200 charity shops closing (cancer research)

I get through lots of books hardbacks / paper backs we have a really good chuck 50p \ whatever in the bucket shelf in the local Co/op. There’s always new stock and I must of gone through hundreds of books. Most I pop back some go to other free bookshelves, minority I pass along / keep.

I’ve not bought books at a charity shop for years and I used buy books all the time at £1-2.

Also the rrp of a new book is rarely what is charged when new. Eg a new celebrity autobiography would be bound to be up to 50% off.

And as for those ones in The Works… mil used to most generously give family members some random large history book from The Works, always careful to leave the price on the fly-leaf. She’d even titter, “Whoops! I left the price on!” to draw attention to the £24.99 she had certainly not spent on Aerial Views of Long Lost WWII Airfields…

@SorcererGaheris

How similar are they? Do you mean higher than 50% of the original price?

It wasn't the original price of the book in the charity shop I was considering, it was the price of a brand new copy generally. I was looking for a specific book a while back and picked up a second hand copy in an Oxfam Bookshop - the price was £4.99 for a slightly tattered copy. A new one from Amazon was around £6.

The great thing about volunteering is the freedom. I have volunteered for an organisation where the woman in charge was nasty to me. Didn’t go back. Volunteered for another and the organiser sent out a rota with shifts set up for months in advance. Cue mass quitting.

Ds worked for the National Trust for a while. His manager nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to deal with volunteers. It is a relationship wobbling on the flimsiest of tightropes.

@Arran2024 , They probably didn't have the space to store it. Take it in a little and often.

Same for me.

Volunteering is a choice. There are many reasons why people choose to volunteer their time.

Yep. My sole reasons for volunteering in the Oxfam bookshop are for fun and pleasure.

I have been volunteering for over five years and this is my experience. As I said over 42% of our sales are gift aided so if people just wanted to ‘get rid’ then they wouldn’t bother with the gift aided registration, would they?
Also if you really don’t give a shit, just chuck it all in the bin.

Volunteering is a choice. There are many reasons why people choose to volunteer their time. I know some people in very senior corporate roles who volunteer their time to provide high level expertise to charities because they want to. Equally many people volunteer to develop skills to move into paid work or to develop life skills associated with employment.

Just to add, Primark take used clothes - they have a big container for it. Other big shops do too.

Last time I took stuff to the local charity shop the guy went through the bags and took what they wanted and I had to bring the rest home. I am too worried to take anything there now. It was stuff they sell too, like jigsaws. He said they had too many.

@RandomGeocache

Exactly - you get a certain level of freedom as a volunteer that you don't get as a paid employee.

You can choose which jobs you want to do and choose not to do roles that don't suit your taste. You can choose your own hours. If you want to take two months off, you can also do that.

@Arran2024

If people are happy to work for free and choose to do so (which is what being a volunteer is) - then why not? Remember, that volunteers do get the benefit of choosing only to do the tasks that they wish to do and can take as much time off as they like. While I try to show up to my shifts as much as possible, if I fancy taking a Thursday or Sunday off, I just let the manager know in advance and tell them I won't be there.

If the charity paid EVERYONE who works in shops, they wouldn't make nearly as much money for the cause.

However, they DO need to pay SOME people (including shop managers) and those that are paid should get decent renumeration. It's why the low pay for charity shop managers is a bugbear for me. They deserve more, for the level of responsibility.

I have no strong feelings about whether people volunteering in the shops should be paid. There are lots of reasons why people want to volunteer in shops and the sector manages OK with a mainly volunteer workforce. I certainly wouldn't continue doing my 4 hours a week if my role pivoted from being on my terms as a volunteer to being on their terms as an employee. As a manager it makes running the shop a huge challenge though.

But you think that people should work for free in the shops!!!

@RandomGeocache

Many people think charity should run on fresh air and goodwill, paying the bare minimum.

Well, those are for the most part ignorant comments. Underpaying staff creates more problems and ultimately is detrimental to the charity overall.

The bottom has fallen out of the rag market. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0nr11myd1o says prices down 73% in 3 years - that's why you don't see those businesses any more doing cash for clothes who used to set up in car parks, because the price is down to 12p per kilo for waste clothes. Your average black bag filled with used clothing is going to weigh 5-6 kg maybe, 10 kg at the very very most. So about a quid a bag to the charity. The rag merchant has to pay someone to drive around the shops or to the supermarket donation bins, pay for van/fuel/insurance, empty the bins or collect the bags, sort the donations, sell the stuff on. It's just not a profitable business model.

