Right now, thousands of T-shirts and other merchandise are sitting in Las Vegas, some of them naming the Chiefs as the winners of this year’s Super Bowl, and others naming the 49ers.
Obviously, only one set will be distributed at the end of the day, so what happens to the other?
Alexandria-based nonprofit Good360 has the answer. They match product donations to people who need them with a goal of closing the need gap and keeping excess products out of landfills.
“Whether it’s a mattress, whether it’s hygienic products, whether it’s a pair of shoes to send your children to school, just basic needs that I take for granted,” CEO Romaine Seguin said. “And there [is] so much access out there.”
Seguin says Good360 is the middleman between excess goods and people who need them. The company partners with around 100,000 donors across the United States. One of the nonprofits’ partnerships is with the NFL, which allows Good360 to repurpose excess team merchandise.
“It’s the nonwinner that we have to rescue the product and carefully distribute where the NFL wants to go,” Seguin said.
“They don’t want it anywhere in North America. So the clothes this year will be distributed to Ukraine, Mongolia, Georgia, Estonia.”
So, whether it’s the 49ers or Chiefs that win, Good360 will find a new home for any merchandise that goes unused.
“[The NFL] has to have it on hand as soon as the whistle blows, because everyone wants that hat, everyone wants that shirt,” Seguin said.
“So there’s been thousands of pieces over the 10 years [we’ve partnered with them] that’s been donated, and someone benefits from it, even though it’s not a winning team.”
Of the thousands of donors that Good360 works with, not all of them are providing the typical necessities like clothing and hygiene products. Seguin says her team is tasked with finding homes for some less traditional donations as well.
“We got 24 pallets of gerbil cages donated and we found a wildlife nonprofit to take all of them because they protect wounded animals that can’t go out and survive in the wild,” Seguin said. “And I thought that was kind of cool.”
Seguin says that repurposing not only benefits both the donor and recipient, but it helps to keep unused goods out of landfills as well.
“We’re about people and the planet, we want to take care of [someone] that needs a pair of shoes, but we also want to take care of the planet,” Seguin said. “It’s a win-win.”
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