Animal Welfare Professionals

We are looking to approach local businesses to put a receptical to collect donations of food and toys for our unhoused clients. Since I know space can be a factor I was wondering what folks found the best thing to use to collect donations.  And where did you get them>

Thanks in advance

#FundraisingandDevelopment

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Roxane Fritz
Veterinary Program Coordinator
San Mateo County
CA
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This is such a great question as I would love to know what people use. We get A LOT of donations and some we can use and other we donate to our food pantry. The donations sometimes take up so much room and while we are trying to help, it just builds up in the back where we have no room. Besides making numerous trips to deliver items, we haven't found a storage bin solution.

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Stefanie Schmidt
Animal Welfare Specialist
Hearts Alive Village
NV
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Hi Roxane:

We've used plastic kiddie pools in several locations to collect donations. Sounds funny, but it works! The pool can go under a table to use space that was empty. It's also easy to move around. 

Hope that helps!

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Kirsten Cianci, VMD
Palmetto Animal League
Ridgeland, SC 29936
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How clever! I never would have thought of that!

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Roxane Fritz
Veterinary Program Coordinator
San Mateo County
CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-12-2025 04:12 AM
From: Kirsten Cianci
Subject: Best containers for collecting food and toy donations

Hi Roxane:

We've used plastic kiddie pools in several locations to collect donations. Sounds funny, but it works! The pool can go under a table to use space that was empty. It's also easy to move around. 

Hope that helps!

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Kirsten Cianci, VMD
Palmetto Animal League
Ridgeland, SC 29936
=^..^=
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@Roxane Fritz we use packing boxes that are 18" square and about 36" tall. We leave the top flap up so the box is taller.  A local framing shop actually donated the boxes to us. I am sure you could purchase them on amazon. We also had decals printed with information about our food bank and included our logo. Currently we have boxes in three local pet stores and one in a feed store. Our goal was to collect items not only for dogs and cats but for alternative pets as well, but I'd say the majority of the donations we receive are for cats and dogs. 

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Lisa Burn
Co-founder/VP
Farmhouse Animal & Nature Sanctuary
Myakka City, FL
https://farmhousesanctuary.org
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We were thinking of adding a sign that shows what's most needed each week, maybe that would help guide donations a bit and keep things manageable.

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Daniel Burr
Operations Manager
Little Ones
MA
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