Donating Handmade – Making it Work

How to make Donating Handmade a pleasant experience

Anyone who crochets or knits (with needles or loom) will make items for friends, colleagues, family and beyond. At some point you have already or plan on donating handmade to the less fortunate.

We, as crafters, donate to hospitals, homeless shelters, women shelters, men shelters and our local churches. I’m sure there are many more places as the list can go on with opportunities donating handmade goods.

We treasure the opportunity to do what we love and take pride in our work.

Imagine yourself taking your gifts that you spent a lot of time and effort in making to an organization. Enthusiastically you tell the individual at reception you have items you made to donate.

The person in charge of receiving donated item meets you; takes a look at your precious gift and says, “None of these items are suitable for what we need.” You leave heartbroken and feel that this may have been a waste of time.

Donating handmade items shouldn’t be a sour experience. Here are some tips and free PDF downloads for donating handmade items!

Stasia Neal Renfrew (Blogger Loom Knitting Central & a member of GoodKnit Kisses Loom & Craft Club Facebook group) shared this information after having a conversation with a volunteer coordinator:

1) Use yarns accepted by the facility or group you are donating to, because of allergies and sensitivities that some babies and young children and adults have not all donations can be used.

2) Ask what is needed, some charities get overloaded with hats or afghans that don’t get used and eventually end up donated to Salvation Army or other such organizations. Make sure you are creating something they can use and if they can’t they might be able to point to another organization that can use what you have created.

3) Ask before hand if you want a receipt for your donation; because asking at tax time they are more reluctant due to the possibility of fraud. (They have to protect their selves as well).

FREE PDF Downloads for Donating Handmade

With this in mind we have created three templates that will assist in making your gift of giving a pleasant one. We recommend placing in a notebook or binder. Keep a record of the places you donate. Keep or print a clean copy for changes or new places to donate.

Donation Worksheet: A place to record the Organizations contact information.

Donation Check List: Use this check list to record necessary information for the organizations donating guidelines.

Donation Tax Log: Keep track of what organizations you donated to; do they provide tax receipts & do you receive one.

Click on the links below it will bring you to a new page then you click on the title for the form.

Donations Checklist (<–click here)

Donation Worksheet (<–click here)

Donation Tax Log (<–click here)

In addition to the above the following is a link to Lionbrand’s charity page.