Step 1 – Select your Group of Recipients and Target Area(s)
- Select recipients that you feel will appreciate your gesture a lot, for giving away school supplies this might be students with no or few money to spend on supplies.
- Decide on one or multiple target areas where you find enough recipients, keep in mind that larger areas require more time for distribution. Where will your recipients be on this specific day and time?
Step 2 – Select the Number and Type of Items you want to give away
- Notebooks and pencils are a good choice for handing out school supplies, make sure it’s something helpful for the students in school.
- Check the pricing per piece, if you buy larger amounts you might can buy wholesale or from the factory directly. Decide on a number that you feel comfortable to afford.
- Consider the size and total weight of the items (larger numbers can sum up to a higher total weight very fast), you still have to transport and distribute them
Step 3 – Plan a Setup and Flow of Distribution
- There are two parts of the distribution: Transportation and Handover
- Transportation: Do you want to use a vehicle? Can you do it alone or do you need help? Can you load everything at once or need to go back inbetween to load more items? Do you for example need cooling so chocolate won’t melt?
- Handover: How will you find the recipient? How will you approach him/her? Will you say something before or afterwards?
- If you have to record the handover, don’t hold the camera straight into your recipients face or even ask them to pose. Recipients will not feel good about receiving your gift if they are just used for your YouTube video.
Step 4 – Buy and prepare all Materials required for your Plan
- Organize all materials so you can prepare and pack the finalized gifts as efficient as possible
- It’s often nice to add a message to your gift, even if they are just printed out on paper and taped onto the gift. People will wonder why you gave them a gift, tell them what you want them to know, as short as possible.
- Pack finalized gifts into boxes or similar so they can be stored and later loaded easier
Step 5 – Organize help for Distribution if necessary
- Especially when giving away many gifts, you might need a vehicle and potentially even a driver or rider that helps you while you give the gifts to the recipients
- Make sure the vehicle is able to support the total size and weight
- Themed vehicles, costumes etc. can be used but are more optional as the recipients might not all notice them
Step 6 – Do the Distribution
- If your plan was detailed enough, most will work as planned
- Prepare some more time than you think for unexpected situations (traffic, not finding enough recipients right away, etc.)
- Be flexible in case something goes wrong to at least make the best out of it for yourself and the recipients. It’s the thought that counts and many people will appreciate that already.
- Don’t set your expectations for reactions too high. Some people can be happy even without freaking out
