In a city with a vibrant secondhand shopping culture, one organization is changing the game by giving away rather than selling its treasures. Ozarks at Large’s Casey Mann explains.
At Ozark Natural Foods, just off North College Avenue in Fayetteville, Saturday shoppers ducking in from the cold were greeted with a unique display nestled in the corner of the co-op: a patchwork tablecloth featuring the words free and swap hung below a glass jar filled with donations. Nearby racks of clothing, home goods and packaged food — all up for grabs.
Greeting shoppers was University of Arkansas graduate Lillian Holt, founder of a new initiative called Spare Change Fayetteville. The women-led organization hopes to bring a completely free thrift store to the city. Holt says the idea was inspired by an existing project in Illinois.
“So there’s a store called Enough Stuff Illinois in Peoria, Illinois. And the owner actually inspired me to kind of do something of the sort. They started a little differently than I did. They had a loan from the bank, and they were able to start it that way, and we decided to do a more crowdfunding approach.”
Spare Change’s crowdfunding efforts are facilitated through GoFundMe and Patreon, where supporters are asked for monthly donations ranging from $1 to $100 from those who wish to support the mission.
“Instead of taking four or five large qualified donors, we wanted to bring the community in instead and ask for their support directly.”
And support they’ve received. Spare Change Fayetteville has amassed more than 16,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram in just two months and has about 290 paid members on Patreon.
This surge of support has stepped beyond screens, too. Spare Change has hosted several pop-up events where supporters have shown up to donate items and money to the cause.
“You can’t see it, but there’s two racks full of clothes that have been donated, a whole bunch of pantry items that have just been brought this morning, and over $5,000 in money that we’ve just gotten donated to us. So it’s been amazing.”
So amazing that Holt quit her teaching job to work on the project full time.
“I used to work at Holt Middle School, which is my grandfather’s school. It was an extremely special place for me, and I thought I was going to be a teacher for the rest of my life and get that pension at some point. But we just decided to ride this wave of momentum, and we thought that it would be completely unfair for the community to come up so much, and within like a week, we had 7,000 followers and we were like, we have to take this. So we just have ridden it, and it’s been meetings, meetings, meetings and conversations that have been super productive.”
As momentum grew, other Fayetteville businesses took notice and jumped in to support the cause.
“So our first people that we ever did a pop-up with was Pretty Good Neighbors. Sekuru, we have something coming up with them on the seventeenth. We have a pop-up at Funky Fresh Vintage on the 24th and Handshake Fayetteville on the 31st.”
But with support has come criticism. Holt began filming videos at Goodwill locations for Spare Change’s social media, highlighting high prices on donated items. As a result, Goodwill asked Spare Change to cease filming inside its stores.
“People will love to say that we’re banned from Goodwill and we are blacklisted, but we just had gotten asked to not film in that store anymore, and we’ve made a conscious decision to not do that.”
Still, Spare Change continues calling attention to high prices through photos and videos sent in by community members.
“We think that it’s super important to highlight pricing transparency, even in thrift stores, because you have a certain responsibility to do the right thing with those items. And while I don’t disparage anything about Goodwill’s mission, I think helping people enter the workforce is extremely important, especially in this economy. But you have a right and we have a right to the pricing transparency model as well for them. And we just want to make sure that people are aware of where their items are going and what their items are being sold for.”
But one question people keep asking her, is who is paying for all of this stuff?
“Nothing is free. Someone’s going to have to pay for it at some point down the line, and we totally acknowledge that it’s true. But where we come from is that it can be free for those who need it. If someone else can shoulder the cost of something as small as a box of pasta or an extra coat, then we want to get that item to someone for free.
“Overall, we decided to build this model around 1,500 to 2,000 people in Fayetteville paying just $1 a month rather than five larger donors. We think that if someone were to drop out from this model and several people have left our Patreon, but it hasn't hurt our overall mission, we kind of see it as like a bed of nails instead of three big nails. Kind of thinking this process down, we have two thousand nails supporting this and if one leaves, we won't really feel that financial burden as much.”
Moving forward, Holt says Spare Change hopes to secure a location to make the initiative a permanent resource for Fayetteville residents.
“We have our eyes hooked on this house on Spring Street. The rent is going to be around $1,800 to $2,000 a month, and we are pretty confident that we’re going to be able to get those funds within the next few months for it/
Holt says with a set space, Spare Change could also serve as a community hub.
“We plan to have a fully functional thrift store with home goods, as well as a creative reuse center where people and artists can come and utilize materials that have been donated. Hopefully at some point in time, we’ll be able to have some nice equipment there, like a serger, glassworking, metalworking material for those kinds of artisans.
“We really want to make sure that space is highlighted, because the first people that really supported this initiative were makers and artisans in that space. And it's extremely hard to get into the creative sphere, especially now with the economy. So we want to make sure they're highlighted.”
She says the organization is also working toward partnerships with more thrift and retail stores in the area and hopes to collaborate with University of Arkansas sororities and fraternities to collect items students often discard at the end of the semester.
“People feel like they have to tackle the world or they can’t tackle it at all, and we want to tell people that you can do incremental change. And the incremental change that you do in your community is where the world-changing starts. And so when people give 30 cents a month or $1 a month, that’s exactly what we need and it's doing something.”
Spare Change’s next pop-up is in partnership with Funky Fresh Vintage and will take place on Jan. 24 at 2380 N. Main Ave., Suite 130, in Fayetteville. Until then, Holt says you can find them on TikTok and Instagram.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
