200 charity shops closing (cancer research)

[lebopbop]

AIBU to be sad about this as a charity-shop lover?

I don’t have a nearby cancer research shop but lots of other charity shops and I’m worried this is signalling a general trend :(

I do like Vinted etc for pre-loved clothes but it’s so much better to see things in person, be able to try on and not pay postage. It’s also just fun to go and rummage.

I love a charity shop but recently prefer Vinted. I have about 5/6 charity shops near me and I used to love spending a couple of hours in them but when it started to be half used candles and £10-£15 for clothes that were overwhelmingly M&S I just stopped going so much tbh.

Edit - my exception is the one that deals mainly in furniture and books. They're known as the one to give your books to and they do 3 for £1 on fiction regardless of how old or new the book is. The only exceptions are classics and big series.

@ShanghaiDiva

Exactly. If I want to buy a book from the bookshop I volunteer in, it's not because I perceive them to be high quality, it's because the book itself is of a genre, or on a subject, that interests me.

There are books I've bought that have arguably been in a little poorer condition than some other books, but I've bought them because I want those ones in particular, NOT the 'better quality' books.

I put out a number of science books of high quality (many were basically like new) on the shelves at Oxfam last week. I didn't buy a single one, because reading them would bore me to tears.

I volunteer and receive 25% staff discount and I buy very little- books which I read and donate again, the odd item of clothing for Dd.
Volunteering in a charity shop actually deters me from buying things: I don’t need that much ‘stuff’.

this Information is readily available eg
https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes
over 70p per pound for BHF.

@ERthree

It depends on what you mean by "very little to the cause" but Oxfam states on their website that 80% (80p for every 1 pound) goes to the cause. That sounds like a more than reasonable amount to me.

Unless you think that charities are being dishonest about how much of the money goes to the cause...

I don't disagree that, especially in this economic climate, some charities could consider lowering prices a bit. But not to the point where things are being priced exceptionally low - over time, that would prove detrimental as well.

I think it's a worry that the item won't get its full value. That might be my ignorance of the pricing process in charity shops.

E.g. I sold a pair of used Spanx leggings for £60 on eBay. I don't think it would fetch that in a charity shop.

Then I can decide where to donate my money, i.e. directly where most needed.

There are lots of charity shops in the town I live in. Cancer Research charges way, way more for their items than any of the other shops. I’m talking £50 for a bobbly Primark coat, or £9 for a pair of Peacocks jeans. Erm no thanks!

Other charity shops seem to manage without being so greedy, so it’s no surprise that Cancer Research shops are not selling stock and therefore closing!

We do sell stock online if we believe we won’t achieve the ‘best’ price for that item on the shop floor.

@nomas

Thanks for explaining, that makes it make a bit more sense and sounds more understandable.

I would imagine the pricing process may vary in charity shops, and also depends on the experience of the volunteer - where I volunteer, we're told to use Ebay prices (the lower end) as a guideline for pricing items that need to be looked up. If an item is thought to be valuable we're always encouraged to look it up on Ebay, as well as Addall and Amazon, sites like that.

That makes sense, thanks.

And I do think there should be perks for volunteers.

Have you checked whether your kerbside recycling takes textiles? Ours does, I just put them out in a white plastic bin liner.

I've mentioned it before in another thread, but a donated book that I wanted to buy had to be looked up on Ebay (a book about Icelandic sorcery) and it was priced at £40.

But looking up eBay prices… On eBay you have potentially a worldwide market. Pricing something aspirationally in your charity shop in, say, Bedford, relies on a person happening to walk in and saying, “Gosh! The very limited edition Toby jug I’ve been searching for!”

Pulling things out to sell online (recently deleted thread in which employee was bemoaning their redundancy) leaves stores depleted of decent stock so people won’t bother going in there. Putting a Ming vase in for separate sale is one thing, but not every reasonable item.

Also dh knows a bloke who travels charity shops and prices up their vinyl in return for first dibs. No wonder all that’s left is Richard Clayderman and Mantovani!

I have donated to a local hospice shop, some very good quality clothing that was becoming too small.

I walk past the same shop relatively often on the way to the train station, and spotted one jacket I had donated in the window at £125 I had bought it about a year earlier for £175.

