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I recently helped organize a Benefit Garage Sale and we were blessed to raise $1500! This was my 4th fundraiser garage sale and I have learned quite a few things along the way.
(My first one was when my husband ran a marathon for the Leukemia Society in memory of our son. Our sale raised almost $2000, but it left me whimpering in a corner.)
Hopefully these tips will help you plan a great sale!
{Planning Committee}
Divvy up the responsibilities!!
We created a private Facebook Group for the planners, but email or meetings will work fine.
{Choose a Date & Time}
- Plan at least six weeks out to give people time to gather donations.
- Saturday only? Friday & Saturday?
- Don’t pick a holiday weekend. They tend to be slower, and it limits your volunteer availability.
- Check your city calendar for big events. These can help or hurt you, depending on the location of your sale.
- Check availability if holding the sale at a church building, community center or school parking lot.
{Choose a Location}
- @ someone’s home on a busy road
- @ a church building (indoors or out)
- @ a community or rec center
- in the parking lot of a school
- in the parking lot of a business
{Have a Rain Back-up Plan}
- choose a second date OR
- move it inside
{Sign Up Volunteers}
You will need people to:
- sort & price donations
- put out & pick up signs
- arrive early on sale day to set up
- work the sale
- pack up & clean up
- drop off boxes to be donated
{Collect “Junque”}
- Ask people to gather unwanted items via word of mouth, email, newsletter, and Facebook.
- Designate a drop-off location, date(s), and time.
- Offer to pick up items for the elderly.
- Have people start collecting plastic grocery bags – bunches!
- Decide what you are going to do with the leftovers: donate, save for another sale, send home with someone
{Gather Supplies}
- tape
- poster board
- sharpies
- price tags
- cleaning wipes
- safety pins (for clothing sets)
- storage bags
- change – plenty of dollar bills & quarters
- empty boxes
{Sort Donations}
Direct people to a specific area when they are dropping off donations. You don’t want unpriced items getting mixed up with ones already priced.
Make signs and tape them to tables or walls so your volunteers know exactly where to place things after they have been priced.
Suggested categories:
- Household appliances, dishes, electronics, gadgets
- Home Decor pictures, knick knacks, candles, lamps, plants
- Seasonal/Holiday
- Linens bedding, towels, tablecloths, curtains, pillows
- Books adults, kids, educational
- Toys, Games, Puzzles
- Baby Stuff
- Accessories purses, belts, jewelry, hats, bath & body
- Clothes men, women, boys 2t & up, girls 2T & up, infants (nb to 24 mos)
- Shoes men, women, boys, girls, infants
Toss little toys and odds & ends in a box. Let kids fill up a bag for a quarter (my friend’s great idea). We used a box of inexpensive bread storage bags.
{Pricing}
My method is to price it low & let it go!
Make several posters that detail your pricing system.
Use neon stickers to color-code items that are 25 or 50 cents. Orange or green stickers were 25 cents, and pink or yellow stickers were 50 cents. Who wants hand cramps from all that writing?
White Stickers are priced-as-marked (for items $1 & up).
Most fundraiser sales will have piles & piles of clothes. Don’t bother pricing them – sell them for $5 a bag! (That is why you need to collect a bunch of grocery bags.) Trust me, you will make way more selling them by the bag!!
If someone only wants 1 or 2, sell them for 50 cents each.
Place the nicer clothes (like coats, formals, or business wear) on hangers and hang a sign saying they are priced-as-marked.
Around lunchtime: lower the clothes to $3 a bag, and either mark some of the more expensive items down or declare everything to be half price.
Don’t want to be left with a bunch of stuff at the end or your sale? About 2 hours before the end of your sale, start selling bags for $5 . Allow people to stuff them with whatever they want. (We even handed out trash bags for the bigger stuff.) You would be surprised how much money you can make off of things that probably weren’t going to sell anyway!
{Advertising}
- let people know why you are raising money
- spread the word on Facebook or Twitter
- set up a Facebook event page – add a map
- advertise on craigslist **I posted my ad down below if you need ideas
- put up signs – get a permit if needed
- grab attention with balloons or streamers
- have people stand by the street waving signs (very effective if one of them is a cute niece dressed like a clown LOL)
{Sale Day}
- Start setting up an hour before your opening time.
- Appoint someone to man the money table – do not leave your cash box alone EVER!
- Keep paper & pen on hand to help add up purchases.
- Allow people to bargain, but don’t practically give stuff away first thing in the morning.
