“Ways Volunteers Can Help at Your Nonprofit Store”

5 Ways Volunteers Can Help at Your Nonprofit Store

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Nonprofit stores rely heavily on the dedication and passion of their teams to turn goods into funding for their missions. While staff members handle high-level strategy and oversee the store’s operations, volunteers are the ones who keep daily operations running smoothly. But are you leveraging your volunteers to their full potential?

In this guide, we’ll explore five impactful ways volunteers can help out at your nonprofit store. When you entrust volunteers with more responsibilities, you demonstrate the importance they hold in pursuing your mission. This facilitates stronger relationships, resulting in more assistance for your mission and your store.

Streamlining Donation Dropoff

While not applicable to all types of stores, donations are one of the biggest efficiency roadblocks for nonprofit thrift stores. According to ThriftCart, donations are one of the main ways secondhand and resale stores stock their inventories, as individuals are likely to donate in-kind gifts to support a good cause.

As a result, the donation dropoff area is often the busiest part of a nonprofit thrift store. It’s the beginning of your inventory pipeline and the first touchpoint for many donors. Volunteers can assist with this critical area by:

  • Greeting donors
  • Unloading heavy items for donors
  • Performing initial quality checks
  • Accepting items
  • Sending or printing out donation receipts
  • Moving accepted items out of the dropoff zone
  • Organizing or sorting items

Training volunteers to identify acceptable items prevents your store from being filled with unsellable goods that you have to dispose of. Personable and charismatic volunteers also facilitate positive donor experiences, fostering goodwill and encouraging future in-kind gifts, whether for your thrift store or a different campaign.

Optimizing Inventory Management

Whether run by businesses or nonprofits, all retail stores must manage their inventory effectively. Your staff members need to know what’s in stock, where it is, and what it’s priced at to keep your sales floor filled with appealing items that your customers are excited to purchase. Volunteers can play a major role in organizing and tracking stock before it reaches the sales floor.

Assign detail-oriented volunteers to:

  • Sort and categorize incoming items
  • Inspect items for damage, functionality, or missing parts
  • Apply price tags, barcodes, or security sensors to items
  • Conduct periodic stock counts
  • Restock shelves with backstock during slow periods
  • Organize the stockroom to ensure high-demand items are easily accessible

Additionally, train volunteers on how to use your inventory management software solution. During implementation, you should have created documents and resources that outline how to use the solution. Provide these materials and system access to your most experienced volunteers, as interacting with your inventory management system places a fair amount of responsibility on these individuals.

Then, your most trusted volunteers can use the solution to better facilitate inventory management, such as by entering new item data, checking if any stock is low and should be reordered, and automating discounts.

Visual Merchandising and Store Organization

A clean store layout, well-organized shelves, and attractive displays are what entice shoppers to browse your wares and make purchases. On the other hand, a cluttered or disorganized store may overwhelm shoppers and decrease sales.

Volunteers can help you maintain an organized, visually appealing shopping environment by:

  • Ensuring shelves are fully stocked and neat
  • Creating clear, attractive signage for sales or item categories
  • Rotating stock to ensure fresh items are always visible
  • Refreshing endcaps with high-margin or unique items
  • Creating themed displays for holidays or seasons
  • Color-blocking clothing racks for a boutique feel
  • Styling mannequins with complete outfits to inspire purchases
  • Organizing bookshelves by genre or color to encourage browsing
  • Dusting and polishing furniture or glassware to increase perceived value
  • Untangling jewelry and arranging accessories on display stands

Creative-minded volunteers will be particularly helpful in this area, as they’ll have the skills and enthusiasm to assemble attractive displays and organize your stock. Additionally, when volunteers take ownership of specific sections of your store, they take pride in keeping them well-kempt, which translates to a better shopping experience and higher sales.

Assisting With Point of Sale (POS) Operations

When your customers are finished browsing and ready to purchase, they should be greeted with a smooth and pleasant checkout experience. Your volunteers can assist with that by:

  • Bagging customer purchases efficiently and carefully
  • Wrapping fragile items like glassware, ceramics, or delicate souvenirs in protective paper
  • Asking for roundup or additional donations at the register
  • Cleaning the counter area and restocking bags, tissue paper, or receipt rolls
  • Answering questions about return policies, store hours, or membership discounts
  • Offering information about upcoming sales, exhibits, or loyalty programs
  • Helping customers carry large or heavy purchases to their cars

Similarly to inventory management, you can invest in POS software that makes your checkout processes more efficient for staff and volunteers alike. For thrift stores, robust POS systems also include inventory management features, which means you gain many functionalities by investing in a solution. If you’re operating a gift store, such as one for an aquarium, Doubleknot recommends looking for ticketing software that makes it easy to sell tickets online, enables membership signups, and provides POS features for your gift store.

Customer Service and Community Engagement

Volunteers are often the face of your organization. Their enthusiasm for your cause can be contagious. Encouraging volunteers to act as brand ambassadors on the sales floor helps connect shoppers to your mission.

This doesn’t mean that volunteers should focus their time on getting customers to purchase your items. Instead, have volunteers:

  • Greet every customer who enters the store warmly
  • Help shoppers locate specific departments, exhibits, or items
  • Share the story of your nonprofit’s mission and how your store’s proceeds support it
  • Discuss how merchandise relates to your nonprofit’s cause
  • Hand out flyers for upcoming sales, events, fundraisers, activities, and initiatives
  • Collect email sign-ups for your nonprofit’s newsletter or membership program

Even if a customer doesn’t purchase anything, your helpful and friendly volunteers can still inspire them to learn more about your mission and stay engaged. This rapport helps build a strong community for your nonprofit, resulting in more support for your cause.

When given the right training and trust, volunteers can manage complex tasks like inventory organization and POS support. By diversifying the roles you offer, you’ll improve your store’s operations and give volunteers a greater sense of purpose.

Remember that volunteer hours can turn into funding through volunteer grants and other corporate volunteerism programs. Designing an engaging volunteer experience only encourages more sign-ups for future shifts, which can lead to more monetary and non-monetary assistance for your nonprofit.