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!

You are so right most where we are seem over priced - I give our clothes to a community charity that gives them away or sells for £1.

I have seen primark clothes with labels priced higher than original cost !

it's all about raising money that mostly goes on huge director salaries

well the first part of your sentence is right. It is all about raising money.

However if you were bothered to take 2 minutes to look at the accounts of your preferred charity on the CHarity Commission website, you'd see the second half of the statement is total nonsense.

What’s the ‘fundraising’ spend as a ratio to the real charity spend?

‘Fundraising’ = those hefty salaries we all since about.

Ie if a charity gets given £100, and gives away £5, the ‘fundraising’ costs of £95 are what they keep for themselves. In this case they would be giving a fiver to good causes and keeping 95 per cent for salaries, lightbulbs, etc..

Fundraising spend is lumped in to any overhead costs for the organisation. On the charity commission website each charity publishes how much of the total income goes on overheads including fundraising.

The big high street household name charities also all publish salary lists.

Why do you think ‘salaries’ and ‘good causes’ are mutually exclusive?

A lot of the work of charities is done by charity workers who need paying!

No no no. That is not the mn way. Charity workers should preferably not be paid and if they are paid, minimum wage only. Otherwise it’s pigs with their snouts in the trough.

@squigglesquirrel You can see no one’s said that (including me).

Many charity staff work for nothing, as volunteers.

Anything a charity spends on ‘fundraising’ is getting public money in, not giving it out to a good cause. That includes salaries and expenses for ‘fundraisers’ inc. management staff.

What people need in order to
give money to you for nothing back is proof the charity spends it on the charity’s cause. At least some of it.

A local charity to me has a good pricing policy where in a more deprived area there is a flat price for items such as £1.50 for a top etc. In the more affluent areas the prices reflect the prestige of the brand in a lot of cases (£15 for a silk Hush dress that I bought recently). I think this is a good way of doing things where the low prices help to serve the people of the local community but also recognise that people who are more affluent like a bargain and also donate better labels. I prefer shops to display tops together and skirts etc. I am not a fan of displaying by the colour of the item.

@CharityShopChic good points. My preferred charity, one of the biggest, spends 78p in the £1 on research etc. The CEO is well rewarded, but the difference made by a skilled management team means that its a hell of a lot more 78ps than could ever be raised by a few well meaning volunteers going it alone.

A charity shop I went into the other day had a book for £50. I did double check at the till and yes that’s the price. Needless to say I didn’t buy it. It was a book with flower pictures in.

We’d have sent a book of that value to our online Ebay shop, as it’s less likely to attract serious collectors in our locality. One of my fellow volunteers knows lots about books, and has identified some quite valuable ones. Our aim as volunteers is to help our shop raise as much as we can for our chosen charity.

Lots of 'big chain' charity shops rotate their stock. So it will stay on the shop floor for two weeks and then move onto another branch.

I worked in a charity shop, it was open 7 days a week and would take between £180-200 per day.

I'm in a deprived area of a city, all of our local charity shops have closed. The nearest one is now 25 mins walk plus a bus ride away, and people have stopped leaving stuff outside as it was being collected to sell at a local car boot. Its all a bit sad.

And?

If it was a very rare book it could easily be worth 5 or 10 times that - well done to the volunteer who spotted it and realised its true value to the charity. Agree though that those niche products usually do better online, but it's often worth trying to sell in the shop for a few weeks before going through the listing process.

My local charity shop is crap too. I went in a week ago and there was a small packet of vintage buttons £1. (I sew). I took it to the till and asked if they had any more? The assistant said they'd been given a large tin and she was going to decant it into smaller packets. I asked if she could bring the tin out I'd buy the whole lot? She told me no. So I went in the next day and asked how she'd got on decanting all the buttons. She told me there weren't any left - I was mistaken and I'd had all there was.. yeah right.

One of our charity shops has recently had a makeover. It was the end of the line £1 an item shop then it closed. Has reopened as a retro shop but still for the charity. It looks great, all done up and sells all the retro/vintage stuff from clothes to old games to china. Much nicer and not ridiculously priced either. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

I think it was marks and Spencer who said at the beginning....pile them high, sell them low?
Maybe charity shops should adopt that approach.
Price everything to sell, and it will sell.
There's no point in pricing an item at £2 when you can buy it new for £3, but price it at 50p and it will sell.

@Mentalpiece there are charity shops that are very cheap. There are 7 charity shops in and around the shopping centre near me. One (big chain) sells bundles of babies’ and children's clothes for £1, it sells books for 50p, regardless of condition, often pretty tatty. People who have the time (or inclination) to go through the piles of stuff can get bargains. There’s another (local) one that sells all the cheap stuff that gets sent from its other branches.

The big chain shop where I volunteer gets good quality donations, our books are pristine, our brica is washed and laid out attractively, clothes are steamed, and clean, and hung by type, ie ladies dresses, then by size. The shop is laid out nicely, and we get lots of regular customers who prefer to browse rather than rummage. IMO having different types of charity shops in one locality is brilliant, and suits different shoppers’ needs.

I volunteered in one about 25 years ago. Used bands to determine pricing & date marked labels. Things arranged by colour because sizes had changed so much between brands & times and there was an assumption that people would need to alter stuff anyway. I agree that’s v irritating!
Undervaluing donations had its own problems- people would hesitate to donate anything if it was to be sold “too cheaply” but people wouldn’t buy if it cost too much.

@CharityShopChic no it was not. And the lady didn’t know either.

The charity I work for (local) has a single charity shop. We have to drive around the county collecting donations from well-meaning supporters, only to find about half of the time they are broken, dirty or damaged items that we can't sell. But our shop manager is amazing at pricing sensibly (books £1 for 3, plenty of clothes at 50p) and rotating stock so that the regular customers who come in weekly have something new to look at each time they visit. It doesn't look or smell like a charity shop (see picture). There are many types of charity shop just as there are many types of hairdresser or supermarket, but ultimately their purpose is to raise funds for their charity.

Charities need scientists to carry out research, nurses to provide end of life care, youth workers to support vulnerable young people, carers to keep older people and disabled people safe, etc. they need support from finance staff, HR, training, safeguarding etc. all that needs to be paid for which needs charity shops and fundraisers.

If you think that can be achieved by volunteers and minimum wage employees then you are truly deluded.

@MajorCarolDanvers I think you've missed the sarcasm in this post.