Free help starting a dorm reuse program. Actually free.
No fee, no contract, and no requirement that you ever use our software. We work with any campus trying to keep dorm items out of a dumpster — because there are roughly two thousand of them that don't have a program yet, and we can't sell software to a program that never gets off the ground.
What it costs
$0
There is no paid tier of consulting, no hours cap that turns into an invoice, and no clause that says you owe us a platform subscription later. If your campus builds a program with our help and then runs it on a spreadsheet forever, that is a win as far as we're concerned.
What we actually help with.
Three things, narrowly. We are not going to run your move-out for you — you know your campus better than we ever will. What we know is the part that stops most programs before they start.
Build the business case
Almost every campus reuse program dies in the same place: someone believes in it, and nobody can put a number on it. We sit down with your housing occupancy, your move-out timeline, and your current hauling costs, and work out what a program at your scale would actually collect, cost, and return.
Free tool: Business Plan CalculatorYou walk away with
- A realistic first-year collection estimate for your housing population
- Startup and operating budget — storage, staffing, supplies, the parts people forget
- Projected revenue and diversion, with the assumptions written down so they survive scrutiny
- What your current move-out costs you today, which is usually the strongest number in the room
Get the campus to yes
A dorm reuse program needs housing, sustainability, and facilities to agree, and usually procurement and risk to not object. Those offices care about different things and answer to different people. We help you map who actually has to say yes on your campus, and give you the version of the pitch each of them responds to.
Free tool: Champion ToolkitYou walk away with
- A stakeholder map for your specific campus structure
- Pitch decks and pre-written emails tuned per office
- Answers to the objections that come up every time — liability, storage, staffing, 'we already donate'
- How to frame the program against your existing climate or zero-waste commitments
Stay with you through the year
Starting a program is one problem. Surviving the first summer is a different one. We stay on a recurring call through the full cycle — the crunch of move-out, the quiet months of storage, and the pressure of move-in — so the questions that come up mid-season get answered mid-season.
Free tool: Guided Program PlannerYou walk away with
- Recurring check-ins timed to the move-out → storage → move-in cycle
- Benchmarking against what comparable campuses are actually seeing
- Help writing your results up for AASHE STARS and internal climate reporting
- A read on what went wrong and what to change before you run it again
How it goes
Four steps, starting with thirty minutes.
Book a call
Thirty minutes, no prep required. Tell us where your campus is — an idea, a stalled proposal, or a program that already runs and is exhausting.
We size it with you
We work through your housing numbers, your move-out calendar, and your current costs, and come back with what a program at your scale realistically looks like.
You take it to your campus
You leave with the case, the decks, and the stakeholder map. We'll join a call with your housing or sustainability director if it helps to have us there.
We keep showing up
Recurring calls through the year as the program takes shape, and after it launches.
Why would this be free?
What's the catch?
There isn't a paid version of this and there's nothing to sign. We do build software, and if a program you start with our help eventually wants to run on it, we'd obviously be glad. But the consulting isn't priced against that, and campuses regularly take the business case we built with them and go do something else with it.
Do we have to use the ReDorm platform?
No. Every one of the free tools on this site — the calculator, the planner, the pitch decks, the research library — works with a spreadsheet and a storage room. The platform exists for the point where a spreadsheet stops holding, which for most programs is somewhere in year two.
We already have a program. Is this for us?
Yes, though the emphasis shifts. Established programs usually aren't asking whether reuse works — they're trying to prove their value to keep funding, or trying to stop losing money on a break-even sale. That's the ongoing advising track, and it's the same call.
Who actually shows up on the call?
Us. ReDorm was started by students who ran a dorm reuse program by dumpster-diving their own campus, so the advice comes from having done the thing badly first. Read the story.
Bring us the messiest version of the idea.
"My director might be into this" is a completely normal place to start a call from.