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Sustainability

 
Furniture piled up in a room.

WarpIt is an online marketplace to help redistribute resources legally and conveniently within the University for free. It is designed to make it easy for staff to find others with spare items - reducing procurement spend. It also helps staff who are disposing of “stuff” to find new owners - saving on waste disposal costs. Staff and students at the University can visit https://www.warp-it.co.uk/cambridgeuni to create a free account.

New to WarpIt - charitable donations

While the first destination for unwanted items should be within the University, the online WarpIt portal now allows charitable and community groups to claim surplus or underused resources from the University of Cambridge. We’ve developed a set of terms & conditions for third parties which now enables them to view and claim our resources. All postings on our network will be offered up externally for the last 5 days before its expiry, meaning there will be an extra chance for unwanted items to be diverted from landfill.

Get your local charity involved

WarpIt is free for any charitable organisation to join, so you can encourage your local community or charity group to join for free at www.warp-it.co.uk/charities. Organisations must be a charity, social enterprise, community or faith group delivering a social objective to join, so this includes sports clubs, scouts and brownies and any groups serving a social or charitable purpose.

Best practice for donation

If you are using WarpIt to donate to a partner organisation, have a read of WarpIt’s top tips for donating to the charitable sector:

1. Ensure a clear line of communication

It's very common for charities to be staffed by volunteers, in order to maximise their budget and help as many people as possible. To help these volunteers, and the charitable organisation through donation, you first need to find whomever is in charge of accepting donations and begin liaising with them. When donating to a charity registered with Warp It, all of the contact details will be provided to you, to make communication even simpler.

2. Access arrangements

As well as having a clear line of communication, you need to have a transparent dialogue in which both parties express their expectations. You need to make strong agreements about the time that they will turn up, where they can park, and who will do the lifting and shifting. It is very important that each party has a main contact and swap mobile numbers!!

3. Resources

Every site has different health and safety policies and visitor guidelines. It's your duty to inform charities who may be coming to pick up items about what is expected them on site, and it can be very helpful to say how heavy items might be in terms of manpower and lifting requirements. To save yourself time in the long run, it may be worth creating one document that outlines everything the visiting charities need to know.

4. Set achievable targets for pickups

Give plenty of time for a pickup to be arranged, it's unlikely that a charity will be able to come within the first day, as they have to find a volunteer and a van to do the collection. It's a good idea to tell the claimant how long before the item needs to be gone, and then working together to agree the perfect time and date.

5. Make the charity sign a transfer of ownership document

With the Warp It system, your transfer of ownership document is produced automatically. As a show of good faith, we recommend that the charity brings their claim confirmation with them to identify themselves.

6. Vet the charity to make sure they are who they say

Of course, you can use Google to learn about the charity themselves. If you're satisfied with that, simply ask them to bring ID along, or maybe have a chat about their plans for the assets, if you're concerned about what might happen to them.

Any questions about WarpIt?

Email environment@admin.cam.ac.uk.