Charity shops have lost the plot

Charity shops in some areas prices have gone up to the point that it's not a bargain.
However until 2 years ago I worked for a charity, the closure of so many charity shops is not so much to do with people not spending most charities have a year on year rise £'s through the till.
But councils have found not a loop hole as such but about 3 years ago it was put out to most charities that shops are not a charity and for big nationals the operating costs are through the roof, if a charity shop is not classed as a charity they are subject to the same rates as any other shop,.rather than the rate relief and discretionary rate relief.
Operating costs from wages NI and now rate relief those shops not making a profit but may have bought in quality donations will be first to go, and those that don't make big operating profits will go next.
Charity shops love them or hate them the amount they charge puts us off yet with the costs to run them with less and less people able to volunteer increasing staffing costs.
It's support them in anyway we all can or lose them in a big way.

It’s not about charging top whack for items, but pricing realistically. This means that a Seasalt dress which is bnwt is not going to be priced at £5 where I volunteer as it’s worth much more than that. We have plenty of dresses that are £4 so the choice is there for the customer.
Similarly I am not going to price a brand new hardback at £2 when I know I can easily get £5 or £6 for it.

If the cartel does end, I wonder what will replace the charity shops? Other retail units? There are plenty of empty spaces on our high streets as it is. Barbers? Nail bars? More cafes and bars? Housing?

I met an ex CS volunteer today, we are similar ages, around 80. We buy clothes in charity shops because there is little on the high street or in supermarkets that we like. The previous older generations had BHS, Debenhams, Littlewoods and M&S for everyday clothing. Only M&S has survived, and it’s offer has little for us. We could afford to buy new, but can find little to tempt us.

Can anyone archive this very relevant article

https://spectator.com/article/the-charity-shop-cartel-is-coming-to-an-end/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAUCWYVjbGNrBQJZJ3Bkb2YFZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEeD07sK5YjrW1E699IgnHFKUg2s6JpaWOq1RY4vTb652nU8jyu3PQjGappUK8_aem_m2WKxlpDWKYWKJXG4_1Ibw

Well maybe the good that Oxfam does for their specific aim doesn’t outweigh them treating staff and volunteers poorly in the UK and their representatives sexually abusing girls and women who they purport to look after in the rest of the world. I think being a charity shouldn’t exempt you from basic morals or working regulations regardless of how much money you raise.

I guess the hospice that I bought 3 for a tenner from at the weekend gives no shites about their patients because they didn’t charge top whack for the goods I bought? Perhaps I should report them to the charity commission for not doing their utmost to rinse every last penny from each donation.

@SomethingFun

why do people say this like it’s some kind of revelation?

I think it's because some people appear to have the perception that a charity shop is there to benefit its customers, as well as the charity's cause - but (with the possible exception of small, local charities that have a community focus) many charities do not operate their shops with consideration to benefitting their customer base. They are not concerned with the welfare and potential needs of the people who shop in them. Perhaps at one point they had a broader focus, but not now.

what a warm and charitable attitude towards both your customers and society as a whole.

That's the thing, though - charities are not warm and charitable to everything and everyone as a whole, they are only charitable to their specific cause. From my experience in volunteering in an Oxfam bookshop, I would say that Oxfam is not particularly charitable towards some of its own paid staff. The manager of the Oxfam bookshop in which I volunteer has frequently been under a lot of pressure and gets reprimanded when the shop closes due to a shortage of staff (meaning that the manager feels obliged to give up her one full day off a week in order to cover whenever there aren't enough volunteers in on that particular day.)

@DancingonmyOwn88

I think where the disagreement/contention is coming is between the charity shop's official, explicit purpose (and the only one that they actively work towards) versus what I would call an incidental purpose.

The explicit purpose of the charity shop is just to make money for the particular cause. By selling items second hand and discounted, there can be an incidental purpose in helping less well off people afford things, but that is a secondary result and isn't happening by specific intent.

