To feel a bit peeved that the charity shop

[Lightshines]

creamed off the best stuff before the shop customers got a look-in?

I was browsing yesterday and overheard two staff members sorting out a box of donated goods. Lady 1 said 'oooh I will have that for the tombola at ......' And Lady 2 said 'this DS will be ok to put on EBay' and put the items aside.

I know when people give goods the aim is to raise money, which I guess still happens. But I felt a bit cheated somehow. AIBU?

I think YABU. If their professional opinion is that something better could be done with the donations, then I think they should be able to do it.

It depends whether it's for personal gain or for raising badly needed funds for the charity.

If the tombola and the eBay account benefit the charity then that's fine. It's up to them to make top profit for the charity.

yabu as long as they are trying to get best value for the charity

DS works in a charity shop, and any stock that is identified as having a higher retail value than normal shop prices goes to a different location. This is a wealthy area; the book section has had some very valuable donations, the jewellery and china sections have had donations that they've sent to auction that have raise hundreds. All of the money is tracked and returned to the charity.
So YABU and forgetting the main purpose of the charity.

Yabu my nan volunteers in a charity shop and she does this so they can maximise profits for the charity

Mmm. I did think I was BU.

I suppose people donate goods to the charity, and the shop is the easiest place to do that.

It does explain why there is rarely any good stuff in the shop, though.

I wonder how much money is actually raised from the good stuff if it's creamed off. I know someone who volunteered in a charity shop and they could pay £10 a week and that could cover anything they fancied that week. Seemed a bit odd really when she would come home with allsorts for just £10.

Please name and shame the "all you can eat for £10" charity shop! That's terrible

I have also overheard staff talking about purchasing things themselves before they make it onto the shop floor. It did feel a bit weird to hear them say it and I did wonder how they decided on a price for the goods that were benefitting themselves.

Charity shops charge waaaay too much nowadays. Surely better to sell more cheaper items than over price them and have folk walk away

If by 'creamed off' you mean it was personal gain then YANBU, but what you described sounds like the shop maximising revenue for the charity so in that case, YABU.

I saw an advert in a branch of Oxfam asking for volunteer help from someone who had good knowledge of eBay so they probably thought that was the best way to maximise their profit on the DS.

Well I've never volunteered in a charity shop and while this feels a little unethical as nobody's policing the accuracy of the pricing, I just assumed getting first dibs on things as long as you are paying the fair price is one of the perks of the job. Obviously inaccurate pricing is a form of theft and different. Hard call, presumably taking away this perk would lead to a decline in volunteers.

As long as the money raised is going to the charity I don't have a problem with it. I know when I've made donations in the past I've made a point of saying 'this X is worth quite a bit' as I hate the idea of a £100 top being priced at 50p when the charity could make a lot more out of it. I once saw an extremely expensive wedding dress in a charity shop window (label clearly showing-we're talking worth thousands and thousands) and was horrified they were charging something like £50. I went in and told them so they could think about eBaying it or selling it another way but the volunteer I spoke to didn't seem bothered. Next time I passed it was gone so I guess either they did decide to sell it in another way or someone got the bargain of a lifetime and the charity missed out on hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

I know of charity shops where they have experts who come round to value ceamics, clocks, jewellery, that sort of thing, to ensure they make the most from it. Not all charity shops have stuff good enough to be in a locked cse, though! Others, like Oxfam, send valuable bits, like some books, to their specialist shops.

It does explain why there is toot on the shop floor then. Yes of course they want to maximise profits, but if there's nothing good people won't come.

eat seems fair enough to me, that policy.
I don't volunteer and I appreciate the people that do it, if they're getting a small benefit but the money's still going to charity there's no issue.
I see lots of great stuff in our local charity shops, especially kids stuff.

'oooh I will have that for the tombola at ......'
Tombola could have been raising money for the charity. Many charities do participate in local events as fundraisers.

'this DS will be ok to put on EBay'
2 of my local hospice type charity shops sell decent stuff via ebay. They rightly want to raise the maximum possible for the goods donated and if a DS will raise only £30 locally with a poor local economy it could well raise £50 on ebay.

Yabu.

In the charity shop I volunteer in all goods have to be priced up as normal before a volunteer is allowed to purchase them. Any items that may be of extra value are checked against similar items on Ebay, etc and we have local contacts who we can ask to look at i.e. vintage items, cameras, etc. Anything that is metal that hasn't sold is taken to a scrap metal dealer, any clothes not suitable to be put on the shop floor are sold for rags. Everything is done to maximise profit for the charity whilst keeping items within a reasonable price for customers. To be honest, if volunteers are paying the same/full price for items that customers do, I don't have a problem with them buying things when they come in. Some ladies I know volunteer up to 25/35 hours per week in our shop providing many valuable hours for the charity.

Charity shops' job is to maximise income for their charity, and yes many operate on eBay as a way if doing this. It's good sense - it makes the item available to the widest possible audience and gives the charity the opportunity to get the greatest price for the piece.

Charity shops get a lot of stick IMO - they do a brilliant job in often challenging circumstances and raise a lot of money for many good causes.

I used to manage a charity shop and we'd do this from time to time - as others have said, it's about maximising profit for the charity. I also used to let my volunteers have first refusal on items - at what I judged to be their full/maximum value - as a kind of thankyou for volunteering. The way I saw it, we wouldn't make any profit at all without their hard work, so they deserved to be allowed to purchase something they wanted without having to wait and see if it sold to a customer first.