CHAPTER 8

CHARITY EXPANDS WITH BARTER

While we’ve focused on how barter can enrich your life, we realize that you may wish to help others enrich their lives, especially those who are less fortunate than you. There are an enormous number of charitable endeavors, community groups, and nonprofit organizations that help people, pets, the environment, education, and a thousand more causes. But unless you’re as rich as King Midas, you probably don’t have the money to support all of the good causes dear to your heart. That’s where barter can come into play. By using barter as a creative method of helping your favorite cause, you expand the power of your giving beyond the limits of your wallet, credit cards, and checking account.

IN-KIND DONATIONS

Most people think that giving to charities or community groups, first and foremost, involves money. Next in most people’s mind are “in-kind” donations, which are items or services rather than hard currency. In-kind donations might include donating a computer to your temple, bags of llama chow to an animal rescue group, old cell phones to shelters for abused women, or canned goods to a food bank. Both kinds of donations are essential to the survival and well-being of nonprofits.

To our minds, in-kind donations are a type of barter. While this might not be a pure tit-for-tat trade, in-kind contributions involve giving something to a cause and, in return, getting a tax deduction and the endorphin splash from doing good for someone else. Before we discuss pure barter as charitable support, please understand that we aren’t suggesting you stop giving cash contributions to your favorite organizations. Those donations are essential to an organization’s ability to meet its mission, which they wouldn’t be able to do on barter alone.

To begin adding barter to your philanthropic work, go back and take a look at the list of stuff and skills that you compiled back in chapter 2. First, determine what you have or can do that you could give as an in-kind donation. That contribution could go directly to the group of your choice to solve a particular problem or fill a need. Some in-kind contributions will be obvious to you: donating your time to clean your house of worship, organizing an aluminum can drive for your children’s school, chatting with seniors at a retirement center, and more. Karen donates her time as a motivational speaker for the nonprofit group Connections to Success, and Shera has donated her writing skills to her spiritual center’s Web site and newsletter. Charitable giving helps strengthen communities, especially those that have less and need more. It also provides buckets of personal and emotional fulfillment to those doing the giving.

GIVING WITH BARTER

Barter can help you expand the impact of your charitable inclinations, because it offers some opportunities that few people consider. To get started, ask your favorite charity, group, or cause organizer for a list of needs and wants. Many organizations publish their wish lists on their Web sites or on sites like Amazon.com. Check them out to see if you can donate something directly. Then, take a look at the list to see if you have access, or know someone who does, to one or more of the items on the list. Jot down anyone you know who can put their hands on what your charity needs.

Now comes the fun part: Consider the talents, skills, services, or abilities that you have that can be traded. With those skills in mind, review the charity’s list of wants to determine if there is a local company that could fill them. Contact the charity to see if the need you want to fill on its list is still current and either if it has a relationship with a vendor that supplies that good or service or if it is willing to have you contact one on its behalf. If the nonprofit gives you the green light, and better still, a contact at a vendor with which it already has a relationship, make the call. Offer to provide your service to the company in exchange for the good or service that the charity needs. Explain that the company will not only get to list the support of the charity on its Web site and in public relations communications but also receive your top-notch services at the same time. Since this is a sales job, be prepared to provide the company with a list of happy customers you have worked for, samples of your work, and any other information that would help the manager or owner recognize that you are serious about this and will provide excellent work.

Once you have an agreement in place, make sure to let the charity know which goods are coming and in what quantities. They’ll be delighted, and you’ll get a warm glow from doing good for a cause you believe in.

Here’s how it might look: Let’s say you’re passionate about helping stray animals find homes. Your favorite no-kill animal shelter always needs certain items, such as dog food, towels, veterinarian services, and so on. You could offer to provide janitorial services for a local grocery store in exchange for the store donating dog food to the shelter. You (or your teenager) could volunteer to answer phones at a veterinarian’s office, care for kenneled pets, clean the vet’s office, or update the vet’s customer database in exchange for the vet providing care for the animals at the shelter.

It might be obvious that bartering for charity, in some ways, is a lot easier for people who have a talent, skill, service, or ability that they can trade. That isn’t to say that goods won’t work; they will. The barter just gets more arduous. Here’s how a goods barter might transpire. Let’s say you make handsome gift baskets full of beautiful items. You offer a local bed-and-breakfast a certain number of gift baskets each month in exchange for donating rooms to your favorite charity. The charity could use those rooms as a prize in a “getaway” raffle, a door prize at its next fund-raiser or trivia night, or a place where out-of-town parents could stay while their sick child is in the hospital.

