Ideas for drawing participants to a small community freecycle/swapfest?

3 ANSWERS

1. 
   

   Depends on the location and if it is inside because it is so cold.   Sounds like a great idea to me.
   
   Robin

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2. 
   

   Our neighborhood youth group had a similar swap, but they did it to raise money for the youth. When you arrived you bought a ticket for $1.00 and got to pick out whatever you wanted. You could also get some prizes donated from local restaurants like a free dinner or from a car wash(free washes or tokens for do it yourself) and advertise the free swap with the prize drawing at the end of the day along with a last chance to take things home.

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3. 
   

   We have something like that two or three times a year. These are some of the things we have learned:
   
   We posted a notice on the local craigslist.org and got a lot of attendees there. Getting rid of stuff and getting free stuff was a powerful draw. I thought about putting (free) notices in the local newspaper and radio, but didn't get around to it. (If you write something up, they may run it in the Events or Announcements section at no cost.)
   
   Email your local Freecycle group moderators. They may put out an administrative notice about it (but don't just go in and post it yourself - they may have a rule about that).
   
   We also put out signs on the day of the event - and got a fair number of visitors that way.
   
   Check with Goodwill first - they may not want the leftovers (they didn't in our area). But we had a family shelter come and take most of our clothes.
   
   We required people to take back any of their stuff that didn't go - that went pretty well. I went with 7 boxes of stuff, came back with two, hooray!
   
   Last - it is OK to start small.

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