Frequently asked questions

A free clothing exchange run by students at each participating high school. You list clothing you no longer wear, claim what you need, and the handoff happens at a booth on your campus. Nothing costs anything, and there are no fees and no ads.

Current students, staff, and authorized volunteers at a participating school. You need to be at least 13, and if you are under 18 a parent or guardian has to have read and agreed to the Terms on your behalf.

Read the Terms of Use

It is free on the App Store and runs on iOS 15.1 or later. Android is not available yet.

Get the app

With your own school issued or otherwise authorized account. Accounts are tied to a participating school, which is what keeps a closet to the students it belongs to.

Up to three per week. What you claim is held for you until the next booth day at your school.

At your school, from the team running your closet. Booth dates vary by campus and are not posted publicly, so the app is where you get them: it tells you the date and place as soon as your claim is scheduled, reminds you on the day by push or text, and updates you if anything moves.

Yes. Every word of the app and this site, not just the menus. The app follows your device language, and you can switch it yourself at any time.

Clothing and everyday items another student could use: jackets, hoodies, shoes, backpacks, jeans, formal wear. Clean and wearable is the bar. You photograph the front, the back and the label, and add a few details about condition.

Yes. Automated screening checks every photo and description against our safety rules before a listing goes live, and our team reviews anything it flags. The exchange itself happens on campus with a student from the team present.

Listings do not carry your name. The student who gives an item and the student who claims it stay confidential from each other from start to finish.

We hold your name, school email, phone number, school, and what you list, claim and pick up. You can ask us to delete your account and its data at any time by writing from the address on the account, and a parent or guardian can make that request for their own student.

Read the Privacy Policy

Yes, and most of what fills the racks arrives that way. Clothing goes straight to a chapter school where students claim it for free. Funds cover the half that has to arrive new.

See the ways to give

Yes. The Community Closet is a fiscally sponsored project of The Hack Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, EIN 81-2908499. Contributions are deductible to the extent the law allows, and a receipt is emailed to you.

By card or bank transfer, on a page hosted by our fiscal sponsor and processed by Stripe. Card details never touch this website. The money buys what clothing donations cannot: new socks and underwear, hygiene basics, hangers, racks, booth materials, and the software every closet runs on. Every transaction is published on a public ledger anyone can read.

Hoodies and sweatshirts, jackets, shoes in good condition, backpacks, jeans, PE and athletic wear, formal wear for events, and new socks and underwear.

Tell us your school and we will walk you through it. You get the app your closet runs on, two signature banners, your own page here, features on our socials, the playbook we wrote at Menlo-Atherton, and students who have opened one before helping while you set up. It costs nothing.

Start a closet

The assistant inside the app handles most questions about sign in, listings, claims, rewards and pickup, and hands you to a real person when it cannot. You can also write to us from anywhere on this site.

Message the team