WIN Warehouse

WIN’s mission statement is to provide value and mutual sustainability by connecting nonprofit organizations with donated corporate excess inventory at a highly discounted rate, helping both groups achieve their organizational goals long term. For us, ultimate success looks like a healthier nonprofit sector and a more generous corporate community.

WIN empowers nonprofit organizations to more effectively achieve their missions by connecting them with corporate excess inventory, saving them money and increasing their capacity to carry out their mission. Corporations partner with WIN to donate excess products, enabling them to be generous while keeping their focus on their core competencies.

WIN’s efforts are focused on acquiring new products donated from corporations and passing those donations along to other U.S. based nonprofits.

Over the next 3-5 years, WIN plans to expand the types of donations available to the nonprofit community by significantly increasing our number of donors. We have found that the variety of the donated products we receive, as well as the overall volume of donations, drastically impacts the number of organizations we can serve. It also significantly affects how we are able to serve each of our nonprofit members.

WIN continues our dynamic growth, measured by the number of donors, the amount of donated product received and distributed, and the number of nonprofit organizations served. Just as important as quantity, though, is the quality of relational care WIN provides its nonprofit members. We become a small part of every nonprofit we serve, caring deeply about their mission as well as what drives them to succeed and make our communities better places to live.

In order to achieve our goals for the next 3-5 years, WIN has identified some specific near term activities designed to strengthen our strategic approach. By implementing these activities, WIN is building for future success by driving towards further growth for both donors and members.

In our effort to expand the types of donations available to the nonprofit community, WIN has launched a comprehensive strategy for acquiring new donor relationships. These activities include targeting, personal outreach, marketing, advertising and public relations. We are also exploring new ways to create and share premium content with our corporate donors that will help them meet their business objectives.

As we shift our focus to providing more resources to our nonprofit members, WIN recently launched the Reverse Logistics for Good campaign. This initiative focuses on creating a charitable disposition for products that are not in the forward supply chain. This can include consumer returns, B2B returns (return to vendor).

WIN currently has several programs geared toward the nonprofit community to help us achieve our goals of empowering them to do more good with the resources they have.

WIN offers an online product donation catalog, from which qualified nonprofit organizations (our members) can choose individual items in exchange for a small handling fee. This program allows our nonprofit members to save 67%-90% off the retail value of donated products.
WIN also offers a bulk donation program. This allows nonprofits to receive large quantities of donated products for up to 99% off the retail value of the products they receive.

WIN’s “Deals of the Week” promotes certain donated products weekly, allowing nonprofit organizations to save 87%-95% off select products.
WIN’s nonprofit showroom allows organizations physical access to WIN’s headquarters in St. Louis. Nonprofit members can visit during business hours without an appointment to pick up donated items on display in our showroom. While on site, members can also consult directly with WIN’s member relations team, access WIN’s entire catalog and pick up orders.

Since 1991, WIN has acquired substantial resources, capacities, and connections to support our organization’s mission.

WIN starts at our St. Louis headquarters, strategically located right off Hwy 70, offering generous access and shipping lanes throughout the U.S. WIN’s headquarters consists of a 150,000+ sq ft facility that recently was awarded Most Enhanced Winner for excellence in historic rehabilitation by Landmarks Association of St. Louis. WIN partnered with SPACE Architects + Designers + Builders to design and construct the new space in order to accommodate ongoing growth, create a comfortable environment and provide excitement and energy for WIN’s members and staff.

In addition to our warehouse and distribution center, WIN houses a nonprofit showroom, which our nonprofit members can visit during business hours without an appointment to pick up donated items on display in our showroom. While on site, members can access WIN’s entire catalog and pick up orders. This space also offers consultative meeting areas where members can consult directly with WIN’s passionate member relations team.

WIN has ongoing relationships with more than 900 nonprofit organizations. Some of those organizations have partnered with WIN since our beginnings in a small rented basement space of the warehouse we now own.

WIN currently houses more than $150 Million worth of donated assets, ensuring immediate robust solutions for nonprofit organizations while solidifying WIN’s future long-term viability. Our responsible cash reserves policy (6-9 months of budgeted expenditures), gives us flexibility and stability, and our board of directors is active and engaged in the organization and the community.

While WIN is always actively seeking new corporate donors, our core longstanding donor relationships (with many dating back 15 years or more) are a significant asset, providing not only stability for our organization and our members but new opportunities as business needs evolve.

Vendors are more than suppliers at WIN. They are integral to our business and rooted in strong relationships. WIN partners with best-in-class marketing & PR, accounting, legal, facilities, and technology firms and individuals to strengthen our core and provide dynamic impact for our future.

WIN continues to invest in technology to streamline our processes and make donated inventory more readily available to our members. WIN has a robust ERP system that integrates with our web catalog, marketing tools, nonprofit member accounts, and registrations. We always seeking methods to automate procurement of rich product data, and we recently installed hardware to capture weight and dimensions of donated products.

WIN has a lean but growing staff of dedicated team members with experience in many different industries like nonprofit management, warehousing, distribution, retail, customer service, and marketing. Employee tenure ranges from six months to 20 years.

Since our founding in 1991, WIN has grown into an organization that has:
Served well more than 1,000 nonprofit organizations.
Distributed more than $300 MM worth of donated goods.
Given more than $1.5 MM in cash philanthropically.

In 2010, WIN purchased the 151,000 sq ft facility that we had occupied partially as a tenant. The increased capacity quickly led to an influx of donations. So fast and significant was the influx that we had to turn our attention almost exclusively to program distribution and facilities. To that end, WIN invested heavily in:
- New team members that could help take our charitable programs to the next level,
- Technology and R&D, which not only increased our capacity to process donated products but made it substantially easier for nonprofits to secure donations,
- Marketing and Public Relations, which included a complete rebrand and strategy to clarify WIN’s message as well as magnify our reach,
- Facilities which included physical and technical infrastructure and culminated in the 2019 grand re-opening of our new showroom, conference, and office space.

From these focus changes, WIN saw immediate accomplishments. Over the 5-year period of 2013-2017, the value of donations that WIN has received has grown by 56% compared to the prior 5-year period. In that same span, the value of donations that WIN has distributed has grown by 305%. While both of those growth numbers are tremendously positive, the fact that donations distributed have outpaced donations received so sharply is helping to teach us valuable lessons about what has worked and where our strategic focus needs to pivot moving forward.

Because of this growth, WIN has renovated our warehouse headquarters to provide a new, inviting entrance and lobby area, a new showroom for our nonprofit members, a conference area for consulting with our nonprofit members and serving our local community, as well as new office spaces to provide better efficiency for WIN’s staff and accommodate future growth.

WIN has a culture of growth and evolution. While our mission and values remain constant, our programs and opportunities are fluid.