Basically, some of the public happen to be helped by charity shops, but it's not the charity's aim to help those people, it just happens to be the case.

I think some people (not you) have the perception of charity shops being there to be of benefit to their customers, when those in charge of charities do not operate them as enterprises to help the local community/customers.

@SomethingFun theres also the fact that “per item” revenue maximisation isn’t necessarily “whole shop” revenue maximisation or profit maximisation if you assume they have basically unlimited free stock ( most charity shops where I live have more donations that they can handle). I’d be interested to know how much autonomy managers get in running the shops vs policies being set centrally. If the former, I wonder if it’s just a case of many managers not having the skill set ( not their fault btw) to actually have a profit maximisation strategy.

But if they can assume that no one will buy a pair of second hand Levi’s for 30 pounds and almost everyone will buy them for 1 pound , there has to be a sweet spot where you can churn your donations really fast, and max out the revenues.

Even where shops have said “we just put Primark/ Temu stuff in the bin”- if you had a rummage basket and made it 2 for a pound I bet people would buy them.

Of course charity shops exist to make money for charities.

But it is also true that if these shops price their items too high and put off their customer base, then they will end up with less profit and might even ultimately closing down.

So they have to find a middle ground.

Too many of my local charity shops are trying to sell tat from Primark, Temu and other cheap brands at a higher price than it would be to buy them new and the better brands (M&S, Hobbs) are also overpriced . That puts me off. I often hear other potential shoppers pointing out the high prices and leaving the shop with nothing.

It is not a good way to run a shop.

I regularly used to purchase clothing and stuff for my new home in charity shops up to a year ago but since then I hardly find anything worth buying and prices seem to have gone mad.

Threads about charity shops regularly cause arguments. I think people should donate to the ones they support; buy from those with the right prices; volunteer for a charity they think worthwhile.

Celebrate if you find a bargain! Celebrate even more if your life has been saved because a charity has raised millions for research into a condition that might previously have killed you. Chain charity shops are expected to hit targets; they are expected to price things to sell, but not too cheaply - also, donors of quality like to see them raising reasonable sums.

We may have too much stock, but there aren’t always enough volunteers to keep on top of everything. Not every volunteer is capable of the same work load for all sorts of reasons. There isn’t the same selection process as for paid staff. Some volunteers need quite a bit if supervision, that eats into staff time. All the paid staff in our shop put in extra unpaid time, mainly before we open.

After years of volunteering, I love it when a customer is really happy with an item. I don’t like the fact that much on our rails now is cheap to start with, but as people have pointed out, much of the good stuff we used to get goes to Vinted or Ebay. However, I popped into our local hospice shop, and bought a Wallis dress for £2.50. It was reduced from £5. A few of my tops are from charity shops too. M&S was the last one, £3.

‘A charity shop is there to make as much money for the charity as possible’ - why do people say this like it’s some kind of revelation? When they were substantially cheaper a couple of years ago were they not trying to work towards their aim? If they’d always been charging the top market price for every donated good you might have a point but that is clearly not the case. Some have decided that no one should be able to make additional money on a charity shop purchase so that means for every thwarted Vinted seller you have a poor person who is being forced into being able to afford a smaller and smaller pool of things - what a warm and charitable attitude towards both your customers and society as a whole.

My posts, like many others in this thread, are not unpleasant. They're just simply pointing out to you, over and over again, that charity shops are not there to help people who can't afford to buy new. They are solely there to support their own specific cause. This is not an opinion, it's a fact, it's a legal duty.

I'm also struggling to see how you can accuse me of being unpleasant when you are the one who had a post deleted for being abusive.

We're going round in circles here. I'm bored of saying the same thing over and over again. Read and try to understand @Bikenutz post, she sets it out in far more detail than I could be bothered to do. I can't keep explaining the same thing. I give up, I'm out!

But years ago it used to be to be a bit of both! Raise money and help the less fortunate!

