Next time you move house, the removal men might make you an offer you can’t refuse: to take away your unwanted good quality clothing and shoes for free!

The items donated on moving days will go to a Pickfords warehouse where the NSPCC’s recycling partner Clothes Aid will pick them up. For every tonne collected, Clothes Aid will donate £300 to the NSPCC.

The new national fund-raising partnership is a first for the removal and storage firm and will allow the NSPCC to raise awareness of its helplines and other support systems via the removal teams who visit homes and businesses throughout the UK.

The linkage of national firms and national charities is becoming almost commonplace now, but local charities can also benefit from links to local businesses and your firm might organise something as simple as a packed lunch day once a week, when staff donate the money they would have spent on buying lunch to the good cause, right through to sponsoring clothing for charity workers that bears the logo of both company and charity.

A firm based in Halifax, Yorkshire, has undergone a rebranding and as a result, it’s helped fund the Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA).

Casual clothing saves lives

The construction company had dozens of bags uniform clothing with the old logo, ranging from health and safety wear, through to fleeces and hats and casual clothing – and it recycled them all through YAA which works with a partner to actually sell all donated clothing overseas. This process raises up to £250,000 for the charity to fund the flying ambulance service which helps save the lives of people like distant hill farmers and those stranded by weather or accidents in Yorkshire’s picturesque but remote areas.

Back to school for teachers

On the other hand, uniform could be a painful issue for schools. The new Education Secretary Michael Gove wants a dress code for teachers because he thinks both parents and pupils respond better to a smartly-dressed teacher.

But while headteachers can establish a dress code they are not able to impose clothing rules that could be considered as sexual, racial or religious discrimination. And that’s not the only problem – in 2008, a maths teacher was fined after insisting on his right to wear trainers and tracksuit bottoms rather than a suit. His argument was that he had taught at the school in question for a decade and a half without discipline problems and should be allowed to continue as he was. While the matter was resolved, it doesn’t bode well for the future – we expect children to try and contravene rules about uniforms, but not teachers!

The staff of a DHL depot have received an award after adopting an army platoon that was serving in Afghanistan.

The depot staff raised funds through a range of events and workplace competitions which was then used to purchase MP4 players and iPods, magazines, sweets, biscuits and other dry foods and even wholesale casual clothing to help make the lives of the soldiers a little more comfortable.

In 2009, they raised over £20,000 for a variety of causes including the Ava platoon, demonstrating how workplace initiatives can really help, not only by raising funds but by boosting morale and creating relationships that sustain people coping with extreme hardship.

The depot has been granted the Royal British Legion’s Friends of The Forces corporate award for its “extraordinary” work with the soldiers and DHL Droitwich’s Community Liaison Officer said, ‘At the end of the day, you may think you’re having a bad day at the office but it doesn’t compare when it’s hot, you’re getting shot at, blown up and you’ve got sand in every crevice of your body … If all firms could do what we did it would do a lot of good.’

Workplace charity initiatives range from supporting local playgroups by donating leftover paint and paper for creative play through to massive fundraising campaigns by national organisations to fund hospital units or mentoring opportunities offered to individuals ranging from potential athletes to disabled young people to ex-offenders or those recovering from serious illnesses.

During its heyday, punk clothing was seen as disposable and anti-fashion, but this week a T-shirt worn by Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols, is to be auctioned, with an expected price of £10,000. The bass player was filmed wearing the T-shirt during the ‘documentary’ about the band entitled The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It was designed by Malcolm McLaren, who was the group’s manager at the time, and bore a swastika. It features in some of the last photographs taken of Vicious before his death the following year – he succumbed to a heroin overdose at a party thrown to celebrate his release on bail in New York in 1978. He had been charged with murdering his girlfriend Nancy Spungen who was discovered stabbed to death in the bathroom of their hotel room. He then attempted suicide, assaulted a fellow musician, was arrested and bailed again before dying after he was released the second time.

Punk fashion became synonymous with buying clothing in bulk and personalising garments – often creating clothing that could not be reworn because it could not be washed or was too torn or damaged for sustainable use.

