How to plan and create a toy swap event

Author: Jaana Koivisto, Ecofellows

In this article you will find tips on how you could replicate or execute something similar to Tampere Ecofellow’s toy swap event. We’ll point out several aspects that might support you in doing this.

Stakeholders 

Since the preparation of the event included pre-collection and sorting of toys, following stakeholders are important to engage:  

• A charity organisation where toys not suitable for the event could be donated (Hope ry Tampere in our case). 
• Local art schools or any other organisations that would benefit from using broken toys. 
• City Government that might support with providing suitable space for the event or support in any other way, e.g. in communication efforts (Tampere city offered free space for our event). 
• Organisation that would be executing pre-collection and sorting of all the gathered toys (the main organiser of the event, Ecofellows, performed this work a few days before the event). 

The target groups of the Tampere Christmas Toy Swap event were citizens, especially families, parents, grandparents, and other people who have children as the closest ones. 

Organisation

In brief, preparations included securing a venue, organizing pre-collection & sorting, ensuring accessibility, selecting seminar topics and speakers, planning for toy scenarios, and coordinating equipment and transportation. The event organizers also followed legal requirements by notifying the police about the public event.  

Depending on your workload, preparations might take around 3 months. The pre-collection and sorting of toys might take 2-3 days with full-time workload. 

Pre-collection and sorting stages of preparation work are important to ensure that only clean and unbroken toys were included in the event. In our case this work took place on December 3 and 5, 2022, at the Ecofellows office. After the main event, some toys remained and were donated to Hope ry Tampere, a charity organization that supports families. Broken toys were donated to local art schools. 

Communication efforts are vital for the engagement of participants. Ours included press releases, a social media campaign, and engagement on platforms like LinkedIn. Various materials and resources were gathered, and a feedback survey for visitors was created to assess the event’s success.  

Legislative point of view

The event was about exchanging toys and children’s hobby equipment. The law does not really regulate any part of the main subject of the event itself, however, the law does specify some of the arrangements for the event: prior notification to the authorities (public event), order control and the number of people that can be admitted to the event space at one time. 

Financing

Following costs can be estimated to conduct such an event:  

• publicity and advertising,  
• possible venue rentals (for the main event),  
• staff fees,  
• transport of toys and waste management,  
• costs associated with pre-collection&sorting of toys 
• costs associated with storage of toys. 

In Tampere, toy collection days were organised at the Ecofellows’ own premises. As the toys were received and stored on the premises, there were no additional storage costs. However, as the premises were far too small for the event itself, it was necessary to rent space for the event (which was eventually made available free of charge) and to arrange transport for the toys.  

Since pre-collection and sorting of toys is time-consuming, make sure you engage reasonable number of staff performing this work. In Tampere, we accepted all the toys that were brought in, but we only took toys that were in good condition to the actual event. In addition, for the toys that were not accepted for the event, we also had to find a recipient. Some of the toys went to the recycling centre, some went to the art school and only a small number had to be put in mixed waste. 

Society 

Toys contain a lot of plastic, so buying used toys instead of new ones reduces the amount of plastic. Toys are very age-specific, and one child may play with a particular toy for a very short time. Many of the toys brought to the Christmas Toy Swap were in excellent condition. However, buying a second-hand toy, especially as a gift, may still be socially unacceptable. With the Christmas Toy Swap event and related communication, we wanted to try to change this. 

Safety 

If the event is carefully organised, there are no safety risks at the event itself. When toys are bought second-hand, they no longer come with packaging warning of possible small parts, so with very young children one must be careful what toys are purchased for them. Older plastic toys may also contain phthalates, which are banned in new toys. This cannot be controlled for used toys.