Huge job-lot donation creates order out of chaos

A Good Thing is an online platform that allows businesses to give things away to their local charities. Less to landfill, more to a good cause! The case study below is an example of the wonderful impact that can be made through these matches.

Donor: Arcadia Corporate Merchandise
Location: Buckinghamshire
What was donated:
89 notebooks
40 desk-tidys
250 post-it notes
17 conference folders
45 charger cables
50 travel adaptors
22 t-shirts
4 rucksacks
20 wallet-and-luggage-tag sets
40 wine bottle stoppers
60 children's crayons
and shopping bags
Sector: branded merchandise
Charity that benefitted: The Oasis Partnership

Time to step forward again

Since 1998, Arcadia Corporate Merchandise has been supplying and distributing branded merchandise globally. Offering a wide range of promotional products from a certified supply chain, Arcadia has a strong focus on ethical processes and product sustainability.

The firm is a member of the British Promotional Merchandise Association and a proud signatory to the Association’s Step Forward Pledge, which encourages members to take positive action to reduce waste.

As a paying annual supporter of A Good Thing, Arcadia has made a number of large-scale donations. In the summer of 2025, the firm donated a huge job lot of surplus branded goods, including notebooks, desk-tidys, post-it notes and folders to name a few.

Jilka Newbury, Merchandising Manager at Arcadia, said of the donation:

“These items are high-quality surplus inventory from our amazing clients. Items become available usually after a big change, like when a company finishes a re-brand and has promotional products featuring their old logo. We work hard to minimise this stock, but our clients are always thrilled that anything left over can go directly to a good cause instead of going to waste.”

Most meaningful and responsible choice

Jilka explained how Arcadia looks at these donations:

“It really comes down to a commitment to being sustainable. These are items the clients simply don't need anymore – maybe due to that re-brand, or a change in strategy. At Arcadia, we advocate for the donation of surplus goods right at the start of any re-branding project because we genuinely believe in this mission. Instead of paying to store them or having them end up in landfill, donating through A Good Thing is the most meaningful and responsible choice our clients can make.”

Seeking alignment and being proactive in tackling waste

Many offers on the A Good Thing platform receive multiple requests from local charities. Businesses often ask us for advice on how to choose which charity to be matched with. You can read more about how to make that decision on our blog.

We talked to Jilka about how her firm chooses who to be matched with:

“The selection process of choosing which charity to support is customised for every project. Sometimes, we partner with the client to pick a charity that aligns with their corporate social responsibility goals. Other times, the client trusts us to make the choice, and we select the local charity that we feel will get the maximum benefit from the specific items we have.”

At A Good Thing we know that businesses have options as to what to do with their unwanted things. There are many ways to dispose of things that end up gathering dust. We asked Jilka about this:

“The alternative options are less exciting. While some surplus items might be distributed internally to staff, the sad truth is that without the A Good Thing platform, a lot of perfectly good inventory would head straight to landfill. Being proactive is our best defence against that kind of waste.”

Support for neurodivergent people

On this occasion, it was The Oasis Partnership that was selected, a charity that has been supporting adults and young people in Bucks for over 40 years. Colin McGregor-Paterson, its CEO, requested the items for the charity’s programmes to support neurodivergent people:

“We’re starting to particularly focus on engaging neurodivergent clients, as this is a group of people that are under-served but require additional support into employment or training. In our experience of supporting people with a neurodivergent condition (particularly ADHD – diagnosed or undiagnosed), goods such as the ones you are offering are perfect. They provide people with some simple but effective tools: people with ADHD often forget things, lose paperwork, lists and notes – and generally can be a bit messy.”

Colin explained that many of the stationery-type items on offer will have a real impact:

“Your donations will be utilised as an incentive to engage clients, and offer them some of the tools they need to help manage their lives and career goals. It may sound odd, but simple items like these can really help with planning, keeping things together, acting as reminders and generally enabling our clients to keep track of things – and manage their difference effectively.”

Colin knows much of this from experience, as he revealed:

“I am the CEO of The Oasis Partnership and have ADHD myself. I know how difficult things can be, and how goods like these really do help make a difference.”

A genuine impact all round

Jilka and her colleagues were happy, too, and have loved the experience of using the A Good Thing platform:

“The process is incredibly smooth and easy! For us, it’s just a quick step to upload the details. Then we watch the responses from the charities come in and arrange a collection date. We love the experience of using A Good Thing from beginning to end. It’s brilliant knowing we are making a genuine impact – helping charities, supporting people who need these items, and keeping great products out of landfill. We’re already looking forward to our next donation!”

Colin was pleased with how things went, too:

“The Arcadia goods were very much appreciated, such a wide selection of useful products. At Oasis we support the economically inactive and long-term unemployed, and those struggling to maintain employment. We included the notebook, post-it notes, a multi-charger and document folders in a pack for our attendees, as an incentive to attend our workshops. We pitched these items as being ideal for creating some order in an ADHD brain seeking a career.”

Colin is a long-term user of the A Good Thing platform, and knows that it will be useful to him for a long time to come:

“We’re about to launch our new model – exciting times – and there will be more mentions of A Good Thing as a core part of this.”