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.

Had a similar experience taking clothes to cancer research. It was all good quality stuff and good brands but it was poo pooed. I had some seasalt dresses and phase eight stuff that was unworn but i had taken the tags off.
I walked away feeling a fool and then thought, hang on, why do i feel stupid? This is ridiculous.
I think a lot of the staff in the big charity shops are incredibly rude and precious of 'their domain'
Anyway i took it about 3 doors down to a small local charity shop and they snatched my hand off for it :)

@ThisUsernameIsNowTaken
this is where the money goes…
www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/annual-report

100% agree. The shop that turned away my donation had much more ropey stuff for sale. Obviously imo!

Prices at the shop i volunteer at are competitive, lower than some of the national chains generally but we do not sell low quality items, not cheap brands like Shein or Primark so they are not ultra cheap (the charity has a clearance shop in a cheaper area which sells the cheaper volume items). Rent in a nice area is more, electricity and gas with a listed building is high and some people are paid to ensure it's open and professionally run all the time.

Charity shops are to raise money for their cause not provide items cheaply to people selling on Vinted (we can spot them checking prices!)

Charities have to buy this stock.

if you donate directly they don’t lose out on the cut to the distribution centre.

Oh good the first charity shop bashing thread of the year!

Mumsnetters always say 'I took a bag of beautiful, newly washed and pressed Seasalt/White Stuff clothes/lovely toys/tasteful bric a brac etc to the charity shop and it was tuned away'.

The reality is, and those of you on this thread who work & volunteer at charity shops know only too well ... most of what we are donated is unsaleable and charities have to pay to dispose of it. New rules are coming in as to how 'unsaleable items' are responsibly recycled and this is going to make it even harder. The rag market has plummeted and there is very little (if anything) money in recycling rags .. many companies who offer this 'service' do not dispose of waste in an ethical manner ... and yes, many of us do care about this.

Sadly many people use the charity shop as a dumping ground rather than taking stuff to the tip themselves.

And, as a PP very articulately explained further up the thread, there is no value in selling items cheaply ... it doesn't mean more volume will sell. So many people think they are 'experts' in charity retail but have no idea of the complexities involved.

Of course there is no excuse for rudeness when dealing with donations but I wish those who think they know all the answers would take the opportunity to volunteer themselves at their local charity shop.

When it comes to.aecond hand stuff, a fair price is what someone is willing to pay for it. This is not necessarily a percentage of what it might have originally cost.

Very coincidentally 🧐 I just got a SM vlog about charity shop prices.

As people said in the comments, the pricing model seems to be to look on eBay and price the same. Not taking into account that these are list prices, not sold ones, also that eBay has a huge reach, not just the people popping in a shop in a town, and - eBay has standards regarding condition (eg you have to be brutally honest about defects, wear and tear etc) whereas a charity shop will price vinyl (it’s an LP !!!!) at £5 when they haven’t checked for scratches and so on which an ebayer must do.

Also I think a lot of charity shops don’t seem to be on board with turnover - surely it’s best to lose a pound or two and make the sale rather than have an item sitting there for weeks, nay, months for fear of not getting the highest possible price. Yes, yes, I know some shops do reduce after x weeks, but frankly a great many don’t.

Whilst I totally understand charity shops exist to provide funds and 'presence' for a particular charity, I do think they have reason to display gratitude to the community they are in.

It is the community that supply them with the goods that enable their existence.
It is the community that are their customers who choose to spend their money with them.
It is the community that provide them with volunteer workers that allow them to run.
If they have discounted business rates it is the community that is paying the council tax that allows this to occur.

That said I'm not a fan of super cheap pricing or accepting everything. It is better to sell one thing for £10 than 10 things for £1 - less effort, shelf space, staff time sorting/cleaning/pricing so overall better profit.

Not here , our local charity shop has their own bins and directs people with donations to use them .

Shops get full/ and short staffed , she wouldn't have been giving you looks or stares or even a second thought. She did not make your bags split.

I mostly sell on Vinted and donate to a local kids charity shop. They take everything all year round. Donate in a carrier bags worth at a time. So don't do a mashoosive clear out and try to donate two bin bags at a time.

The high street charity shops?I'd ring ahead to see if they are accepting donations. Places like cancer research also get donations shipped in from distribution centres I think. So they are more likely to be bursting than a non chain charity

I never donate to the big ones. There is a new charity shop opening up near me that I’m donating to as they are small and not well known. They very much appreciated the stuff I handed in.

