Connecting charities with surplus goods

There’s a huge focus on recycling and repurposing used goods – but what about the products that are manufactured but go unsold? Alison Covington is passionately obsessed with connecting charities with surplus goods that businesses don’t need, as well as raising awareness about the need for programs like hers.

Alison was driven to start the Australian chapter of Good360 a decade ago because she simply could not stand back and watch billions of dollars’ worth of perfectly usable goods go to waste. With her corporate background she had the skills to run the organisation and she gladly walked away from a successful career to do something she knew could make a real difference.

“When we have made something with the earth’s resources, there is an obligation to use it,” she says.

“Twenty-seven million items later, Good360 Australia is offering a solution for businesses and for charities and communities.”

CommBank offers more than tools and products

Alison already had her personal banking with CommBank at the time Good360 launched, and her positive experience led her to stay with the bank for her business accounts. She has utilised CommBank tools like merchant facilities, eCommerce and the CommBiz app but says the real value she gets is through the relationship with her banker Lisa McCosker.

“Lisa is fantastic. She is always readily available, I can ask her questions, she’s always looking at what we need.” Lisa helped Alison simplify her accounts structure and enable credit card transactions, and she has created a number of connections for Alison to help her leverage the bank’s reach and scope, including introducing the Good360 brand to CommBank’s Not-for-Profit team. Good360 is also a recipient of a Can Give Flood Appeal grant of $250k, which will help the communities of NSW and QLD to rebuild and recover from the recent floods, as well as looking to organise corporate volunteering opportunities for CBA staff within Good360.

“Alison is incredibly passionate and she often challenges me with her questions. I try to connect her with the right people in the bank, so that we can support Alison and Good360 achieve their goals,” Lisa says.

Online tools for an online marketplace

As an organisation focused on sustainability, Good360 encourages its stakeholders to interact digitally. That includes making donations and paying for freight costs, where necessary, to ship donated goods.

Alison says when Good360 first launched, there were some cash transactions at fundraising events, but she and her team have really looked to streamline the way funds come in.

“There’s been a big swing to tapping to pay and then to more pure online transactions. Initially we used terminals from CommBank to enable card payments in person, and now we’ve stepped up our website capability to allow credit card payments and PayPal transactions. For us the goal is to allow our stakeholders to pay however they want to pay, to make the administration of our finances as simple as possible and to keep our staff safe by operating in a cashless environment.”

Alison says in deciding to go with CommBank for online credit card payment facilities, simplicity and cost were both important factors.

“We reconcile hundreds of payments a month and we want to make that as straightforward as we can. We already banked with CommBank so of course we looked at what they had to offer, but we didn’t just go with them automatically. We looked at the functionality of their system and analysed the fees. It had to be good value and easy, and that’s what it has been.”

Following recent fires, floods and droughts, Alison and her team have been able to connect people with brand new clothes, furniture and other non-food goods.

“There’s dignity in being able to provide brand new goods to people who need them.”

Making it easy to pass on goods

One of Alison’s goals is to remove the ‘secret shame’ in business of having product that cannot be sold.

“It doesn’t feel good to think as a business leader you got it wrong and made products that people won’t buy, but the truth is, it’s almost impossible to get it 100% correct. Sometimes we make things for summer, but summer turns out to be cool. Winter is warm. It rains when we weren’t expecting it. COVID comes and the store closes.”

Good360 Australia partners with 3,000 disadvantaged schools and charities and is an online marketplace that lets these organisations choose the goods they actually need in their communities. The Good360 website is set up for an online shopping experience and the registered users can fill a box or a pallet which can be delivered to their door, collected from the warehouse via Click and Collect or picked up from a local store such as BIG W.

Raising awareness, the most important goal

The biggest challenge Alison faces is that the cause simply does not have the profile of food rescue or recycling programs, and that means there is little government funding.

“Mostly it’s just me banging on a few doors. We don’t have significant funding. We’re just 30 people doing what we can.

“Deloitte Access Economics recently released a report highlighting that unsold household goods in Australia equates to $2.5billion per annum! We need scale in our funding to be able to accept more goods and help more Australians in need.”