Furniture has a big impact in Manchester
Manchester-based animation studio Kilogramme was happy recently to find a new home for some office furniture it had been paying to keep in storage. And two local charities, the Together Trust and the Manchester Central Foodbank, were the fortunate beneficiaries.
Time to find a new home
Jon Turner, Director at Kilogramme, joined A Good Thing in March 2023 with the aim of trying to find a home for a variety of items that were no longer needed:
“We gave up our office in March 2021, and paid to put everything into storage. But we later realised we weren’t going to be moving back in, but we worked out it was going to be cheaper to give everything away – and then rebuy it further down the line if we needed to.”
Kilogramme created a listing for 11 office chairs, 11 Ikea desks, two fans, a coat stand, a large shelving unit, four upright lamps, a microwave and four computer monitors, and had some interest from several local charities very quickly. Jon was pleased with the way things played out:
We had thought we were running out of options
“I had heard about A Good Thing at a Suez Group/ANTZ UK event, and thought I would give it a go. Other people had previously suggested donating via the British Heart Foundation, and a college in town said they would take our items, but then it turned out they couldn’t. I had also considered using eBay or Freecycle, but felt there was a level of market saturation there. We were running out of options, but going along to the Suez event was helpful: we could see how much work people were putting into repurposing things, and avoiding landfill.”
Jon was positive about the matching process, and about the logistics of the next stage:
“I just decided to go with a ‘first come, first served’ approach. I made the assumption that all of the charitable organisations on the platform were equally deserving. Kilogramme decided to pay to rent a van, and we delivered the various items to the two charities we had chosen: the Together Trust and the Manchester Central Foodbank. We were happy to do a bit of driving around, and were paying for storage anyway, so didn’t mind paying to rent a van. We were also aware that it would have cost us a lot to get rid of things via the waste route.”
Kilogramme managed to donate the chairs to a local charity shop in the end, but the other items were rehomed using A Good Thing – and Jon concluded:
“I would recommend A Good Thing!”
Wonderful work with people with disabilities
Natalie Essex, Fundraiser at the Together Trust, was delighted to have been part of the process:
“We heard about the platform through word of mouth, and found the site easy to navigate. We have a partner special-needs school in Ghana, and will be sending them a shipping container full of items soon – including some of these donations. It was straightforward to use the platform and I look forward to the next thing that comes through that could be beneficial for us!”
For 150 years the Together Trust has been championing and caring for people with disabilities, autism and complex health needs, and providing life-changing support for care-experienced people. Today it is one of the North West’s leading disability charities, delivering individual care, support and education to thousands of people each year.
Supporting people in crisis in Manchester
The Manchester Central Foodbank was equally happy to have been on the receiving end of Kilogramme’s donations. The charity provides nutritionally-balanced emergency food and support to local people who are referred to it in crisis. One in five of the UK population live below the poverty line: the Manchester Central Foodbank is part of a nationwide network of foodbanks working to combat poverty and hunger, and provided 4,014 packages of emergency food to people in crisis last year.
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