You Don’t Have To Be Big (To Make an Impact)
Small businesses often feel like every penny counts, and giving anything would set them back. Our business proves otherwise, and giving has helped us grow.
Hi, I’m Eleda, and I have run a niche hobby shop for model horse collectors and LEGO fans since 2012 in rural Maine. In 2016, we were approached by our area animal shelter to ask if we could try selling some old model horses that had been donated to them. To our delight, when we posted them on our website, they sold immediately! One was even donated back to be sold again!
Working with the animal shelter, we created an ongoing program for them, where folks could send model horses to us to be sold, with proceeds going to Harvest Hills Animal Shelter, our regional shelter which helps animals from nineteen towns. Since that beginning in 2016, people have donated a steady stream of models from all over the US, and we’ve been able to send quarterly checks to the shelter without fail.
As of autumn of 2025, we have raised over $20,000 for the animal shelter. People donate the models, we donate our time taking their photos and posting them to our site for sale. That’s very little “cost” to our small business, and the impact it has made on the animals going through the shelter is immense. We also donate 1% of total sales to charity using an automated program provided by Pledgling, which makes it a smooth, labor-free process for us. Advertising these two programs has helped us grow every year, with customers often mentioning these programs when they review our business.
You don’t have to be big to make an impact, you just have to do something.
