01/03/2009 - -

Questions, Queries and Answers!!!

The GWO team has been inundated this week with new registrations and this usually means queries. I’d like to share a couple of the frequently asked queries and questions.

A few businesses are not quite sure what charities need. Quite often we are asked, apart from furniture, what can we give? Quite simply the answer is just about anything. Rephrasing an old saying ‘one mans surplus is another’s lifeline’. Businesses can donate anything from a metre of fabric to stationary, toys, clothing, paper, pens even spare paper clips can be used by small groups.

This brings to mind the fact that, owing to a generous paper merchant, we have never purchased envelopes or copying paper in the seven years of our operation. And I am sure that over the seven years we would have run up quite a bill on just this one small office necessity.

With other organisations registering on the site it became apparent that the guidelines are being bypassed as we are innocently asked ‘Can we sell the goods in our charity shops?’ Apologetically we are obliged to explain that the Business Surplus on the site is being targeted to need and deprivation in the UK,in the first instance.

In the present challenging economic climate our intention is that by targeting surplus to need through charities we will be able to better the lives of the many millions in the UK caught in the poverty trap. We will also be able to help those charities to stretch their own funds thereby having more money to expend on helping the disadvantaged and deprived.