Recently we helped a customer move to a beautiful new corporate headquarters location. As part of the deal we agreed to help them recycle their old office furniture—floors of it.
After brainstorming ideas, we decided to reach out to some local nonprofits in Boise to see if any of them could use some donated furniture. I emailed our list of customers, explaining the story of the local company with multiple floors of furniture to donate. I included my cell phone in the email and asked for any takers to contact me personally.
Almost immediately after sending the email I started receiving phone calls inquiring as to the furniture available. The phone calls went on all afternoon and at 5pm when it was time to leave the office, I had 27 voicemails still left to call back. How in the world was there so much interest? And why did I include my personal cell phone and ask people to contact me personally?
As I would find out in the coming day, the email I sent had gone sort of viral. Individuals who received my email forwarded it to every nonprofit they knew. Then some nonprofit aggregate websites sent out my email to hundreds of nonprofits in their lists. Over the next few weeks, I fielded several calls a day regarding donated furniture. In the end, we established a list of over 120 nonprofits who were hoping to receive some of the decommissioned furniture.
Lessons learned:
- Old furniture doesn’t need to end up in the landfill.
- Donating furniture feels great and can help a lot of organizations.
- If you do donate furniture, there is a better way to have people contact you than calling your cell phone.
Scott Galloway
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