Things 4 Good
Updates on our family’s candle‑making fundraiser for charity. I share insights on costs and materials, celebrate the growing impact and donations raised over four years, and invite readers to help us choose new scents.
- Having T4G Labs and Rekindled both be random scents did not make any sense. Next year the T4G Labs will be our experiments and include a list of scent lookup so folks know what each one is, using a number. Rekindled will likely become a consistent and reused scent just for that candle. We are thinking something that smells “fresh and clean”.
- The XL candles were hard for us to pour because they are double wicked. I have ideas how we can set the wicks next year to make that much easier.
- I’m not sharing the payment preferences as I did in previous years because we really steered people to Venmo this year which made the reconciling of payments much easier.
- Adding more products completely broke our sales checkout process and I did a refactor of that for Sunday that was so much better.
- For years I’ve wanted to create a handout to include with the candles for folks that have questions. I finally made this for Sunday and also have it online — Burn Instructions.
- You can see the early inventory trend drops quick which is a reflection of preorders that folk sent in.
- True North was the first scent to sell out and sold just as fast as Winter Wonderland until they were all gone.
- Just Crackle was popular with people buying many candles as gifts.
- Old Fashioned had more than other scents but still sold out quickly.
- Apple of My Eye underperformed and was the least popular scent until the end when there wasn’t as many options.
- Winter Wonderland seems to sell faster when it is on display and people can see there are so many of them. On Saturday we kept 5 of each candle on the table and added more as they were sold. The rate of sales were slower. On Sunday there were 30+ of them on the table. Do people buy more when they see there are so many?
- We sold out! Inventory went negative? Indeed we ran out of candles and I sent an email to let folks know if they were still planning to come. We did have a few people show up after we were out and I realized I had a couple dozen candles downstairs I had poured for myself. I brought them up and we kept raising more money for our causes!
I’m feeling pretty smart ordering candle supplies for next year’s Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser during Makesy’s 25% Black Friday special! 🤑
1,000th candle
We were talking over dinner about the Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser and thinking we should make note when we sell the 1,000th candle. It turns out we already did — this year!
| Year | Candles |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 134 |
| 2022 | 180 |
| 2023 | 226 |
| 2024 | 264 |
| 2025 | 321 |
We’ve already sold 1,125 candles!
So who got the 1,000th candle? We had 804 sold before this year’s event.
The 196th candle of the 2025 sale, the 1,000th candle, was in the 40th transaction of the event!
POAP 7529255 at Things 4 Good – 2026 Scent Survey.
Having fun preparing for the Things 4 Good 2026 Scent Survey. I have 10 new scents ready for folks to check out and share their feedback over the holidays. A special POAP to all who participate. This is how we added Charcoal Rose last year.
Things 4 Good Five Year Impact
We’ve now done our Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser for five years. With the amazing support of this community we have raised $31,787 for non-profits! Thank you so much. This year was an incredible jump from last year selling 321 candles! ❤️
Last year we did the first day of the sale at Mount Olivet Holiday Boutique and that resulted in a lot of new people finding our candles — and a lot of transactions. This year we returned to our at home model but still saw a lot of people participating in the fundraiser with 73 unique transactions!
I also noticed this year that I felt like the distribution of funds between the non-profits seemed much tighter than usual. I went back and did the math and sure enough it was. The “range” between the four non-profits was only 2.4%, less than any previous year.
Here is another look at this data. In a completely even distribution each non-profit would get 25%. Here we look at the percent over-achievement of the highest performing organization and the percent under-achievement of the lowest. The first year had the highest range ever.
This event has become a treasured tradition for our family and I think it has for some of the folks that come as well. Sign up to our family mailing list and check “Candle Fundraiser” to be notified of future sales.
See Four Year Impact.
Things 4 Good 2025 Candle Fundraiser Insights
We have wrapped up the 5th annual Candle Fundraiser. I’m proud to say that we raised $9,048 in donations! That is a $2,000 jump (29.1%) from last year’s results. Amazing!
Last year we made 252 candles and we sold out on Sunday. This year we sold 321 candles and only had 10 remaining after the sale. We didn’t necessarily set out to make 321 candles. It was a struggle to get the components that we needed to make all the candles. Vessels were all out of stock so I would order any vessels as soon as they came in stock but it was dribbles. Scent was also challenging. On Wednesday before the sale we had no Winter Wonderland candles and had made a bunch of True North to compensate. Then an order of 8 lbs of scent arrived a few days early and we got to making a bunch of candles!