These sorts of barters will also work outside of a charity. If you have a friend who lacks dental insurance, you could provide your service or goods to a dentist in exchange for dental care for your friend. Charity doesn’t always have to go through formal channels.

And don’t overlook your employer. After all, you already know the key people there, the politics, and how to navigate within the company. Maybe your favorite charity won’t be able to use a few thousand widgets from the factory where you work, but perhaps they could use the factory’s van, truck, FedEx number, computer system administrator, bookkeeper, inventory control specialist, marketing director, or public relations coordinator. You can offer to trade several hours of work in exchange for the service, product, or individual your company could supply to your designated charity. (Of course, it never hurts to remind the bosses that their support of this charity will build goodwill for them in the community, especially if they publicize it.)

The power of barter is enormous if you are willing to be assertive and just ask.

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME

Besides the efforts that you make on behalf of your charity, you can also encourage your favorite organization to use barter to help itself. Nonprofits can register with barter Web sites like SwapThing.com to receive bartered goods or services from members. They could also create a Meetup.com group aimed at bartering among its members and for itself. If the organization has a physical location, it can potentially use its building for barter (and cash). For instance, if your temple, church, or mosque has a commercial kitchen, it could be bartered in exchange for catered dinners for congregants, meals for the homebound or homeless, or fund-raising dinners. Classroom space can be rented or bartered, as can meeting or office space. An auditorium is a great place to barter for lectures, business meetings, and presentations or for other organizations your nonprofit supports.

We realize that some organizations, by their very nature, won’t be able to open their doors to outside groups wishing to use their space. In other instances, the nonprofit or institution may not want to expose its facilities to what it perceives as potential risk. Making sure that the individual or business wanting to use the building is insured or that your group is insured against fire or other damage could remove at least one objection. If there are no fundamental reasons against putting facilities to alternative uses when they would normally be closed, you may have to build a consensus among board members or officials within the organization to explore and support using the space for others or in creative ways. For example, a woman we know who wanted to start her own catering business was able to trade catering for use of her church’s commercial kitchen. The church got the dual benefit of having some of its gatherings catered, which built goodwill among the congregants, and it was also able to help a member financially support herself, her family, and her church by starting a catering business. Everybody wins!

BARTER EXCHANGES AND CHARITIES

If you are a member of a trade exchange, there are many opportunities to help a nonprofit group through barter. Many exchanges allow members to name a charity as a subaccount to their membership. You could make trades on behalf of the nonprofit for the items or services it needs. Just imagine if your place of worship needed a new roof, the elder-care center needed a new van, or the child-abuse-prevention group needed a safe house; you could help them obtain that most-needed item through the barter exchange. Even if the full price of the roof, van, or house couldn’t be paid in barter credits, your organization would still save cash by deferring at least part of the cost through barter.

Members of the trade exchange could also donate credits to the charity and get a tax deduction in return. That’s especially popular as the year draws to a close and brokerage members look for ways to reduce their tax bill. The exchange itself can help by putting out a call for donations on the charity’s behalf as the year ends.

The nonprofit can play at an even higher level through the power of exchanged-based barter. If it joins the trade exchange, the entire world of barter opens up. Nonprofit organizations will often get reduced joining fees, lower monthly membership fees, and reduced transaction costs just for being an Internal Revenue Service 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity. Once the organization is a member of the exchange, its volunteers and members could donate goods and services to the nonprofit, which could then barter them through the exchange. The credits earned from volunteers’ donations can be turned into facility repairs, furnishings, direct-mail campaigns, and a host of other goods and services. Volunteerism the barter way exponentially expands the impact of the volunteers’ donated goods and labor.

Some exchanges, especially those focused primarily on individuals, allow nonprofits or community groups to join and receive a percentage of transaction fees when members name them as beneficiaries. The beauty of this system is not only that will a charitable group will get actual cash but also that individuals like you will benefit by being part of an exchange that allows you to barter for your own wants and needs. Get what you want and help your favorite cause at the same time—now that’s leveraging the power of barter through collaboration!

BE CREATIVE

Doing good can turn into doing great when you add barter to your volunteer and charitable cause activities. Bartering for charity will require that you become more creative in your thinking. It may also push you to expand beyond your comfort zone by setting up barter deals on behalf of your favorite cause. But when money is limited or you just want to do more than write a check, barter can give you more options to advance the issues and causes you are passionate about. If enough supporters band together to help the cause, the impact can be profound. A beginning group can get off the ground, a struggling nonprofit can become stable, and a small group can expand the number of people, animals, or worthy needs that it helps. Barter is the hidden secret that will help make that happen.

GREAT TRADE!

