Our last post-disaster, pop-up warehouse was – pardon the term – a bit of a disaster.
Is there someone who can provide us with some good advice that will help us do better the next time around?
If we were Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter, this is the point where we’d be obnoxiously raising our hands, because late last year, our incredible volunteer Katherine Amato created a brief tutorial that addresses many of the challenges your organization probably experienced.
Wow, what were the odds?
Pretty good since we’re writing this blog – and because you’re not alone in experiencing warehousing woes. But we digress.
Among other things, our tutorial addresses the importance of:
- Creating high-level categories of products and using duct tape or painter’s tape to outline the area you’ve designated for each. This will help you process and stratify donations and incoming shipments more easily, especially if you augment your efforts with clearly marked signs for each area.
- Identifying and prioritizing products that are high movers. You’ll quickly learn which items are the most requested for a particular area that has been hit or type of disaster that has occurred (if you haven’t figured that out already). These should be situated near the front of your bulk storage area so they can be easily retrieved for distribution.
- Properly organizing volunteers. Pop-up warehouses tend to have a lot of different people showing up for one-day shifts, so it’s important to have at least one consistent volunteer or staff member who’s there every day to provide continuity and give new volunteers the lay of the land. It’s also a smart idea to have some volunteers who are dedicated to being official organizers for your bulk storage area. Otherwise, as things get busier, this area of the warehouse could easily get mixed up and disorganized.
You keep talking about bulk storage like it’s a whole different area of the warehouse.
If possible, it should be, just like it is in most successful commercial warehouses. Another separate area of course, should be your distribution section – e.g. the place where goods are either being shipped out to disaster relief sites or directly shared with disaster survivors.
Speaking of that, do you have any tips for making our pop-up warehouse’s distribution area more efficient?
For one thing, make sure you employ the same product categorization as you used for your bulk storage area. For another, use a bin format for replenishment.
Also, don’t forget to clearly label each of your replenishment bins, because even though you may think it’s obvious what products should go where, it may be less apparent to your warehousing volunteers.
It’s all about being as resourceful and organized as possible under the circumstances.
This is all good stuff. Are there any other helpful hints you’d like to share?
Plenty, which is why we encourage you to visit the non-profit section of our website to access the complete version of our tutorial.
On a final note, remember that ALAN is always here to provide not just the donated warehousing space and services nonprofits need but also the free advice and expertise to make your warehouses more efficient. To request this assistance, click here.