The dealer who is offering the garment on behalf of an anonymous seller says that the piece of clothing ‘sums up everything that punk and the Sex Pistols stood for: rebellion, controversy and provocation’, which may be true, but it’s definitely an unexpected twist in the history of punk rock to find that one thing that sums up the Sex Pistols is ‘good investment’!

Buying clothing online is a great way to save money, particularly if you can buy in bulk, for a sports group or children’s club, but it can also be a little daunting at first. Here’s how to make the best decision and buy the best bargain:

Buying for yourself

•    Before you begin to browse, get a good friend to help you take your own measurements – you need to know your chest, waist, hips, arm length and inside leg (which is the length from your crotch to the hem of your trousers) in both inches and centimetres. If you’re a bit shy about your inside leg – find a pair of trousers that are exactly the right length and comfortable in the fit, and measure them!

•    When you’ve got your measurements, browse the various styles and sizes offered online, because different manufacturers offer different cuts and styles and working out which suits you best can ensure your clothing looks great.

•    When you’ve found an item that suits you, why not order several different colours at the same time to avoid paying extra postage? If you get free shipping when you spend a certain amount this can essentially mean getting ‘free’ clothing instead of paying for postage.

Buying in bulk

•    Ensure you purchase from sites that give loads of pictures, and detailed information about size, fit and colour. The more you know about the clothing, the better informed your choice will be.

•    It’s a good idea, when placing a bulk order, to contact the retailer by email or phone explaining what you require and what your current first choice from their offering would be. Sometimes the retailer can offer you a better deal or simply point you to a garment that you had overlooked or disregarded – because they deal with so many people, online retailers have a vast experience of wholesale clothing purchases, how they are used and what works best for the buyer.

•    Make sure you know how the return policy of the retailer works – if you’re buying for a group you’re taking responsibility for ensuring that if you need to send stuff back, you aren’t going to incur a fortune’s worth of costs.

•    Check the privacy policy and online purchasing policy – a good online shop will have a secure system to keep your credit card details and personal information safe, and will also give you the chance to opt in, or out, of marketing information sent by them or by others.

Clothing can be used to educate, inform or even raise funds:

Campaign Clothing

On Friday 26 March, people in the greater Cleveland area chose to wear a custom printed T-shirt saying “HIV Positive”. The shirt-wearing phenomenon was recorded on  Facebook as an attempt to get everybody with whom the shirt-wearers came into contact to think about what it means to have HIV or AIDS and how the rest of the world reacts. The shirts were designed to challenge the silence and shame that descends on people who are HIV Oositive or have AIDS. The AIDS taskforce director said, “We don’t stigmatize people who have prostate cancer. Why HIV?”

The campaign began with a small wholesale order of 100 T-shirts but in the end, more than 500 were purchased by individuals who want to demonstrate their support for those who are dealing with the disease. It is hoped that the campaign will spread across the globe, the cities of Chicago, Toronto, Atlanta, and Columbus have already expressed interest in running their own HIV Positive T-shirt day.

Kids in Business

In the past few weeks, children up and down the UK have been taking part in the Make Your Mark with a Tenner challenge run by Enterprise UK. Essentially they are lent £10 for a month, which they must use to make as much money as they can. The idea is to inspire young people to make a profit and make a difference to the community at the same time.

In Sheffield, four ten and eleven year olds got together to pool their ten pound stakes in a joint venture: Sonny, Emily, Bethany and Holly combined a lunch-break juice stand with an offer personalise classmates’ PE shirts. They printed names and celebrity images like Beyonce and Steven Gerrard onto the polo-shirts. It did cause them some problems, working out how to write the names backwards so that they printed forwards – and once they spilt some juice on a shirt, but overall they made a profit of £72 which they are donating to the relief effort in Haiti and the Tickled Pink breast cancer charity.

A number of stars have removed their clothing for charity. The calendar features a range of people we usually see with their clothes on, from Apprentice contestant Kate Walsh to former Strictly Come Dancing contestant Camilla Dallerup and athletes like Sol Campbell and Jimmie Anderson. Even veteran actor Christopher Biggins has stripped for the Cancer Research UK campaign which is called Give Up Clothes For Good and is designed to encourage the public to empty their wardrobes to raise funds for cancer research.

On the other hand, giving clothing to charity isn’t without risk. Robbers are raiding clothing banks and stealing donations meant for the poor in Wiltshire. The Salvation Army clothing banks have been broken into several times in the past month and large amounts of casual clothing have been stolen.

