Помните, умоляю Reading

1 Look at the sentences about a successful organisation. Read the text and decide if each sentence is correct. If it is correct, write A. If it is incorrect, write B.

1 Go For It is a charity.

2 The company owners expected great success from the beginning.

3 Go For It choose which organisations to help.

4 For sales, T-shirt design is more important than what the charity is.

5 Go For It is planning to sell more than T-shirts.

Go For It

Now here’s an idea. In 2011, a couple of friends from Bristol set up an internet site with the idea of selling T-shirts with original designs made to support charities. Every Monday to Thursday – you can go to their website and order whatever they’ve got there. However, you’ve got to be quick because the products are only available for this very limited period.

T-shirts with statements such as ‘Listen to me’ and ‘Can you hear me?’ raised more than ₤1,000 for the National Society for the Deaf. Another early venture with a local charity helping people with learning difficulties was also successful. So how does it work? Well, I spoke to Martina Smith, the co-owner of the company and she had this to say: ‘We wanted to make money, but we had no idea how well we could do if we worked with charities. However, the public seem to like the idea that they will get something original that would also be in aid of a good cause. Every four days there is a new design available for four charities and you have four days to buy it. We give a quarter of our profits to the charity. Simple.’

Since the company started, they’ve had over 150 charities applying to work with them. ‘The problem is’, says Martina ‘that we are the ones who decide who to work with and many are disappointed when we don’t choose them to be our partners. Perhaps they don’t fit in with our four categories of help. These are to do with the senses – being deaf or blind, or having speaking or mental difficulties.’

Martina says that the T-shirt design can make or break a campaign, so Go For It’s designers are a critical part of the process. They use top quality fabrics and inks to provide wonderful detail. ‘We sell more based on the design then on the charity.’ says Martina. ‘So that’s our priority – good design.’ Go For It also guarantee that their products are all made with environmentally-friendly materials in their local factory.

There are no plans to change the business model of four days and four charitable categories, but Go For It may expand by selling other products, such as prints of the artwork designed for T-shirts. Martina says, ‘My partner has this great idea of opening a shop where we sell our T-shirts, prints and also offer cakes, pies and coffee. He’s a great cook.’

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