If I ran a charity shop....

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.....I think I'd do a better job than our local one.

They are rarely accepting donations as they have too much stock, but when you go in its the same stuff that's been there forever as its hugely overpriced and most of it is tatt.

The donations of potentially good stuff are given in elsewhere, and the shop cling on for dear life to their junk.....a Primark tshirt for £4, or a single toy car for £1.

As well as making money for the charity I always thought another aim was to provide the community with affordable stuff. Not in this case. If I were in charge I'd do a huge sale, 50% off everything for the next week, and get things moving. I volunteered to help for a few hours a week but they don't need me....Damn!

We have a Cancer Research shop where nothing is over £3. The books are all 50p too, whereas the Oxfam and BHF shops are £2+ each.

The CR manager has been there for years and told me they sell around 1400 items per week - now that’s a way to shift stock and a business model that’s working for that particular branch. The stock is all good stuff too so it’s not like all the crap gets sent/donated there to sell off at clearance prices.

I used to volunteer at a charity shop and asked about the putting out by colour rather than size thing - it’s to cover the fact they don’t get a regular wide range of sizes. Some months they’ll have loads of size 16 and above, next then all size 6&8, arranging by size means constantly having to completely rearrange the store to allow for now there being lots of one size and not much of another, or regularly having half or more empty racks. This did make sense when you have to fill the space and only have enough volunteers to sort the donations or rearrange the shop, not both.

Oh and the shop I used to volunteer at had local chains - so stock would go out (priced depending on which shop it was from), with a different coloured dot on the price label, it would stay out for 2 weeks and if not sold, would be collected up, bagged up and sent to another shop for the same charity in a more deprived town, where they didn’t get as many donations. They would move on stock after 2 weeks to a 3rd shop that didn’t get many donations as well, think that was the end of the line so they’d either discount or put in scrap bags after a few weeks. (The shop got paid for scrap bags so not completely a waste).

I would ban charity shops from sorting clothes by any system other than sizes. I don’t need to see all the blue dresses in one place, I want to see all the dresses in size order.

I love a charity shop mooch. We used to have a brilliant Help for Heros charity shop on a local trading estate. It was huge and they priced to sell. I have some amazing things from there. I also donated lots of items - clothes and furniture.

There are charity shops in my town with the same old, overpriced stock every time you go in. And yes, they're asking the same for jeans that cost that new in Primark.

My local charity shops are the same. They've gotten so expensive. £6 for a primark top or £4 for a stained kids top from Asda George. Toys that are worth 20p in a rummage box are priced at £2 each. It's the same stock week in week out. And yes it also drives me mad having clothes organised in colours rather than type.

As well as making money for the charity I always thought another aim was to provide the community with affordable stuff

Bingo bongo, you are wrongo.

The aim of ANY charity is to raise as much money for possible for their charity. That means selling their stuff for as much as they can, to keep things moving through the shop and maximise profit. Most of the big charities will have a way or tracking how long stock has been out and will regularly rotate it.

But hey, what do those of us working/volunteering in the sector know? Feel free to apply for a job. Just so's you know, charity shop managers are paid barely over minimum wage. For that, you're a keyholder (the one who gets out of bed in the night if the alarm goes off), you're responsible for covering the shop all the hours it's open even though you are not contracted for that many hours, you're responsible for all the money and banking, the HR of recruiting, training, arranging rotas, all of the Health and Safety, compliance, window dressing, cleaning (charity shops do not have cleaners and yes that includes the staff loo), dealing with all the customers who complain, bitch and moan about how they could do it all SO much better.

uk.indeed.com/Charity-Shop-jobs?vjk=1828a98dd564c2b9

Yep, the point of a charity shop is to raise money for that charity. Recycling clothes, a service to poorer people in the community - these are additional benefits, but not the point of them.

if you want shops arranged by size, contact the manager and offer your time to do it, probably about 2 hours every other day to rearrange the store to cover there being now only 3 size 8 items but 2 rails worth of size 12, when yesterday there was a whole rail of size 8s and only a couple of size 12 items.

arranging by size is only an efficient use of the space they have if they are a shop that consistently gets similar amounts of the same size things.

And to pick up on another couple of points...

One of our local ones has everything for £1. It has a massive turnover of stock and is always bustling.

This requires a large number of volunteers for pricing, steaming clothing, displaying, selling, constantly. Many shops don't have that. Also by pricing a BNWT Hobbs/Reiss dress at £1 they would not be doing what they can to maximise profit.

These ones were clearly worn and a bit stained. Couldn't they sell them for 10p to genuinely help families out and get the stock moving?

