How to Run a Donation Collection Business: What You Need to Get Started
Whether you're collecting textiles, clothing, or books, running a donation collection business sounds simple: put bins in high-traffic locations, pick them up before they overflow, and sell or redistribute the goods.
In practice, there's a lot more to it. Here's what you actually need to run the operation.
Locations
Your locations are your revenue. More bins in better spots means more donations.
You need site agreements with property owners—grocery stores, churches, shopping centers, parking lots. You need to track which locations perform and which don't. And you need to think about geographic density: bins clustered together are cheaper to service than bins spread across multiple counties.
Bins and Containers
Your bins are physical assets sitting outside, taking weather and abuse, representing your brand 24/7.
You need to track where each bin is, what condition it's in, and how often it fills. Some bins fill in 2 days, some take 2 weeks—knowing the difference determines whether you're making money or wasting trips.
Trucks
Your trucks are your biggest operational expense after labor. Every mile costs money.
You need reliable vehicles sized for your route density. You need to plan for capacity—if a truck fills up after 3 stops, you're making a warehouse run mid-route, killing efficiency. And you need to budget for maintenance and breakdowns.
Drivers
Drivers are the face of your operation.
You need to manage scheduling, route assignments, and communication. When something changes mid-day—a bin overflows, a stop gets added—you need a way to reach them. And you need to capture data from the field: what got picked up, how full each bin was, any issues at the site.
Routing Software
This is where most operators struggle.
You need a way to plan efficient routes that account for real-world constraints—truck capacity, driver availability, service windows, fill rates. And you need a way to adjust when reality hits: a truck breaks down, a driver calls in sick, a bin needs emergency pickup.
Container and Asset Management
With bins scattered across a region, you need to track your assets.
Which bins are where? Which need maintenance or replacement? Which locations are underperforming? Without visibility into your container network, you're flying blind.
Driver App
Paper route sheets create problems. Drivers need to know where to go, and you need data back from the field.
A driver app puts routes on their phones, lets them log pickups with one tap, and captures data automatically—no manual entry at end of day.
Processing Equipment
Once donations are collected, they need to go somewhere.
You need warehouse space to dump and sort. For textiles, you'll likely need a baler to compress goods into dense bales for sale to recyclers or exporters. And you need buyer relationships lined up before you start collecting.
The Challenge
Most operators end up running all of this across multiple disconnected systems—spreadsheets for locations, a separate tool for routing, another for GPS tracking, paper forms for drivers, manual data entry at end of day.
It works at small scale. But as you grow, the time spent stitching it all together becomes the bottleneck.
Plutou Handles All of This
Plutou is the all-in-one platform for donation collection operations—locations, routing, asset management, driver app, and reporting in one system.
No more juggling disconnected tools. No more manual data entry. Just efficient operations that scale with you.