Home > Get involved > Donate underwear > Acknowledging receipt

One smalls gesture… one giant impact

We’re often asked if we’ve received parcels of underwear that you’ve so generously donated.

This can be a surprisingly tricky question to answer! So we thought it would be helpful if we explained what happens after you’ve sent them off to us and the process involved in acknowledging them, where we can.

Receiving the parcels

In June 2019, we moved to a new warehouse in West Calder. Most of the donations we receive are sent there. However, our previous mailing address (Maria’s home) appears on many old posts that are still being re-shared, so unfortunately some parcels are sent there.

Parcels that go to Maria’s home are left under cover on the porch of the Pantagon (Pants HQ!) in her garden, and she transports them to the warehouse whenever she can. 

Opening and sorting the parcels

We rely completely on volunteers who are kind enough to come in and open/sort your donations in their spare time. We currently have three opening/sorting days each week, but sometimes it can take a few weeks from when you send a parcel to our being able to open it.

We split the donations into pants and bras, then ages and sizes, so when we get requests from our partners who distribute the underwear, it’s so much easier to get it bagged and ready.

Sometimes people include little notes which are lovely to read and encourage us in what we do.

Acknowledging the parcels

Unfortunately, we don’t have a way of tracking parcels. This is largely because data protection regulations mean we can’t keep records that would allow us to trace people’s names and addresses or tie them to a particular donation.

In an ideal world, we’d like to be able to thank all our kind and generous supporters individually. But due to data protection issues and the costs that would be involved, we’re unable to do this. Instead, we rely on email to thank people for their kindness.

Many of the parcels we receive are anonymous. But where a parcel does include a note with an email address, we send a little acknowledgement/thank you email at the end of the month when we opened it. The notes then need to be destroyed and the records deleted.

Unfortunately, each month a small number of emails bounce – either because there’s some technical issue that makes it undeliverable, or because we’ve misread your writing (or mistyped). If you’ve sent us a parcel and haven’t heard anything from us, we hope this explains why. Please know that we value each and every donation and that your help is making a real difference. We couldn’t do what we do without you and truly appreciate your support.