Donate Food & Clothes
Donating Clothes
Any clean and good condition clothes can be donated on Wednesdays at the clothes bank at Church of the Ascension or at any of our Basics Bank Food Venues during their opening times. You can also drop clothes to our Central Warehouse & Offices in Millbrook, but please call the office number first to check someone is available.
Donating Food
All of the food that we are able to give out to those in need comes to us as donations from the public. We are completely dependent upon this year round generous support from churches, schools, businesses and members of the public in order to help those who need emergency food in Southampton and the surrounding area.
Donations of clothes will be sorted and displayed for clients to ‘shop’ from when they come in with a valid Basics Bank voucher on Wednesdays. If we have an excess of clothing donations, these will be recycled which earns some income to help keep the charity running.
We are always in short supply of men’s clothes (particularly smaller sizes 30, 32 jeans, other hard wearing trousers and shoes), as well as male & female teenage clothes.
As the seasons change we need warm jumpers and waterproof coats and shoes from the beginning of autumn onwards. If you are donating shoes, please could you tie the pair together to avoid separation during transit.
You can donate food at any of our venues, or at our Central Warehouse & Offices in Millbrook but give us a ring first to check that there are staff in. There are also food collection points after the checkouts at a number of supermarkets in Southampton so that you can ‘drop as you shop’:
– Sainsbury’s, Hedge End
– Sainsbury’s, Portswood
– Sainsbury’s, Shirley
– Sainsbury’s, Lordshill
– Asda, Marlands
– Mini-Waitrose in John Lewis, West Quay
– The Co-Op, Spring Road, Sholing
If you are a school or a church that has collected a large amount of harvest donations it may be possible for us to arrange for it to be picked up. Please contact the SCM office to discuss arrangements for this.
To give you an idea of what kind of foods are good to donate, please look through the list below or download a copy. If you do wish to buy items, please buy smaller portion bags not bulk buy items, as we give out food based on meal portions.