![Illustration: a mountain of diapers in a sunlit meadow, beside a wooden sign reading “[Company name] — thank you, community!”](/hero/mountain-1280.webp)
A real drive, running right now
The Ithaca Diaper Drive runs on DrivePlenty today. Every number below comes from a box that actually arrived.
Ithaca Community Diaper Drive
1,165 of 8,750 diapers received
- Preemie0 of 240
- Newborn31 of 460
- Size 1486 of 760
- Size 284 of 760
- Size 326 of 1,080
- Size 4318 of 1,780
- Size 50 of 1,680
- Size 6144 of 1,680
- Size 776 of 310
- Boxes received
- 11
- Donations
- 9
- Diapers received
- 1,165
Boxes are counted when they arrive, whether someone dropped them off or a carrier delivered them. The bar adds up the diapers inside those boxes.
Why this works
My drives are designed to solve one problem: getting employees to participate. Friendly competition is the engine. Employees join a team and get their own pledge page. They can share that page with friends and family and invite them to pledge diapers. Those people become the drive’s donors, and this is the simplest way to participate. Other ways to participate include taking a shift at a local collection event, sorting diapers, putting up drive flyers around town, just to name a few. My system tracks employee participation as points, and those points roll up into team scores on the leaderboard. Teams compete for the highest score, and for other awards in categories we set together at the beginning of the drive. Everything a team does to win is exactly the work that a drive needs to succeed: community outreach, gathering pledges, and bringing in donations. All of it happens on a public drive page the whole town can watch, and anyone can share. At the end of the drive, the company shares the results, celebrates what it collected, and hands out the awards.
What happens, and when
A drive runs in three phases, and each one opens and closes on a key step.
Getting ready · 1–2 weeks
Setup is the work that happens before the drive can open, and most of it is mine. I find a charity near you and get what they need in writing, down to the diaper sizes and how many of each. Then we design the drive around your company. I bring a plan for the teams, how points are scored, the schedule, the goal, and the award categories, and you make the calls — you know your company and I do not. I also ask whether anyone at your company already knows a local store, because a store that already knows you is a much easier place to hold the collection event than one I approach cold. Then I build what we settled on: the public drive page, a pledge page for every employee, the announcements, the posters and flyers, the awards, and the collection event booked. Getting ready ends with the pre-kickoff, a working session with your leadership and every team captain. We walk the plan through end to end, and every captain leaves with their own pledge page claimed.
The drive · 3–5 weeks
Kickoff is the moment the company opens the drive, on work time, with everyone claiming their pledge page in the room. Then the drive runs. Your company sends the announcements on the schedule we agreed, your employees share their pledge pages, your teams put flyers up around town, the collection event runs at a local store, and whoever receives the boxes records each one as it arrives. I watch the numbers the whole way through, and you and I check the pace once a week. The phase ends with delivery, when the diapers go to the charity and a signed receipt comes back.
Wrap-up · up to 1 week
Your company hosts the celebration. You show everyone what the drive collected and hand out the awards. A few days after the celebration, you and I meet for closure. I bring the final report: how many people took part, what the drive collected, and how each team did. Every number in the final report comes from the drive’s own records. Then I ask you about your own drive, and you do most of the talking. The final report has the numbers. You saw everything the numbers cannot hold: how the drive landed inside your company, and what your people made of it. Your colleagues will ask you about the drive for weeks, and the numbers on their own are not much of an answer. Then every donor and every employee gets an email thanking them for taking part and telling them how the drive went.
