Charity shop donations

[whitebunnies]

I went to donate some really good quality stuff earlier at Cancer Research. It was stuff I could have sold online but don’t have the time to. The manager of the shop was very rude and said we don’t accept bric a brac and was looking down on me.

It wasn’t bric a brac and she didn’t even see inside the bag. I said thanks and started to leave and then she was being really passive aggressive giving me nasty stares and saying some nonsense about they have enough donations so she held me up and then the bags split outside. I wish I just ignored her and left as the bags would not have split.

I had this hassle 10 years ago at the same branch with someone else there. Do Cancer Research not want to raise money for their charity? I won’t go in their again due to the rudeness of the manager.

I took my bags to Acorns in the end who were really nice and thankful.

This is something we hear a lot @Mareleine and what most people don't understand is that charities have to have charters and mission statements and answer to trustees and board members, submit annual reports and accounts and do all sorts of other compliance work. What they are spending their money on and how much their CEO is paid is all out there in the public domain for anyone who is interested enough to look.

Any charity's constitution will say what they are raising money for - and 9 times out of 10 that is not about benefitting the local community. Quite obviously, BHF raises money for research into heart conditions, RSPCA for animal welfare and so on. They are not anti-poverty charities. Now also obviously there is no point in pricing things so high that nobody ever buys them. But as a charity shop volunteer I have zero idea of the financial circumstances of the people who choose to buy in our shop and can you imagine the furore if there was some sort of rule that only people earning under £x could buy? Charity shops are not just for people who can't afford to buy new, there are many other reasons why people choose to shop in charity shops.

Seems like they’re given ‘rules’ on what they can and can’t take.

I tried to donate a bunch of toys and kids books to Barnado’s at the end of November and was told they weren’t taking toys, they’ve been told not to before Christmas. What absolute madness!

I agree op, some of the attitudes in charity shops are so rude. Sadly very few take everything these days, they are very much run as businesses.

I was in one last year and a poor woman was almost in tears the way the staff spoke to her. She had a boot of her deceased DHs things she’d finally gotten round to sorting, but they didn’t suit the shops image. There was absolutely no need for the rudeness she got, I walked out with her. She showed me what she had, she had some very sort after collectors items but didn’t have the energy to try and sell. I was able to point her to 2 shops that would happily take them.

I had this. A bag full of brand new adidas/nike tracksuits. Lots of nearly new NorthFace bits
The woman was so incredibly rude when I tried to drop it off. I sold the bits individually on vinted for well over £100.

The current model of selling everything at silly prices and creaming the best stuff off to go on ebay or Vinted is clearly faulty because the product quality and choice in charity shops has fallen dramatically. Charity shops not accepting donations because they are 'full' is a now a permanent thing and down to the fact that they are not shifting their overpriced, low-quality stock.

Of course charities are run as businesses! We have to comply with the same regulations with regard to training, health and safety, audit, accessible shop layout etc.

I give to out shops because I want to support the charity

They are rarely full round here - unless they are short of volunteers so can't open never mind process goods

They are always friendly

Because of business laws, they will not want to have stuff that ends up being thrown away as it costs them to do so

@Mareleine people do actually care about how we price donations and often say to me they hope x achieves a good price.
I am not defending overcharging and I do see unrealistic prices in some shops.
information is readily available as to how much of each £1 goes to the cause. I think for BHF it’s about 76p

Hmm. The people I know who have interactions like this are people who struggle a bit with interpersonal relations and take things a bit too personally. Might that be what’s happened here?

I think a lot of people donate to charity shops because they want to pass things on to people that need them rather than them going to landfill. I'd rather have second hand shops with that as the focus to be honest. If I want to raise money for a charity I can donate money directly rather than take the chance of my old dress selling for a decent price.

How are we supposed to find out if a random person who comes into our shop to buy something is someone who needs that particular item, or someone who has plenty of money and just likes a bargain?

I don't really care about that. I personally don't even care if the staff get first dibs on the item. I'm sending stuff to these places for them to be used again.

I prefer to sell on Vinted or ebay than give to charity shops - I've got some decent amounts in total, for things that I'd be giving away. I buy a lot from there too so the money goes into spending on the next stage for my dcs.

If I give any clothes and other items to charity I just put them in donation bins rather than wait for shop opening times and having to speak to staff. More convenient and no risk of confrontation.

For worn out clothes I cut them up and use for spills/cleaning - I'm getting some value out of it by not having to buy cleaning cloths.

I've found old baby clothes make really great cloths for wiping up stuff.

I'm sorry you had that experience at Cancer wresearch OP, but am delighted that you had a great experience at Acorns (I work for them)!
Their loss is our gain!

I wouldn't care if they gave it away for nothing. Out my house and someone getting use of it!

Why would it matter? Is selling second-hand stuff and preventing it from going to landfill not a worthwhile aim in itself? Since charities shops dominate our town centres, it's time these charities assume some social responsibility beyond their main cause.

I used our large cancer research for convenience cos I can get a taxi there, but Acorns would be my preference and I always go there if it's smaller amounts I can carry. So consider her attitude her loss, and a wonderful Charity's gain x

It doesn't matter to me one bit - but lots of posters think that charity shops have a duty to be selling stuff cheap for the "poor" or "the needy".

I think the problem is the users of charity shops, those that donate and who buy from them tend to do so for reasons that have nothing to do with donating to the charity. In other words they want a less wasteful way of getting rid of stuff or they are looking for a bargain. Raising money for charity is fine but you can just donate money straight to a charity.

@WhatNoRaisins that's kind of true.
I see them as secondhand shops who happen to send their profits to charity.
I don't shop there because I am "poor" and it's the only way I can get cheap things - I shop there because I collect various things and like to rummage.

Interesting that the OP never came back.
Is this the first Charity Shop Bashing thread of 2025 🤔

There's a charity shop round the corner from me that has signs up saying please don't leave donations outside when the shop is closed - and yet almost every evening/morning I go past, there's a pile of bags left at the door. They can't screen those donations to turn away items they can't sell, people rifle through them and steal anything valuable, stuff gets rained on or the bags ripped by foxes. And then the charity has to pay for the disposal of unsaleable waste. All because people can't be bothered to only bring donations when the shop is open, and don't care what happens to the stuff they dump outside. It's basically fly tipping at this point!

Probably and we have ticked a few of the boxes: overpaid CEOS, price everything at £1, rude staff, run like a business…
we are missing the comments on volunteers being dopey old dears who know nothing about anything, but yet still steal all the good stuff…

Selling things cheap makes sense because they sell more if it's cheap. Now that most of them have put up their prices, the same stock stays in the shop for weeks and months. If they don't want to particularly serve the local community, they should make way for thrift stores that don't exist purely to make huge profits for blown-up national businesses from donated goods.