The basic issue is that we as a nation are creating far too much waste. People embracing fast fashion and the likes of shitty Shein and Temu. Buying loads of "cute bits" for every trip abroad or night out and then trying to salve their conscience by donating their used tat assuming that someone will want to buy it. Well they won't.

That's disgustingly low for the manager's wage, especially considering the responsibilities involved.

But there are loads of people on this thread who express ideas about how charity should be, and misconceptions about how much funds raised actually go to the cause. Many people think charity should run on fresh air and goodwill, paying the bare minimum. I'd agree that to attract the best talent (and therefore raise more money through the shops) you need to be paying managers an equivalent salary to a department manager in M&S or similar.

@SumUp charity clothes bins should be scrapped as encourages fly tipping and doubt any of the stuff inside the bins are sellable. Either because people throw in clothes beyond wearing or people throw things in there for a laugh such a bleach

@gamerchick

When people sort out their wardrobes and clutter. They absolutely do not give a shit. They just want rid.

I accept that that's true of many (perhaps most) donors, but surely you can see that it's not the case for everyone?

ShanghaiDiva has said that in her experience, there are some donors who do want the charity shop to get a good price for the donation - probably those who actively care about the charity's cause and want to see it do well. I don't see what's unbelievable about there being a proportion of donors (even if only a minority) who do give a shit.

People have repeatedly said the same stuff on past threads what the problem is and always someone pops up to say they're wrong.

Then we get a thread about charity shops closing down, people are saying why and still they're wrong.

When people sort out their wardrobes and clutter. They absolutely do not give a shit. They just want rid.

@GrannyWeatherwaxsHatpin

But when the likes of Oxfam (who I won't support any more anyway after their appalling treatment of JK Rowling) sell books for similar prices to a new one, I'm not paying those prices.

How similar are they? Do you mean higher than 50% of the original price?

Personally, I don't think charity shops should sell donated items for more than half of the original price (unless it's, say, a book that was published in 1975 for £2.99) - taking into account inflation, that would be a lot more in today's money.

In the particular Oxfam bookshop that I'm at, the deputy manager told me that they should be priced at a third of the original price - unless they are very new (i.e. released this year) in which the price should be 45-50%.

I realise that is still considered quite steep by many, but I wouldn't say it qualifies as being close to new prices. If there are Oxfam shops that are selling stock, at say, 70 or 75 percent of the original price, that would be far too high.

@RandomGeocache

That's disgustingly low for the manager's wage, especially considering the responsibilities involved.

I wasn't surprised when Oxfam staff went on strike a couple of years ago. The low pay is really quite abysmal.

I think that some people assume that the role of charity shop manager is an easy job, but the truth is very different. Perhaps it used to be a relatively easy role in decades past when charity shops were perhaps less professionally run. But nowadays the level of responsibility and pressure can be pretty taxing.

The clothing banks near me are often full to over-flowing because they rarely seem to be emptied and/or are flytipping hotspots.

The other alternative is the clothing bins at the tip but the council made the tip appointment-only during covid which, as I don't live particularly near, makes dropping things off at short notice impossible. So sometimes I do just put things in the bin.

On the subject of books, I like to buy second-hand books and the independent charity shops near me are good for this. But when the likes of Oxfam (who I won't support any more anyway after their appalling treatment of JK Rowling) sell books for similar prices to a new one, I'm not paying those prices. I buy from charities selling on Amazon/eBay where the book AND postage still often costs less than Oxfam.

@Wakeuplittlebunnies , of a charity shop that helps the buyer get something cheap as well They don't exist to help the buyer get something cheap - they exist to raise funds for the charity.

They get all their stuff for free and they charge ridiculous prices.
They get stuff free but it needs sorting, pricing etc, and a lot of it will not be fit for anything other than binning. That costs money and time. A lot of the staff are not volunteers.
The shops I go to do not charge ridiculous prices.

They get all their stuff for free and they charge ridiculous prices.

But - just like a retail shop - they have costs to cover that aren’t just the goods. Manager salary, heating, lighting, shop rent, security, cleaning, disposal of unsaleable items etc.