How it works

It’s very simple! (Think Airbnb or eBay)

✓ Business creates an offer

✓ Offer sent to local charities

✓ Charities submit requests

✓ Business selects a charity

✓ Details exchanged

✓ Charity picks up items (in most cases)

Take a step-by-step walkthrough

For businesses

Simply sign up and list your items. Once this offer is live, your items will be offered (via an email alert) to charities in your area who can then make a request for them. You get to choose which charity to donate the items to, and we put you in touch. The charity then normally collects the items. It couldn’t be simpler!

For more information, read our full guide for businesses:

The business experience

For charities

Sign up for an account with us to receive notifications about items on offer in your local area, or browse the items on offer right now. If you see something you need, simply use the app to make a request – including a short note about why you need it. If the business selects your charity, we put you in touch and you can arrange collection.

For more information, read our full guide for charities:

The charity experience

FAQs for businesses

  • Anything that is legal can be donated via A Good Thing. Examples might include IT equipment, furniture, branded products, construction materials, food, training sessions, meeting rooms… even the use of work minibuses!

    Take a look at our Donated items policy for more detailed information.

  • Yes! Charities are often happy to use branded items such as notebooks and T-shirts.

    Please note that we cannot offer a service for removing any branding, or broker any agreement with charities as to how these branded items would be used.

  • The platform isn’t designed for volunteering or donating money. In addition, you must be the legal owner of an item in order to donate it. But as long as it is legal, you can donate it via A Good Thing! You can find full information in our Donated items policy.

  • You can specify how a charity chooses to use the items.

  • We ensure that all the organisations receiving offers have charitable status, and to this end automatically check that they have HMRC Charity Tax Status or are one of the following:

    • Registered with the Charity Commission (of England and Wales)

    • Registered with the Scottish Charity Regulator or the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland

    • A Community Interest Company

    • A Community Benefit Society

  • Let us know! We can approach charities in your local area on your behalf and encourage them to sign up to the platform. In fact, having a juicy donation often helps us to recruit more new charities.

  • If you have more than one charity requesting your items, it is up to you to choose. We would encourage you to choose an organisation that is close by (to reduce transport carbon emissions and costs). You might also consider picking a charity that is flagged up as ‘highlighted’, as these organisations have not been successful in securing offered items in the past.

  • You can post multiple versions of the same item in a single listing (for example 10 boxes of envelopes), however please do consider checking the “Willing to split items across multiple charities” box at the bottom. A lot of smaller charities may be unable to take a large number of items, but would still really benefit some of the items and we don’t want to exclude them.

    If, on the other hand, you have different items to give away, it’s worth listing each of these in a separate offer. For example: 10 desks in one listing, three sofas in another listing, etc. This will make it far easier for you to be matched, and also to manage the requests that come in.

    For all offers, you can also check a box to say that you would be happy to post items out to the charity.

  • No, we don’t reveal any details about the business and this won’t happen until you have chosen the charity you wish to receive the offered items.

  • It can depend on the type of item. With priority offers (Premium and Supporter plans) popular items can be matched within an hour. Larger items may require charities to sort transport, so can take a few days to arrange.

  • Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that you'll find a match, even if you've paid a premium fee or are an annual Supporter.  We will always do whatever we can to increase the chances of you being matched.  Many offers are matched very easily.

  • Sometimes it’s not possible to find a charity match. If your offer does not find a charity home after 28 days it will be delisted and you will receive an automatic notification.

  • Your dashboard will tell you about the number of charities in your local area and how many offers have been listed where you are.

  • If your furniture does not have safety labels, we ask you to make this absolutely clear in your listing. Many charities will still be happy to accept these items.

  • A good photo is really useful. A brief description and some sizes if you have them – as much detail as you have time to provide, really! If you have a fixed collection deadline, it’s crucial to include that too. For now there is no ‘chat’ function available within the platform, so it’s really important that all the relevant info is in your listing upfront.

  • Businesses can make up to 3 offers within a 1 month period for free.  For priority matching and larger donations, see our business pricing page. 

  • We have created a step-by-step guide to the sign-up process and how to create your first listing.

FAQs for charities

  • The platform is completely free for charities to receive donations. It is usually also free for charities to give things away to other charities (depending on the circumstances and subject to our fair use policy), and many do choose to do this. If your charity charges other organisations to list items on A Good Thing, then we may charge you as a business.

  • All sorts of things – from sofas to stationery. Check out our Impact section for case studies of donated items. You can also look at our ‘Live offers’ page without even being signed up, to get a sense of what’s on offer.

  • Usually the charity collects the items, but the business may offer to post, courier or deliver if more convenient. If collection is a challenge for you, please make that clear when you request an item. A Good Thing acts as a matchmaking service; we do not collect, store or deliver the items directly ourselves.

  • Yes! We have a feature that enables charities to create a ‘charity need’. You can list your charity need with us as soon as you have signed up. Have a look at our current charity needs page to see what other organisations are looking for.

  • You can request absolutely anything your charity might be in need of, whether for your own operations or do give to the people and communities you work to support. No item is too unusual! (Please do not request money or volunteering hours, as these can't be donated via our platform.) You can check out what other charities are requesting by taking a look at our 'Live charity needs near you' page.

  • We offer the service to all eligible charitable organisations in the United Kingdom.

    We have also run a handful of small pilots elsewhere in the world: do get in touch via [email protected] if you have a suggestion around non-UK locations.

  • To join A Good Thing you will have to have HMRC charity tax status or you will need to be one of the following:

    • Registered with the Charity Commission (of England and Wales)

    • Registered with the Scottish Charity Regulator or the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland

    • A Community Interest Company

    • A Community Benefit Society

    You will need to provide the appropriate charity or company number when signing up, and sometimes there are additional short checks we will need to make.

  • Our platform is growing all the time. Please feel free to suggest local businesses or business organisations in your area that we can approach to sign up to the platform, via [email protected]. The more charitable causes we have on board in a given area, the easier it is for us to engage local businesses, and vice versa.

  • Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that you'll receive the item(s) that you have been matched with.  Very occasionally circumstances may mean that the item(s) become unavailable even after they have been offered to you.

General FAQs

  • A Good Thing is a not-for-profit company, formalised using the UK Government’s Community Interest Company (CIC) scheme. You can read about our commitment to providing a community benefit and re-investing all profits in our Articles of Association.

  • A Good Thing was set up by Cathy and Richard Benwell in 2020. There is more about their story on the ‘About us’ section of the website.

  • We would love to hear from you if you would like to support us or make a donation. Please drop an email to [email protected] or take a look at our ‘Support us’ page.

  • Yes! We are always on the lookout for passionate people who would like to use their skills to help us grow A Good Thing. Drop us a line at [email protected] or click ‘Volunteer’ on the ‘Support us’ page.

  • Occasionally IT firewalls can block access to the A Good Thing platform. The simplest workaround is to try using your mobile or personal device instead to access our platform, but alternatively, if you need to access A Good Thing from your work computer, the information below can be passed to your IT department to see if they can unblock access:

    "A Good Thing is hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). To connect, the browser requires access to Google Cloud Firestore at address firestore.googleapis.com:443. Specifically, this connection uses the HTTP/2 protocol (required by gRPC) which is blocked by some corporate firewalls. To use A Good Thing, HTTP/2 access to firestore.googleapis.com:443 must be allowed.”

Hear how A Good Thing helps with your corporate social responsibility goals!

We partnered with CSR-A to deliver a webinar introducing A Good Thing. Hear from co-founder Richard Benwell, and guest speakers from both the business and charity sides that have used and benefited from the platform