International Friendships - Columbus, OH
Having a Garage Sale for IFI
| FAQs | Register Your Sale | Volunteer Driver Registration |
| Storage Before Sale | Where To Have Your Sale | Needed Furnishings |
| Gathering Items | Pricing Guidelines |
FAQs
Why have a garage sale for IFI?
- To help your church, fellowship, missions team or family raise money for a special project
- To ensure that new international students can purchase the furnishings they need
- To help volunteer drivers quickly find sales that have what students need
- To host a garage sale that involves no guess-work as to date and location, no advertising costs, guaranteed customers, large items that can be priced and set up quickly, and is over in just three hours
What’s involved?
- Commit to do it and identify someone to lead the sale.
- Register your sale with IFI -- sale registration form.
- Decide on a place to store items for your sale.
- Start gathering and storing sale items through church members, coworkers, neighbors, friends and relatives. (For a list of recommended items, click here.)
- Recruit delivery vehicles and drivers.
- Recruit some drivers to ensure that your sale will get customers. (IFI will also recruit drivers and will give a list of all registered sales to all drivers.) Have volunteer drivers register online here.
- Choose a place to have the sale. (See sale locations guidelines.)
- Price your sale items (See pricing guidelines)
- Recruit sale workers.
- On the day of the sale, post an “IFI ONLY” sign by the entrance to your sale.
- Open for business at 9 AM; close at noon. (NOTE: You may open your sale to the general public after noon if you wish. If you have leftovers, IFI can suggest what to do with unsold items.)
What do we do with the profits?
- That’s entirely for God and you to decide! If you want to give them to IFI, we’d be glad to accept, but that’s not expected.
Furnishings Students Need (in order of priority to most students)
- Desk/study tables (NO very large, heavy desks, please*)
- Desk or office chairs
- Dining tables for 2, 4 or 6 people (NO extra-large or heavy tables, please)
- Dining/luncheonette chairs
- Lamps for table or floor
- Coffee tables
- Bookcases
- Shoe racks
- End Tables
- Dressers or chests of drawers (NO extra-heavy, long dressers*)
- Microwave ovens (compact preferred)
- Microwave carts
- Nightstands, bedside tables
- TV stands
- TVs (analog with converter box or digital)
- Sofas with 2, 3, or 4 seats (NO bedbugs. NO oversized or extra-long sofas; NO sleep sofas*)
- Upholstered living room chairs (NO bedbugs, NO worn or oversized chairs)
- Bed frames (twin, full/double, queen, or size-adjustable; NO king-size items, please
- Mattresses--twin, full/double, or queen (NO bedbugs, NOT worn, dirty or stained)
- Box springs--twin, full/double, or queen (NO bedbugs, NOT worn, dirty or stained)
*Most students live in apartments with standard-width doors that oversized furniture will not go through. Also, volunteer delivery persons should not be expected to carry very heavy items, especially to the third floor, where many new students live.
Suggestions for Gathering Sale Items
- Your own furnishings that you’ve wanted to replace or get rid of
- Shop other peoples’ sales during the summer; near the end of the sale, prices may decrease. (Keep track of your costs so you’ll know how to price things.)
- Announce your sale in your church bulletin; ask members to donate items
- Ask your neighbors for items; it they set furniture on the curb for pickup, ask if you may have it. (Please DO NOT pick up furniture in unfamiliar neighborhoods. It may have fleas or bedbugs!)
Where To Store Items Before Your Sale
Ideally, your storage space should be:
- Clean and dry
- Secure
- At ground level—eg, in someone’s garage—or involving few steps
- Protected from rain
- No bedbugs, fleas, spiders, etc.
- Reasonably near where your sale will be
- Free
What you’ll do: Drive students to garage sales on the morning of Saturday, September 18, 2010. Meet students at 8:30 AM (locations to be announced) and drive them to sales until noon. When students purchase furniture, you call the IFI office to arrange delivery if the sale site cannot deliver it. If you wish, your students and you may have lunch together (each person pays) afterward. Make sure students can be home by 2 PM if their furniture will be delivered that day.*
* If IFI delivers, delivery may not occur until Sunday.
To ensure lots of customers and ease of moving furniture, please locate your sale:
- Inside I-270, if at all possible; if not, not far outside I-270
- North of I-70 and west of Cleveland Avenue or no more than a mile beyond these borders
- At a church, home or parking lot that’s easy to find
- Where pickup and delivery can happen easily
- At ground level
Suggested Pricing:
• Desk/study tables (NO very large, heavy desks, please*) - $10
• Desk or office chairs - $5
• Dining tables for 2, 4 or 6 people - $10
• Dining/luncheonette chairs - $5
• Lamps for table or floor - $3
• Coffee tables - $5
• Bookcases - $5-$10
• Shoe racks - $1
• End Tables - $5
• Dressers or chests of drawers - $10
• Microwave ovens (compact preferred) - $15
• Microwave carts - $5
• Nightstands, bedside tables - $5
• TV stands - $5
• TVs (analog with converter box, or digital) - $2 – these are hard to sell!
• Sofas with 2, 3, or 4 seats - $10
• Bed frames (twin, full/double, queen, or size-adjustable; NO king-size items, please) - $2
• Upholstered living room chairs - $5-10
• Mattresses and box spring--twin, full/double, or queen - $15-20 for set. (don’t sell separately.)
If you give people who donate goods to your sale a receipt for tax purposes, the receipt should state when, what and to whom (IFI or your church or other organization) they gave. The receipt could also suggest that they consult a government-approved tax calculation program such as Turbotax and/or the IRS web site for a range of values that they can claim for tax purposes.