Every step, and who does it
| Step | What you do | What I do |
|---|---|---|
| Getting ready · 1–2 weeks | ||
| Setup | ||
| The charity is confirmed | Find one near you, vet them, and get what they need by size and count in writing | |
| The drive is designed | Decide it — the teams, the scoring, the goal and the award categories are your company's call | Bring the plan for teams, scoring, schedule, milestones, goals and award categories, each with the reason behind it |
| Teams and captains are named | Name one captain for each team, and send me the employee roster | Build the teams, and a pledge page for every person on the roster |
| The pages, the kit and the awards are built | The public drive page, the announcement sequence, posters, flyers, handouts, and the award kit | |
| The boxes have somewhere to land | Set up the receiving point and the storage space, and put the celebration on the calendar | Define what each one needs, and help you choose |
| The collection event has a store | Tell me which local stores your company already knows | Ask you first, approach the store, and book the event — you never contact a venue |
| Pre-kickoff | ||
| Every captain is ready | Your captains attend | Run the session with leadership, HR and every captain: the walkthrough, the ground rules, and every captain leaves with their page claimed |
| The drive · 3–5 weeks | ||
| Kickoff | ||
| The drive opens | Leadership opens it on work time, everyone claims their page in the room, and the email goes out under a named executive | Plan it with you and hand you everything you need to run it |
| Delivery | ||
| The announcements go out | Send them on the agreed schedule, through your own channels | Write every word |
| The town finds the drive | Share pledge pages with friends and family, and put the flyers up around town | |
| The collection event runs | Work the booth in one-hour shifts | Book the store, plan the shifts, and supply the signage and the ask |
| Boxes arrive and get counted | Record every box at the receiving point, as it is handed over | The tracking tools your volunteers use, and every number built from what actually arrived |
| The pace gets checked | Fifteen minutes with me, once a week | Watch what the numbers say, and step in when it stalls |
| The diapers reach the charity | Hand the boxes over | Coordinate it with the charity, and get a signed receipt |
| Wrap-up · up to 1 week | ||
| Celebration | ||
| The company celebrates | Host it, and hand out the awards | Plan it with you, and supply the awards so your HR never budgets a prize |
| Closure | ||
| The numbers are final | Build the impact report out of the drive's own records, so every number in it can be defended | |
| The drive is closed out | Talk me through how the drive went inside your company | Bring the report and the win, and ask the questions |
| Everyone hears the result | The closing email to every donor and every employee: thanks for taking part, what the drive collected, and a photo from the delivery | |
How it spreads
One employee
Their friends and family
The people those people share it with
Every employee, and the whole town
A drive does not stop at the people who work for you. Every employee can share their pledge page with the people who already know them, and those people can share it again with people your company has never met. Anyone else in town can find the public drive page on their own and give from there. Not everyone will share, and not everyone will give. That is why I want the drive in front of as many people as possible. Every person who hears about it is one more chance that somebody gives, and my drives are built to make sharing easy for anyone who wants to.
Questions I get asked
Do you handle donations or money?
No. A pledge is a promise of diapers, never money. Donors pledge on the drive page, then buy from the store themselves or hand a box to an employee. Donation money never touches me or the platform. The only bill from me is for my service, and it works like any ordinary vendor invoice.
How much work is this for my team?
Not much, and every part is small. Your leader opens the drive, you name a captain for each team, your company sends out the announcements I write, and someone owns the spot where the boxes get received. We meet at the start and again at the end, and one person checks in with me for a few minutes each week. I do the planning, the writing, the tracking, and all the work with the charity.
Do my employees have to donate?
Only if they want to. Nobody is expected to give money or buy anything. An employee’s main part is sharing their pledge page and inviting friends, family, and the community to donate. When that goes well, it brings in far more diapers than the employees ever could on their own. An employee who does donate earns participation points for it, the same as for every other way of taking part, and an employee who would rather not ask anyone can help hands-on and earn points that way instead.
Are individual employees tracked?
Each employee earns participation points and can see their own total whenever they want. Nobody else sees an individual’s points, and there is no ranking of people anywhere in the drive. The leaderboard shows team scores only. That is on purpose. Ranking employees against each other means somebody has to be last, and being last on a list your coworkers can read is not a reason to join in. Points roll up into the team score, and the teams are what compete.
Where do the diapers go?
To a nonprofit near you that needs them, usually a diaper bank or a charity that helps local families. I find them, ask exactly which sizes and how many they need, and set up the delivery.
What if nobody participates?
That’s the problem I’m hired to solve, and everything I build is aimed at it. I stake part of my own fee on participation, and I stand behind the diaper goal too: if the drive comes up short of what we promised the charity, I buy the difference. Both come with a short list of things your company does, and they’re the same things that make a drive succeed. I’ll walk you through it when we talk.
What will the public see?
Your company’s drive page: the teams, the goal, and the boxes coming in. A box counts when it arrives and someone records it, so the total is what actually happened, never an estimate. The leaderboard and the competition between teams stay inside your company.
Not ready to talk?
One email a month about running drives: what's working, what isn't, and what I'm learning.