Many people buy candles as gifts so we tend to see some larger orders. Our largest order this year was 16 candles. You can see folks tend to by in pairs — even numbers are more common than odd. We also saw a big difference this year versus last in the number of single candle sales. Last year at the Mount Olivet Holiday Boutique we had 32 sales of one candle, and this year there were only 9 sales with one candle.
This year we had eleven different scents, three more than last year. The new scent was Charcoal Rose. We also introduced two new “types” of candles — T4G Labs and Rekindled. Both of these candles were in a random scent distribution, requiring you to smell each one since they were different. The Labs candles are the result of our scent experimentation. Rekindled were all made using vessels that had been returned to us and then reused. Here is a look at rolling inventory as sales were happening.
Here is the same data but using a different visualization.
This year was also the first year we offered XL 24oz candles for a $50 donation. I had no way of knowing demand for this so we only made 12 of them to start with and thankfully the preorders allowed me to oversell them and get more made the week after the sale — totally 22 sold. This added $1,100 to the fundraiser. (Note: XL candles are not in the graphs above.)
The last new thing this year were lids. We have been asked in the past if we have lids and I decided we should just have some available. These were $10 each, are very high quality, and can be used repeatedly on different candles. We sold 40 of these. These seemed to be mostly sold when people were giving them as gifts. This added $400 to the fundraiser.
Other observations from the sale:
We are already busy thinking of improvements and how we will run next year’s sale! We hope to see you there! Sign up to our family mailing list and check “Candle Fundraiser” to be notified.
Also see 2025 Fundraiser Results.
Realized we had some big usability issues in our donation tracking sheets for day 1 of Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser (right side). I designed a complete redo of it for today’s sale (middle) that I tested this morning and is much better. I also created a candle guide to include with the candles! 🤩
We are ready to host our fifth annual Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser today! We are supporting Animal Welfare Institute, Border Angels, The Food Group, and Sandy Hook Promise this year.
Making more candles for the Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser for next week! I got the labels a little faster so we can put those on before pouring making it a bit more efficient. ⏱️
Making Things 4 Good candles!
Spent the morning ordering materials for our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser and candle scents and vessels are more “out of stock” than I’ve ever seen. Luckily I have some vessel inventory, but not enough. Might be a scramble this year. I wonder if Makesy inventory issues are tariff related? 😬
I love the scent and crackle of our Things 4 Good candles. For my birthday my sister got me a candle warmer. I didn’t know that this was a thing and gave it a go. It worked really well! The wax performed very similar to burning and the scent was great. Another way to enjoy our candles.
POAP 7276968 at Things 4 Good Scent Survey.
Had a Things 4 Good candle scent survey today. Figuring out new scents for next year’s event.
How much does a Things 4 Good candle cost to make?
Now that we have the fourth year of the Things 4 Good 2024 Fall Fundraiser behind us I thought it would be fun to really figure out how much a single candle costs. We’ve sold them for $25 every year. I know that we raise more money than we spend. But I’ve never done the math to figure out what the materials cost per candle. Obviously our labor is free. That is part of the fundraiser.
Most of the items in the candles have a single price. However the vessels and scents vary, and in some cases a lot. The iridescent and metal coated vessels are more expensive. Scents can range wildly in price. I also buy the larger quantities. Here is how the cost breaks down.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| 12 oz Vessel (12 pack) | $4.75 - $5.75 |
| Soy Wax (44 lbs) | $3.36 |
| Candle Scent (16 oz) | $1.45 - $3.50 |
| Wooden Wick (100 pack) | $0.28 |
| Wick Clip (100 pack) | $0.12 |
| Candle Label (15 per sheet) | $0.23 |
| Warning Sticker (24 in roll) | $0.16 |
| Total | $10.35 - $13.40 |
I usually time my orders to get things at a discount with a deal so the real cost is probably $8.28 - $10.72.
For the Things 4 Good sale we cover these costs. All $25 of the donation goes to the charities. But it is interesting to see where the costs are in the production.
Things 4 Good Four Year Impact
We’ve now done our Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser for four years. With the amazing support of this community we have raised $22,739 for non-profits! Thank you so much. ❤️
Opening the sale to the public via the Mt. Olivet Holiday Boutique was a great way to get to a lot of new people with a nearly 50% jump in candle sales this year!
Organizations that we’ve supported over these four years include Constellation Fund, Free Bikes 4 Kidz, Appetite for Change, Feed My Starving Children, United Help Ukraine, Agate Housing + Services, Save the Snakes, Free Guitars 4 Kids, American Prairie, Heart to Care Tanzania, Food Recovery Network, Oceanites, SynGAP Research Fund, Water to Thrive, Sprint to Cité Soleil, and World Central Kitchen.
