Also, be sure to list your sale on Craigslist. It is free and more and more people are using it.

The weekend or day before your sale, you will sort through all of the merchandise that was donated. You want to rebox the merchandise and then put it back in the garage so the day of the sale you pull things out and they are sorted and ready to go.

If you don’t have tables you can:
• spread a sheet out on the ground and put items on sheets
• turn over boxes and they become make shift tables
• if you do have a table be sure to utilize not only the top but also underneath it. You can make a tiered system where you have the table top, then boxes turned over under the table and then merchandise layed in front of the boxes. You just created a 3 tier display.
• Baked Goods – ALWAYS have baked goods on hand. If you are not a baker than buy some fresh baked cookies/brownies/cakes at Sam’s Club or the supermarket. Put them into zip lock bags and sell them. What I found is if people don’t find anything at the sale to buy they will buy a baked item from you.
• Drinks – Also sell drinks. Coffee (for the am), bottled water, soda.
• Donation Jar - Make a sign saying donations.
• Merchandise - Get some other breast cancer merchandise to sell. Get some silicone bracelets or other items.
• Banner – Get a banner or other signs to put up around your yard.
• Breast Cancer Shirt – Make sure everyone who is working the sale is wearing a pink shirt. This makes it easy for the people attending your sale to find the actual people working it. If they don’t have a pink shirt, buy some pink baseball hats for them to wear.
• Money – Make sure you have enough 1’s, 5’s, 10’s and quarters. I do not get anything smaller than a quarter. I recommend at least $100. Do not take checks unless you know the person. We learned the hard way when we sold 2 beautiful wing back chairs for $100 to this woman and the check bounced!!! If someone asks tell them where the closest ATM is for them to get money.
• Pricing Items – We do not recommend pricing any items. What we do is say all proceeds are being donated to breast cancer we are asking for a donation. If we don’t think it is a large enough donation we will let you know. We do this because we found that since people knew it was going to breast cancer they would give us more money. I would in my mind come up with a dollar figure that I thought was good for the item. If the people don’t seem to know how much to suggest than you suggest a price.
• If people don’t offer enough money – You say: I am sorry but people donated this merchandise knowing the proceeds were going to breast cancer. We don’t want to give their stuff away. How about X – then you tell them a dollar amount.
• If it is a larger piece item you can always say we know we can get X for it on Ebay so we will just wait and post it on there. We really don’t want to give it away.
For Breast Cancer Awareness Merchandise or Other Causes Click Here