Minimum Orders Explained for Charities
By The Velocity Wear Team
The minimum is 50 pieces per design, and a charity can split those 50 across sizes in any combination it likes. What counts separately is the artwork, not the size. A volunteer tee and a supporter tee are two runs of 50 unless the design is identical. With t-shirts from $13 a piece at that minimum, a first order sits inside most fundraising budgets.
Why is the minimum 50 pieces per design?
Decoration is a setup business before it is a garment business. Screens get burned, embroidery files get digitised, colours get matched and the machine gets calibrated to one specific piece of artwork. That work happens once whether you print 50 shirts or 500, so the fewer pieces it is spread across, the more of the price is setup rather than cloth. Fifty is the point where the setup stops dominating. Our wholesale ordering page sets out how the process runs, and minimum order quantities explained covers why the number exists across the industry rather than just here.
Can volunteers and staff share one run of 50?
Usually yes, and it is the most economical way to reach the minimum. If the volunteer shirt and the staff shirt carry the same print in the same position, they are one order that happens to go to two groups of people. The moment you add a word like STEWARD under the logo, you have a second design and a second 50. Charities often solve this with position instead: the same chest logo for everyone, and a role name added as a lanyard or a printed tabard that is not part of the clothing order at all.
What counts as a separate design?
Three things push a run into its own 50. A change to the artwork itself. A garment colour that forces the inks to be rebuilt, because a design printed on white does not simply transfer to navy. And a change of garment type, since a polo and a t-shirt are different blanks with different setups. Sizes never count. You can order 50 shirts as eight smalls, twenty mediums, sixteen larges and six extra larges without any penalty, which is what size splits for charities goes into properly.
How does the minimum affect the cost per piece?
The 50-piece price is the starting price, and it falls as the quantity rises. Our tiers run 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999, and 1,000 and above, with up to 35 per cent off the 50-piece rate at the top. For a charity selling merchandise to raise funds, that gap is the whole margin. Ordering 100 rather than 60 often costs very little more in total and leaves you with stock for the next event instead of a shortfall. The charities and fundraising page lists what we make for this sector.
The honest way to plan it is backwards from what you expect to distribute over a year, not from one event. A charity that runs four collection days will get through more than 50 shirts, so buying in one run at a better tier beats four separate setups.
Is there any way to test a design below 50?
There is one, and it is the sample. A single piece can be produced before the run at £150, credited against the bulk order when you go ahead. That is the only route to holding the garment in your hand without committing to the full 50, and for a charity answerable to trustees it is usually the difference between an approved budget and a deferred decision. It is worth requesting early, because the sample carries its own production and shipping time before the main run can begin.
What a sample cannot do is stretch the minimum. Two samples are not a small order, they are two setups, so the economics only work when the sample is a check on a run you already intend to place. Charities that use it well sample once, approve the piece, and then order against that approval for several years without paying for the check again.