Like many people around Takilma, Oregon, Stacey Williams felt like the Dome School was an important part of the community. But the prekindergarten through elementary school struggled financially despite volunteer support from parents, who not only helped keep the private school running but also donated their time to teaching and caring for the children. Stacey—who loves barter and trades Spanish lessons for gardening help—decided to resurrect the community’s barter fair to benefit the Dome School. She and other parents and community members reorganized the Hope Mountain Barter Faire in 2002, turning it into a center of barter, a great weekend of entertainment and community interaction, and, most important of all, the primary fund-raiser for the school.

Each year, the fair has grown, attracting thousands of visitors and hundreds of vendors. The fair tries to be as environmentally sustainable as possible and has a zero-waste policy. It operates a community kitchen for attendees to prepare their own meals using plates, pans, and utensils that they wash for reuse as the fair goes on. Hundreds of volunteers earn their $10 admission to the fair by helping to set it up, run it, and take it down each fall. During the event, there are “freecycle” tables of stuff that community residents have donated. Fairgoers, especially kids, can fill a basket with freecycle items they can then use to trade with vendors.

The vendors are encouraged to barter as well as accept cash. In the process, children and people new to the barter-fair concept learn the value of trading. It helps those with limited means, seniors on fixed incomes, and others who are struggling financially to get what they want and need without having to spend a dime. The fair also lifts residents’ spirits as the dreary autumn and winter months approach by providing entertainment from musicians, artisans, and dancers. There are also plenty of local farmers who barter their produce to lighten the pressure on residents’ wallets.

Best of all, as a tremendous fund-raiser for the Dome School, the fair helps replace several annual fund-raisers that were producing little revenue and required a lot of work. Between admission fees, sales of T-shirts, and vendor booth fees, the fair raises $12,000 to $13,000 a year for the school. That money goes a long way toward renovating the building, keeping it up-to-date with disabled-accessible bathrooms, and adding books and other classroom supplies that would have been difficult to afford or were even unobtainable before.

Stacey notes that the fair not only supports the school but it also strengthens the community by gathering everyone together for a good cause and to practice a lot of great trades.

GREAT TRADE!

As a single mother of four kids, Tammy Bunn knew what it’s like to struggle to keep a family fed, housed, and healthy. So when she remarried and gained a bit of breathing room, she decided that she wanted to do something to help other mothers, as well as her own family. She started the Barter4Kids children’s clothing exchange in the garage of her home in Willow Spring, North Carolina, inviting other families to join and bring all their outgrown clothes to trade with other families. Within a few months, more than sixty families signed up to be members.

Families contribute clothes that they tag and price according to whatever value they believe they are worth. (Sometimes Tammy tells them to increase the price if they have marked an item too low.) Whatever the total dollar value of the clothing adds up to, that’s how much credit the family has on account to spend. Then, on several Saturdays a year, Tammy opens the doors to her garage, and the families get to spend their credits on “new” clothes. The barter sale has become so popular that she opens by appointment on occasion as well. She charges $8 cash each time a family shops by appointment and $15 for a regularly scheduled sale.

But Tammy doesn’t stop there. Families will also bring in toys, baby equipment, unused baby food, and more. Two area churches call her when they have missionaries or families in need. Maybe it’s a family who has returned from a tropical mission posting and has no winter clothes for its children. Tammy gathers up items from her stock and donates them to the churches. Before school started one year, Tammy took two backpacks that had been brought in for barter and filled them with school supplies. She took the proceeds from membership fees, as well as the $15 fee she charges each family to shop during the Saturday sales, and bought four more backpacks. She filled those with supplies as well and donated them to families who had no money to outfit their kids for the school year.

For all the times people helped her when she was a single mom, struggling to care for her family, Tammy says barter is her way of giving back and making life a little easier for someone else. It’s also a way to help people she has never met who are in need, none of which would happen in quite the same way if cash was the only currency in the world.

TRADING TIP

Look for homegrown barter exchanges that admit individuals as well as organizations. Invite your community group, charity, or religious institution to become part of the exchange and have its members and volunteers trade on its behalf.

TRADING TIP

Start a barter volunteer group for your favorite nonprofit organization and work together to find ways to trade that will help the organization. Ask the members to fill out a skills, talent, knowledge, and stuff survey to discover what they have that could be bartered. In some cases, those skills or goods can be donated directly to the organization. In others, they could be traded on an exchange, in a barter club the group starts, or among the organization’s supporters for the benefit of the nonprofit. Start small, gather a group of committed volunteers, and then expand as everyone gets the hang of barter and becomes more adventurous in their trading exploits.