Arc Thrift...part 1

I've had an exceptional day today meeting with Arc Thrift Stores who were my third project, and are based here in Denver.

Kathy McAdoo (director of community events and vehicle donations) has spent the day giving me a fantastic tour of their operations (well, as much as we could squeeze into a day anyway), answering my many questions, chatting charity shops in the UK, the royal baby and lots, lots more! Kathy's openness (along with that of the managers and staff I met throughout the day) meant that I have a wealth of information to mull over for my research, my head is swimming with ideas to take back home and develop further with Mercy in Action too.

With 22 stores across the state of Colorado, 1200 members of staff, 108,000 sq ft of warehousing, 8 drive-thru donation stations and scores of community and corporate partnerships Arc is understandably a high profile thrift network in the area. The brand image is strong, professional and very fun - see their little bird character Arcky (pictured in reception below).

The Arc mission statement is 'The mission of the Arc Thrift Stores is to enhance the lives of individuals with developmental disabilities and their families by providing funding to support the Arc and ACL chapters in Colorado. We believe that all people with intellectual and developmental disabilities should have the opportunity to decide how they live, learn, work, and play'. However their involvement goes much wider than passing on funds to the various Arc chapters - employment and training opportunities and ambassador roles are offered to many individuals who are seen as a key part of the day to day operations of the business.

Stores with plentiful bargains...

We managed to visit the Green Mountain Arc thrift store today (12039 West Alameda Parkway, Lakewood), and had a great time meeting the store manager Pam, with her help I was able to understand the day to day operations a little better.

Sorting area

Arc process stock at store level where it is sorted, cleaned, priced and displayed for sale. The stores are generally large (10,000 sq ft and up - think big, out of town units), so again the biggest challenge for the staff is stock levels.

There is enough space for clear sorting areas in the store room enabling fast and efficient systems. A minimum of 5000 items are put out for sale in just this store alone, per day! Stock levels here were good right throughout the store.

Excess stock is returned on pallets, boxed and labelled to the warehouse for storage where is can be re-ordered when required by each store. On this site there were also two huge containers outside for excess stock storage.

The final thing that stood out in talking with Pam was her obvious love for her job and the Arc vision. I know from my own experiences back home motivated and passionate managers are the best ones (we are very lucky to have lots of them at MiA too!).
               

Around 10% of the 1200 employees at Arc have developmental disabilities. Both Kathy and Pam talked about the huge value these individuals add to the organisation in terms of staff moral, team spirit, work ethic, even sick days have dropped.


Never forgetting you vintage savy shoppers here's a few little (and not so little) treasures that were on the shop floor. 

1950's enamel also hitting the mark here in Denver too 

 

Donations, donations and more donations...

Arc are extremely focused on generating the high volume donations required for the successful running of their 22 stores. Through their weekly donations taskforce meetings a clear and multi-faceted plan is underway which keeps donations at a high level and ensure it's continued success.

Arc donation drive initiatives, although not necessarily new to the sector here in the USA, are  executed with military precision and being able to see them up close has led me to consider whether they are something that could be transferred to the UK. Here's just a couple of them...

Donations Stations (the US drive thru with a difference)

Arc operate 8 donation stations across the state. The one we visited today in Denver is one of the most successful, having generated over one million pounds (lbs) of donations last year alone. It is staffed with one full timer (mon - fri), and part time cover over the weekend meaning overheads are low.

The site is a disused petrol station (something we have quite a few of in the UK....can you hear the clogs turning...). The staff welcome donors at their car windows and build up great rapport with repeat donors. They collect donations from the boots of donor cars directly meaning minimal effort is needed on the part of the donor. The donations are loaded onto pallets, wrapped, labelled, and then collected daily. They are then sent to stores for sorting, as required.

House-to-house Donation Collections

I'm sure most of you have had some experience of this personally; a bag dropped through the door, a request to fill with donations and details of when and where to leave the bag for collection on the given day. Well this is NOTHING like that! Arc operate a fleet of 55 vans, which collect at around 7,500 homes every week (yes, week).

To book in these collections a team of 50 call centre operatives are employed to contact individuals (using a mailing list), they let each interested potential donor know there is a donation drive taking place in their area, and whenever possible schedule in a collection. Around 50,000 donation collections are generated in this way every month.

Arc also offer a website option for booking a collection, where donors can schedule their pick up online. This would normally be slotted in to the planned monthly pick up for that area, meaning no additional resources are needed. Call centre operatives call to confirm collection a couple of days before hand with the donor.

Collections are made using a van (pictured above), usually manned by just one person, who will accept items from outside the donors house. Outsized, unusual items and furniture can also be collected with a 2 man van on a separate day, these vans would collect from 10 - 15 sites per day.

You'll see from the map below, the wider Denver area is split into areas, then small sections for each daily collection in that areas. Each area is visited around once a month. The logistics needed for this size operation are huge, but starting small I can really see how this could work in the UK...When most charity shops are seeing a drop in donations year on year, we must come up with new and innovative ideas for generating donations from previously untapped sources.

I want to tell you so much more about donations (cars, community drives...) and especially about Arc's CSR and community partnerships, but I will wait for another day for that, I'm tired now and it's getting very late.

 

Kathy has amazingly managed to arrange for us to attend a Sky Sox team baseball game in Colorado Springs on Sunday. Arc has a sponsorship partnership with the Sky Sox, and will be represented by the store manager in Colorado, and some of the Arc chapter and team too, so we will get to see some of Arc's partnerships in action first hand.