- Have a person or two near the clothes to hand out bags and explain how it works.
- Tidy up tables throughout the day. Most people don’t want to dig through a jumbled mess.
{Don’t Forget to Eat}
- Breakfast: buy donuts or have someone bake & bring
- Lunch: order pizza, brown bag it
- Cold bottled water
- Coffee!! Lots & lots of coffee!!! ( We were spoiled with a steamy box of Starbucks- did you know you can buy Starbucks in a box?)
- Have a dinner plan in place. You will be too tired to cook when you get home.
{Extras}
Check to make sure there are not laws against these in your city.
- sell cold drinks, candy, or chips
- bake sale
- raffle
- face painting (our teens did a fantastic job!)
- place a donation jar on the money table
Now sit back, admire your hard work, and give thanks to God for a wonderful day of Fellowship!!
Do you have any tips to add? Share in the comments!
**Our craigslist ad:
We are having a HUGE Benefit Sale on Saturday, March 24th, from 7:00 to 4:00.
The tables are piled high and the donations are still coming!
Here is just a sample of what you will find:
Clothes in all sizes – fill a bag for just $5!
Baby Gear – swings, strollers, bassinet, toys
Home Decor – wall art, frames, lighting, candle holders, baskets, knick knacks
Shoes, Purses, Hats, Belts
Bedding Sets
Books
Bicycles
Puzzles
Vintage Glass & Collectibles
And So Much More!!
Get here early – it is priced to sell!!!
Thanks Amy, great info to consider in group yard sale
Thank you for the effort sharing so much!! My wife and I are planning a fund-raising yard sale to support our move to Florida, and to be there for my mother who was recently diagnosed with Stage IV Cancer. The costs are adding up to fast for her, and all of this was a blind side to us being in Boston Ma. with no budget to just up and move to another state. Searching for info under very tight time constraints, your post is a great read and super helpful..Thank You again, Eric
Thank you for taking the time to leave such a sweet comment. May God bless your sale & move!
I thought I knew it all about setting up a garage sale… and today after my father was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, I was deliberating on what I could do to help them financially, and a garage sale was the least stressful way I could think of. Your site was towards the top of the page when I googled planning a fundraiser garage sale, and gave me sooooo many ideas that I had never thought of with my personal sales in the past! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I think this might just be an attainable goal to help my parents get through this physically, emotionally, and financially stressful time.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your perfect lay out plan for our Church’s first rummage sale! I’ve looked at a lot of other ideas/tips but when I stumbled across yours it had all the important details I was needing. I now feel ready to chair my first planning meeting!
I am in the throes of planning a garage sale as a fundraiser for our church and although I have had multiple garage sales over the years (thank you, Military, for moving us so often!), you have some awesome tips! Thanks so much for posting your experiences with garage sales, your advice is going to be SOOOOOO helpful!!!
Thank you for your tips! We are in the process of a benifit sale to help a family member with medical costs because of a recent rare diagnoses. Pray our sale is as profitable enough for waht this family will need help with. In GOD we trust! Thank you!
These are some very helpful tips! My sister’s family is moving soon and she’s thinking of organizing a yard sale because it wont be easy to move all their stuff cross-country. I think your advises and ideas will be of a great help, so I’m definitely recommending your post to my sister. Thanks for all this nice info!
Thank you!! I am running the St. Jude 1/2 marathon this year and trying to do fundraising toward the cause! Great ideas!!
Thank you for such a great plan layout. My difficulty is that I am trying to part with my husbands and daughter’s things who are both gone to heaven before me. I want to have a benefit honoring them, and my parents with all proceeds going to cancer society, Alzheimer’s and Ronald MacDonalds house. I have a lot of things to process through but thank you for the inspiration .
I have done alot of garage sales, some of them were very large, So I figured I pretty much knew how to do it.I have volunteered to organize a garage sale fundraiser. Just for the heck of it I googled “Garage sale fundraiser ideas.” Our committee will be using most, if not all, of your ideas. Finding you just made our planning soooo much easier. I’m looking forward to contacting you in May and letting you know just how successful we were. $$$
I’m getting ready to do my third garage sale fundraiser – each of my kids’ classes go on a Mexico mission trip their junior year. Another idea to get more cash donations is to ask each customer if they’d like to round up to the next dollar amount or more. “Your total is $7.75. Would you like to round your purchase to $10 for an added donation?” If they don’t go for $10, they might at least go to $8. Every little bit helps!