Many companies are also getting into the corporate clothing giving scheme – whether it’s putting a clothing bank in the car park to encourage staff to donate their old clothing or investing in simple uniform items such as wholesale T-shirts and then asking staff to gift aid to a charity the money they’d otherwise have spent on clothing for work.

International charity Oxfam has partnered with magazine producer IPC Media. The charity is giving away copies of the music magazine NME in their shops in return for donations. The slogan is swap ‘old music for new music’ and encourages the public to bring in unwanted items from their music collection (records, cassettes and CDs) and take away a free copy of the re-launched magazine in return. It’s the first time a national monthly UK publication has been given away free for charity but the charity did previously work with The Arctic Monkeys, selling the group’s singles in-store.  

And in Sheffield, a charity football match in honour of soldiers killed in Afghanistan has received a donation of sports clothing.

Local company Pyramid Carpets has donated the football strip for the players who are current and former members of Third Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment to wear. The red and blue strip has the logo of the armed forces charity Help for Heroes over that of the carpet store. The match aims to raise funds for injured soldiers from Britain’s current conflicts.

There are more ways than you might think to use clothing to raise funds:

1.    Design and print a batch of T-shirts that you can expect to sell – fifty, a hundred or more. Wrap them up, labelled according to size, and sell them to raise funds, by offering a T-shirt lottery. In some of the wrapped T-shirts there will be ‘golden tickets’ rewarding the buyer with a prize. If you can get the prizes donated, you’ll be raising lots of money from lots of people and generating awareness of your cause too.

2.    If you’re an environmental organisation, run a competition that rewards the best use of an old item of clothing – you might see smart shirts being turned into bags, or ties into skirts and so on. You may be surprised at what people come up with, and by auctioning the top ten or fifty recycled items for charity, you’ll raise funds too.

3.    Try and get a famous designer to work for you for free. The ‘Fashion Targets Breast Cancer’ range of T-shirts have brought in more than £6.5 million in the past fifteen years. They were designed by Ralph Lauren to commemorate Nina Hyde, the editor of the Washington Post, who died of breast cancer and have been worn Yasmin Le Bon, Jodie Kidd and Elle MacPherson among others.

4.    Set up a fashion show, offering both young designers and potential catwalk models a chance to strut their stuff, for a small fee, and then get the paying audience to vote for the best designs in a range of categories: formal, casual and party for example giving scope for everything from Armani-style suits to ballgowns to hoodies.

5.    Get a famous person to autograph an item of clothing for you – a polo-shirt with a snooker player’s autograph was recently auctioned, raising £7,000 for a small local charity.

Whether you’re raising money as an individual with a cause you care passionately for, or as a group, or working for a non-profit that needs funding, there are blogs out there that will help you do better with your fundraising. Here are five of the best:

1.    Step by Step fundraising – this American blog aims to reveal fundraising strategies for non profit organisations. It features fundraising ideas that work for many groups — large or small — and for a variety of causes, all of them road-tested by real fundraisers. While not all the ideas translate culturally or legally to other countries, there’s a fantastic array of money-raising ideas that you can explore and that spark off ideas for your own projects.

2.    Fundraising UK is a bit corporate, which isn’t surprising as it’s the blog of a big British Internet fundraising consultancy. Focused on how businesses and non-profits can best use Internet as a fundraising tool it’s a high level insight into web-giving and how it works. Really worth browsing to keep in touch with the fundraising industry and policies that affect it.

3.    Conor’s Fundraising blog – is written by somebody on the inside of the fundraising world, sharing his thoughts and views of fundraising generally – there are some brilliant links here as well as good thought-provoking articles about what works and what doesn’t.

4.    YouthNet has a blog that offers insight into youth issues, volunteering trends and charity from the perspective of the UK charity of the same name – good stuff for the young, good insight for those who hope to attract their attention and interest. Everything from fundraising T-shirts to volunteering in Haiti is covered here.

5.    Be Relevant deals with one of the toughest areas of fundraising – email pitching and e-marketing – it’s an area where most people and businesses fail, and this blog is packed with good ideas on what works, and what doesn’t and why.