Yup, all volunteers who work in charities are total thickos who don't know that a list price and a sold price are different things.

I am so fed up of these threads with loads of people piling in to say how stupid we are, how we're only there because we can't get "a proper job" and take intense pleasure in either pricing the bobbled primark t-shirt at £20, or stealing all the "good stuff" to hoard in the attic.

Wonder if any other country has this attitude of total contempt for volunteers.

Yes, I was about to post exactly the same. The worst part is that these fly-tippers no doubt think they have done a good deed.

@CharityShopChic - the thing is, people here are your (possibly ex) customers, so it might pay dividends to listen to some of their gripes.

Given that there are so many charity shop “bashing” threads, that might be an indication that an awful lot of them are getting it wrong somehow.

i don’t think MNetters by and large are CFs looking to pay tuppence ha’penny for a designer handbag, just people pointing out that it’s daft to overcharge consistently. Ok, most donations are absolute crap so that is mostly what is for sale, but if you do get something more decent, price it decently not aspirationally!

I didn’t say it was a percentage of the cost,

Feedback is valuable, but some of the gripes on mumsnet show a complete lack of awareness regarding how this sector operates. Common gripes:
donations not accepted and if we sold everything for a pound we would sell more and take more. Donations may not be accepted due to space issues eg after Xmas and new year bank holidays we are waiting for rag and totes to be picked up - we don’t have the space to sort donations.
prices have gone up - yes,they have. Minimum wages has increased, utilities have increased, cost of. cleaning supplies have increased…why would charity shops be immune from these increases?
very little of the money goes to the cause- information on how much of every £1 goes to the cause is in the public domain. This is a regular gripe and it’s easy to see to fact check.
charities are run like businesses- of course they are! They have to comply with health and safety regulations, recruitment guidelines, audit regulations..what happens to the profits is the difference. I am a trustee of a charity and I would not be doing my job properly if I didn’t run the operation like a business.
CEOs earn too much-should they be paid less as they work for a charity? What about a shop manager? should they be paid less that staff at John Lewis or Boots? What should they be paid?
With regard to charity shop threads appearing on a regular basis, so do many other topics:
teachers and holidays
why do my neighbours have more holidays that me
how much do you spend on groceries
my take home pay is £6000 per month, but it doesn’t go as far as you think…
Then fact that the topic comes up frequently is not indicative of charity shops being poorly run.
That doesn’t mean that there are items which are overpriced or that damaged items never go on the shop floor- mistakes happen all the time in any retail operation.

lol I had a thread about this a few years ago. Lots of people told me I was out of order to expect the charity shops to be polite and say a simple "thank you" for my donations.

"They are volunteers"
"They are doing YOU a favour"

I always ring ahead to check they are taking donations on that day as it's v annoying to take stuff home again. I also use those metal clothing recycling bins sometimes, they are way less likely to be rude than most of our local shops.

It's really frustrating when you are giving them good stuff that you know they can easily sell, and you have gone to the bother and expense of driving there.

I agree that it's a sign that there is way too much clothing in the UK and this is a structural problem. Also the quality of most clothing is really poor now.

It's a fact that charity shops are frequently turning down donations when they didn't use to. Its also a fact that they are more protected from price increases because they benefit from lower business rates and don't pay for the goods they sell (apart from the new tat that more and more of them are filling their shop floors with). I went to two charity shops today and I'm sorry to say they WERE full of overpriced rags and again not accepting donations. Therefore I do think they've had their time and should go.

I'm really shocked that most stuff is unsellable, I only ever take good quality stuff in

I sent my DH with a pile of bras (all had tags on) to the charity shop the other day and the woman sighed at him. I know they take bras as I've taken them there before so I assume it's a January thing and they're all having to work really hard as it's such a busy month

this is conjecture on your part.
we only use eBay if we have an item donated and not really sure what the price point would be. You also assume we are not clear regarding condition or unaware of the difference between a list price and a sold price. Isn’t that just another way of intimating that we are all a bit dim?
ebay is a valuable resource but not our prime guideline for pricing donations.
FWIW where I volunteer we check all DVDs, cd and vinyls for scratches.

@Princessfluffy ringing ahead is definitely sensible. 😀

You would be amazed at the donations we receive:
rusty pans, clothes with holes, broken toys, clothes which stink of cigarette smoke, worn knickers, clothes with used tissues in the pockets…