Would you buy a worn and stained polo shirt for your child to wear to school? Of course you wouldn't. However limited your income. Worn and stained items would be straight into recycling where I volunteer. And we have had BNWT school clothing from a major high street retailer as a corporate donation and it doesn't sell even when you're pricing a pair of new trousers or a pinafore for £1.

but the shops could either get someone savvy to sell things on ebay for them,

Where are these "someone savvy" people? They're not beating a path to charity shops to volunteer. And even if they were, with one rickety old desktop computer in the office, listing takes ages. And while someone's listing, nobody else can access the system.

Also agree on the "arranging by sizing" - a size 12 in Next is not the same as a size 12 in H&M or M&S or a continental brand.

As nice an idea as it sounds, charity shops are not there to provide the community with somewhere affordable to shop. They are obliged to make their charity as much money as possible.

I agree that they are often overpriced though.

My friend ran a Charity shop .Was told to make as much money as possible for the Charity! Its a nice bonus if the local community find a bargain but not the aim.Another shop in town have experts in to value some items ,A nice picture of our local community was attractive ,thought I could afford about a £5/10 for it (non priced in window) No £30.00!

I stopped donating good quality children’s clothing to the local charity shop as most of it was bought by the staff (who could well afford new stuff)
I now give to a small charity who pass the clothes directly to families who need it

How very dare "the staff" - aka unpaid volunteers - pay the going rate for stuff. How very DARE they. Cheeky fuckers the lot of them. 🙄

Here we go again - volunteers steal/buy all the "good stuff". Even though for example as a volunteer I have zero interest in handbags, children's clothing, preschool toys, nick nacky ornaments, men's suits etc etc etc. But hang on! There's one of those Doulton china crinoline lady figurines which is worth £100! I'll buy/steal it because it's good stuff even though I wouldn't give it house room. Yip, that's exactly what happens.

Ours vary. There’s a big Hospice shop near me selling mostly furniture, bric a brac & kitchen items. Sadly their warehouse at the back closed but it was brilliant. Clothes 4 items for £1, beautiful coffee table books for £2, other books plus CDs/DVDs 3 for £1, gorgeous jewellery dead cheap, handbags, scarves, boxed games or puzzles 3 for £1, lovely pictures & frames, bedding & cushions etc. I was in heaven! No idea why it closed as they get tons of donations.
Some of the other shops locally are pretty good at pricing but some will charge the same for Asda stuff as a designer label.

Our local food bank has a charity shop, and they are obviously raising money, but also aim to help the community with cheap stuff.
It's all great value and they do big clear outs when overstocked. They had huge plastic boxes full of children's books for £1!

It meant they didn't have hundreds of books to sell and children could have books in their home for very little outlay.

TRAID in London is very good for this. They offer a pick up service but also move clothes around, curate and price them properly.

As far as I know they run on the same mostly volunteer system so it can be done!

My DS volunteers in a charity shop. The amount of crap he gets from customers is incredible. He also works in a cafe and apparently the charity shop seems to attract particularly odd and difficult customers. Everyone has an opinion.

Every charity shop should have a £ rail. Best one I knew, if it hasn't sold in 2 weeks, it was stuck on the £rail.
I'd also tackle the smell of damp and mould.

'How very dare "the staff" - aka unpaid volunteers - pay the going rate for stuff. How very DARE they. Cheeky fuckers the lot of them. 🙄'

But it's not the going rate. When the new price of a t shirt is £5 in Primark or Asda, the going rate for a worn £5 t shirt is about 50p, not £3 or more.

My local Oxfam puts the clothes out in colours and size order. It is simple and effective, I think.

If they shift 100 items at £1 they've made as much as selling 25 things at £4.
They get stock free and it costs money to send it to the top if it doesn't sell.

The good quality antiques need auctioning on eBay but the rest should be priced to sell.

A basket of bargains to route through. bogofs and offers. Get stuff sold.

When I worked for a charity some of the shop staff were so odd.

They resented other forms of fundraising, complained about Gift Aid and refused to throw anything away. An area manager told me about having to take VHS tapes off the shelves when no one was looking and destroy them out the back.

Still love them though, mostly for homewares. Unfortunately Shein and Primark are showing up too often.

For those complaining about their local shop - why not volunteer for a few hours instead of moaning about it! You can put your great ideas in to practice then

@FamilyTreeBuilder is correct in every single post so far. It is not the job of charity shops to provide you with cheap stuff. And they are run by a combination of volunteers and extremely badly paid staff, so if you think you can do better how about giving up some of your time or taking a pay cut to do so?

The amount of unpaid overtime my DH does puts him on less than minimum wage - he'd rather do that than the shop lose trading time when a volunteer calls in sick or have stock sit in the back unseen because no one has time to price it. Too fucking right they won't give something away for 50p when they know someone will give them a tenner for it.