This is an excellent post and 100% correct. But people won't listen and will still argue against it. I was called 'thick' for trying to explain the same thing. (Although that post has since been deleted!).

I think there are a few issues, one of which is that charity shops haven’t adapted to the changing market of Temu, Vinted etc. I also think some volunteers don’t really understand what stuff costs new and overestimate “new” price or brand differentials. My friend volunteered for a while sorting stock and got endlessly frustrated by other volunteers refusing to accept that a pair of ( eg) Paige jeans will sell for more than a pair of M&S ones even though they basically look the same.

However, fundamentally I agree that they are overpriced. In retail, stock turn is a major KPi because the main cost is the premises. Therefore you want to price stuff so that each “space on the rail” turns over as fast as possible while being profitable- so for example you make more money in a day selling 3 T-shirts for 4 pounds than 1 t shirt for 10 pounds ( assume that price elasticity holds so there are many more customer prepared to pay 3 than 10). This is exponentially more true for charity shops because their cost of sales is zero ( they don’t have to buy their stock) so they don’t even need to worry about gross margin. I honestly don’t understand it.

We've had 4 locally recently close down. The prices were insane.
I needed an orange top for a fancy dress outfit. An out of shape washed out primark one was marked at £4.75. Theyre £3 new !

I really don’t think they’d be in trouble with charity commission anymore than supermarkets get in trouble with lossleaders. Yes there is a duty on both to maximise profit but it can easily be argued community engagement in the long term pays off.

These are the people you are asking to purchase, donate, volunteer and ultimately bequeath a legacy.

I do think there is a funnel effect and that if a community disengages from a charity shop, due to prices then they may find donations go down (it’s more important to me that things are reused so I’ll donate books to phone box library and pass along furniture / clothes etc.) it’s hard to recruit volunteers when they feel like it’s chugging.

I think the question becomes will your legacies be effected, in the short term I’d imagine not we have an older (wealthier than their younger counterparts) population but I think in the longer term charities might struggle to coax legacies out of gen z (for example) who could be more likely to associate them with aggressive fundraising and poor operational practices (sex for food /sex trafficking etc.) It’ll be interesting to see to see what direction things head in over next twenty- forty years.

Sadly, I am not shocked to hear this.

That’s shocking behaviour. Wow.

There’s widespread misunderstanding about how charities work.

A registered charity must use its resources to further the purposes set out in its constitution and benefit its intended beneficiaries. Trustees are legally required to pursue those purposes.

So if a heart charity runs a charity shop, the shop’s primary purpose is to raise funds for heart disease research and support. Their beneficiaries are people impacted by heart disease.

The fact that people can buy affordable clothes or that goods are reused are positive outcomes, but unless poverty relief or reducing harm to the environment are part of the charity’s objects, those are incidental benefits.

If shop profits were deliberately reduced in order to provide cheaper clothing for people who need it, and that meant less money for heart disease research, they would be in trouble with the Charities Commission.

Their legal duty is to advance the charity’s purposes, not unrelated social or environmental goals, however worthwhile they may be.

It also isn’t the fault of the heart charity that people have insufficient income to afford clothes. The charities are trying to make the world a better place within their particular sphere of influence.

By blaming charity shops for high prices, it avoids asking more pertinent and challenging questions of why so many people are struggling financially right now.

Oh if only!

If a charity is mentioned in a will they will push and push and push until they get their money. Even if assets have to be sold first to release the capitalThey can add immensely to the stress of winding up an estate.

It's got to the point where many will writers will advise you not to name a charity in the will but instead leave a separate letter (expression of wish) to avoid the harrassment.

@Allergictoironing - stories like this are exactly why dh and I will not be leaving any bequests to charity in our wills - it is by no means the first time we have heard about charities being so pushy and aggressive about bequests.

We give regularly to a variety of charities, and donate to charity shops, so I think we are doing our share.

That's exactly what we’ve done. No percentages, a flat sum. Not nearly so messy.