July 18, 2004 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Q. I am involved in a brand new nonprofit group and have been put in charge of purchasing the office furniture, equipment, and d�cor. Any ideas on how I can get nonprofit discounts on these items?
A. Just ask. Some retailers may be willing to make you a deal if you let them know of your nonprofit status. If that doesn’t work, however, try contacting your city, state, or regional umbrella group for nonprofit organizations, and see if can offer its members any discounts. For example, The Council of Community Services of New York State an association of charities, has a deal with Staples Business Advantage to offer its members 25-percent-to-85-percent discounts on office products, furniture, and supplies.
If your charity provides educational services or other types of services on behalf of government agencies, you also may be eligible to join the U.S. Communities Government Purchasing Alliance. This organization pools the purchasing power of public agencies to achieve bulk-volume discounts on office products and furniture from retailers such as Office Depot and Herman Miller.
Also check out Gifts in Kind International. This charity receives product donations from a wide array of retailers across the country, such as IBM and Bed Bath & Beyond, and distributes these products to charities that register with their service. Registered charities can order items online through the “Global Resource Directory” or through a quarterly product catalog. (However, charity leaders say that quality of the goods can vary a great deal. You may want to ask other nonprofit groups in your area about their experiences with Gifts in Kind first.) The organization also runs a Retail Donation Partner Program, which will match your charity with a local store where you can go to pick up donated supplies throughout the year. To register with Gifts in Kind, first see if there is a local program in your area. If there is no program near you, you can register through the organization’s Web site. Registration fees vary from $100 to $250, depending on the size of a charity.
To find technology-oriented products, Frank Libbe, systems administrator at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, recommends looking at the extensive online directory of free software and online services at TuDogs and TechSoup. Charities that register through TechSoup’s “Stock” section can browse through listings and purchase a variety of donated and discounted brand-name products from Cisco, Microsoft, Intuit, and other companies. It works much like Gifts in Kind’s program, except no registration fee is required — though you will need to pay an administrative fee for each item ordered, to cover shipping and customer-support costs.
If you still can’t find the free or discounted goods you need, consider negotiating with a local office-supply company, advises Maura Schreier-Fleming, president of Best@Selling, a sales consulting firm in Dallas. “Nonprofits have much more to offer than money,” she says.
For instance, if your charity has a newsletter that goes out to people whom the company might be interested in luring as customers, you might offer a free advertisement in the newsletter in exchange for a discount on office supplies, she says. Or you might give the company exposure at a fund-raising event in exchange for a discount. A couple of years ago, Ms. Schreier-Fleming saw this bartering tactic work while helping the Dallas YWCA to set up a fund-raising luncheon. The charity asked the hotel venue to provide a discount on the food worth about $3,000; in exchange, the YWCA gave the hotel top billing in the event program as a “platinum sponsor.”
“It worked out well for both of us,” notes Ms. Schreier-Fleming. “They got exposure to 400 influential women, and we got a discount.” This same tactic would easily work with an office-supply company, she insists: “Nonprofits often have many untapped assets that they forget to leverage.”