Things 4 Good 2024 Fall Fundraiser Insights
We had a great time hosting our 4th annual Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser. We raised $7,010 in donations for our four non-profits. I also like to take a look at the data from the sale to learn more for next year.
We made 252 candles in preparation for the sale. We had 72 Winter Wonderland, 36 Old Fashioned, and 24 of the other six scents. We really had no idea what to do for inventory since this was the first year we sold to the public at the Mt. Olivet Holiday Boutique.
We had 78 candle purchases which is a huge 42% jump from last year. On average people purchased 3 candles, down from 4 last year. However averages don’t tell the story. Most people got one candle, and there are a smaller number of people that get a large number — usually as gifts for the holidays. We had 5 transactions for more than 8 candles, accounting for a whopping 76 candles, 30% of our inventory.
This year we had eight different scents, the exact same as last year. We renamed Plain Jane to Just Crackle, and it was similarly popular for folks wanting an unscented candle. We did fine tune the scents though and increased the scent load on some of them. Here is a look at rolling inventory as sales were happening.
Some observations:
We offer folks a number of ways to donate and again Venmo was by far the most popular method, 3.5 times more popular than cash. More people knew what Zelle was this year. I continue to be surprised at how few people have Apple Pay setup. Three checks! I did not offer a method to pay via crypto this year. We’ve only ever had one candle sale in all the years we’ve done it using Bitcoin Lightning.
We are already keeping notes for things we want to do to make next year’s Things 4 Good Fall Fundraiser even better. Send us an email if you have any suggestions!
Also see 2024 Fall Fundraiser Results.
Things 4 Good 2024 Fall Fundraiser Results
We completed our annual candle sale raising $7,010 for the four organizations we picked! That is a 21.8% increase from 2023, double the growth of previous years at 9.7% and 10.3%. A huge thank you to the 78 folks from this community who made this possible by purchasing a wooden wick candle made with love!
As in previous years, we asked people which organizations they would like to support. People could pick any or all of the organizations. We even have some folks request specific allocations versus dividing it equally. We also donated $260.25 for Mount Olivet as a portion of all sales that were made at the Holiday Boutique on Saturday.
Tyler and Mazie enjoy a friendly competition trying to get their organization the most. 🤩
A little more about each organization…
SynGAP Research Fund supported by Tyler
I was first introduced to this condition by one of my favorite YouTubers UFDTech. His son has SynGAP1 which is a rare genetic disorder caused by a variant on the SynGAP1 gene. His son experiences a wide range of symptoms including Epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, Autism, Ataxia, and has about 100 seizures a day. My non-profit researchers this condition and is committed to giving support systems to make the lives of these patients and families easier.
Water to Thrive supported by Mazie
A cool glass of water is something that I take for granted almost every day, without considering that 48% of people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to this privilege. Women and children walk up to 6 hours each day just to get water, only to have children dying of waterborne disease every 90 seconds. Water to Thrive is a nonprofit that works directly with organizers and communities in sub-Saharan Africa to build wells that have ensured clean, safe water for over 900,000 people since their founding. The educational, economic, and health benefits of even a single well are vast, and Water to Thrive is careful to respect the unique needs and desires of every community they work with. With your donation, we have the potential to fund a well that could serve over 500 people for 20 years! Let’s make water a right, not a privilege!
Sprint to Cité Soleil supported by Tammy
Sprint to Cité Soleil is a non-profit in Haiti that inspires and empowers kids through basketball, mentorship, and a meal. Cité Soleil, Haiti is known for extreme poverty and gang violence, but community leaders know that this can change over time with sustainable, long term programs that build community and peace. This is where Sprint to Cité Soleil comes in, providing a weekly basketball program for over 150 kids. Harnessing the knowledge and wisdom of local people to fuel change in their community, they also employ 10 local Haitians as coaches and 4 as cooks. Sprint to Cité Soleil was founded in 2016 by a teenager in our neighborhood and his friend after they visited Haiti, where his brother is from, and witnessed the needs first hand.
World Central Kitchen supported by Jamie
I first heard of this organization when they were bringing meals to people in Ukraine after Russia’s attacks started. They also are on the ground in Palestine helping people. Most recently they were one of the first organizations after hurricanes hit helping people here in the US. I’ve been very impressed with Chef José Andrés and the impact World Central Kitchen is having.
Also see 2024 Fall Fundraiser Insights for more details from this year. Additionally see results from 2023, 2022, and 2021.
Day 1 of Things 4 Good sale was great and we sold 67 candles for our charities. Getting ready for Day 2 at our house. Have 93 candles left of the 252 we made.