A few weeks ago headed to the train station I saw a member of staff come out of the same shop with some items and dump them outside the charity shop next door, it was around 08:00 in the morning.

I'm reluctant to give stuff to charity shops now having seen that.

What percentage of the taking does a charity shop have to give to the charity for it to meet the criteria of a charity? Thinking mostly of local small charities.

I have a friend who work for a charity and they sell stuff on Facebook and other places and gives all the £ to the charity. I can't remember if they flag it's for a charity or not.

Someone once told me you only have to give a percentage to the charity but that was a few years ago.

I think their slogan "cancer, we're coming to get you" didn't help. Think about it: who wants to "get cancer"? Double meaning gag, probably deliberate (the sort of thing they pay their bright sparks vast amounts to think of), but it doesn't make me want to support them.

And yes, charity shops are losing out to Vinted, and probably lockdown as well. My small town went from six charity shops to two in 2020, one of which is now only open a couple of days a week. Charity shops are also not cheap to buy from any more, as others have said.

This. If I can’t easily donate it, it’s better for the environment to throw it rather than drive around looking for somewhere.

I think charity shops have had their day - it’s all Vinted etc now.

I honestly think in the past there have been too many charity shops in the high street and frankly I can't tell one from the other apart from the name on the front. In more recent times they're just full over over-priced tat so I'm really not surprised.

They are too expensive. I donated something and saw it was being sold for more than the price I’d paid for it new. The one near me sells random bits of crockery for £10-£20. I never shop in them now.

CR closed the one near me a month ago.

Charity shops since Covid are charging too much for stuff. I remember seeing a Primark top which still had tag on it £4. CS wanted £5!

A pair of worn out Nike trainers with sole coming away, £12!

Some CS don’t sort of their donations. Saw a guidebook to Yugoslavia earlier this year and Good Pub Guide 1996.

In Leicester, one of the tips has a charity shop within it. So doing a clear out, you could donate the better stuff to the CS and take the broken, past its best stuff at the tip in one visit

The CS is a bit messy but get some right bargains

@MaturingCheeseball

"Pulling things out to sell online (recently deleted thread in which employee was bemoaning their redundancy) leaves stores depleted of decent stock so people won’t bother going in there. Putting a Ming vase in for separate sale is one thing, but not every reasonable item."

If it was every reasonable item being sold online, then of course, that would be silly, but in my experience, it's not that. (Perhaps some other shops do indeed take online selling to extremes, but I can just speak for my experience - that certainly shouldn't be the case.)

Generally, we can put stock out on the shop floor for £50 or less and we have a valuables cabinet for books that are more valuable than that. Of course, our valuables cabinet has limited space. But my point is, it's not every reasonable item that WE (meaning my specific shop) restricts to online selling. I put out books on the shop floor that I've priced at £20 or £30.

For some unknown reason, I seem to buy more clothes if they are put in sizes, not colours. Even with those CS that display clothes by colour, I avoid colours that I don’t like - white/cream and yellows/orange.

@narkyspirit

"A few weeks ago headed to the train station I saw a member of staff come out of the same shop with some items and dump them outside the charity shop next door, it was around 08:00 in the morning."

They shouldn't have left them outside the shop before it opened, that's not on. A lot of charity shops don't want stuff left on the doorstep outside of opening hours, as it can lead to the items getting damaged.

That said, there's nothing wrong in principle with a charity shop giving donated items to another charity shop. Some shops aren't allowed to sell specific items. Or, it could be that they think items might sell better at another shop - or perhaps they've already been out for sale for a number of weeks. If, after a certain amount of time, the stock hasn't sold it gets culled and sent for recycling - but may get taken to another shop to see if it has a chance of selling there.

I volunteer in a bookshop, but we sometimes get given bags of clothes, which we don't sell. So we'll take those to a general-purpose Oxfam shop.

Its very easy for ordinary people to sell their own things online for a few quid now, plus less people can afford not to do that. Then loads of what people buy simply doesn't last, the quality is poor.

So you end up where people are usimg the charity shops to palm off their low value rubbish, it costs the charity to process but doesn't raise any money.