A friend in need is a friend indeed!
The vast majority of our underwear donations come from individuals. That’s people like you! And we can’t thank you enough.
Many supporters donate money as well as underwear, and we’re hugely grateful for the difference this makes to our ability to keep going. Again, we really can’t thank you enough. All our friends are crucial to the work of Smalls – we couldn’t do what we do without you.
Supply friends
We’re also delighted to be friends with ethical underwear and lifestyle brand Y.O.U Underwear who send us a pair of pants for every pair they sell.
Distribution friends
We rely heavily on our distribution friends’ help to ship and deliver our underwear so we can be sure it reaches those who need it most. We work with many distribution friends in both Africa and the UK. There are too many to mention here, but do have a look at our underwear timeline which shows everyone who has distributed for us since we first started, month by month.
Strategic friends
While we donate all the new underwear we receive directly to those who need it, we also sell some of the gently worn bras we receive to family run recycling company LMB Textiles (LMB) to help raise the vital funds we need to support our work. LMB send the bras they get from us to people in developing economies like Africa to help them earn an income by selling bras.
We’re also grateful to Iron Mountain who supply us with cardboard boxes for packaging up the underwear for distribution, and who help us out in other ways from time to time (for example, with storage and volunteer sorting sessions).
Funding friends
We’ve also been lucky enough to have been awarded some generous additional funds in recent years. Our thanks go to:
- People’s Postcode Trust from whom we received £8,000 in 2021 to buy pants for those in need in Scotland as a result of poverty.
- ShareGift from whom we received £5,000 of unrestricted funding in 2025.
- Bank of Scotland Foundation from whom we received £20,000 in 2025 to be spent on developing our reach in Scotland.
Other funding friends were too shy for a mention but included one who gave us £5,000 for pants for Africa in 2021. And one who gave us £10,000 in 2021 for heating and a new shed, £10,000 in 2022 for a website upgrade and a contribution to our running costs, just under £7,000 in 2023 to get our buy-to-give initiative up and running, and just under £10,000 in 2024 for a pant-making pilot and some social media funding.
As times have been very hard for charities since the onset of Covid and then the cost-of-living crisis, we’re enormously grateful for this extra support.
All our friends are crucial to the work of Smalls – we couldn’t do what we do without you.
If you’d like to become a supply, distribution, strategic or funding friend to Smalls, please contact us at [email protected]!
