CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME...IN YOUR WARDROBE (General Charity Shops)

Member Name: jojopillo

Product:	General Charity Shops
Date:	18/03/09 (318 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: EVERYONE WINS

Disadvantages: GOVERNMENT STILL WANTS TAX

In my time I have been a customer, a volunteer and a manager for Barnardo's, so I have been able to see different perspectives on how this business works. I would like to share some of my experience for you to gain a better insight into this most fascinating of high street sectors.

Firstly I must say what a great idea charity shops are. For us to give unwanted items and for those to be turned into a useful financial donation is a fantastic thing, I think you must agree.

Common misconceptions
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One of the biggest complaints I have heard from people is the prices that are charged for 'second-hand' articles which 'cost the shop nothing'. Now as a customer I used to have a very similar outlook. It does seem a bit of a liberty to pay £5 for a pair of jeans that were given for nothing; and it's not like they're new or anything! This seems a fair point.

Well, my eyes were opened wide after I first became a volunteer at my local Barnardo's. You know when that charity bag comes through the door and they ask you to leave it out on a certain day? A driver is paid to go round the area distributing these and collecting them a few days later. This is known as a 'trawl'. When the trawl is complete (by the way, the driver will often put out 500-1000 bags and receive normally 80-120 back) the trawl costs the shop, on average, £80. Therefore each bag collected probably cost between 75p-£1.00. Bearing this in mind my first point would be that the items are indeed paid for by the shop in advance.

Now, processing a trawl can be one of the most enjoyable things you can do. It's a very strenuous job and needs a keen eye, a good knowledge of clothing brands and a strong back! You untie the knot on the first bag and find it's full of clothes somebody's husband has been using to do his painting and decorating jobs in for the past 3 years, some jeans , an old pair of trainers and a couple of lumberjack shirts. None of which are sellable; but the thought was there and the fact that they gave it was a nice thing to do and was done with the best intention. If I could just add at this point that even if it not saleable then it is bagged up as rags and the shop still receives about 18p per kilo for them, so nothing goes to waste.

I think it is a common myth that charity shops wash clothing. If clothing is dirty it can only be ragged. Only good quality, clean clothes are sold.

Ok, let's get back to the trawl. Out of the 100 bags (average trawl) only about half will be clothing. The rest will be bric-a-brac, toys - some toys can take up a whole bag on it's own - vinyl records, cassette tapes, reader's digest hardback books and many other types of what is known as 'Hard Goods'. So out of the 50 bags of clothing you may end up with about 10 bags of good quality saleable garments, the rest will unfortunately be rags. Sadly, many of the hard goods tend to be of little value or come broken, chipped or in some other way damaged, pieces missing etc. So, as you can see, the original £80 spent on the trawl has not harvested nearly as much as you might have imagined.

'Why should I pay £5 for this top when I can get one in Primark for less?'
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This is also a very common question, and one I used to ask myself, I might add!
The reason that top is five pounds is because it's a beautifully made Marks & Spencer top and probably cost £50 new! THEY DON'T SELL M&S CLOTHING IN PRIMARK. So what they are saying is that they can get a 'top' in Primark for less than a fiver, but leave out the fact that the top in their hand is actually M&S. You see what I'm getting at? When pricing an item I would always keep it between 10-15% of the original price e.g. a £50 item would sell for £5-£7.50 depending on quality, which is still a bargain price!

I know, for a lot of people, there is a stigma attached to going to charity shops but unfortunately some people can't afford stigmas. For some people it's the only place they can afford to buy top quality clothing. Their budgets simply could not cater or justify £100+ on an item of clothing. Yet it is possible at a charity shop.

'Charity shops have become to greedy'
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In general these shops only pay the manager and one part-time assistant (to cover the manager's days off). The rest of the staff are purely volunteers. Charity shops do not receive special discounted rates for rent, business rates, electric, gas, water, property maintenance and all the other overheads I could list. Their employees are taxed in the same way as everyone else. All these things have to be paid for before a profit is made that can benefit the charity. None of these costs, as you can imagine, have ever gone down over the years, and as a consequence there may seem to have been an increase in some items. You have to remember that if these items were grossly overpriced then no-one would buy them, which is not the case. The branch of Barnardo's where I worked made about £20,000 clear profit for the charity in a year; I would hardly call that greedy!

What you have to remember is when you buy something from a charity shop you are not only getting something you want, you are helping that cause too.

It is a testament to the hard work and devotion of the volunteers and managers that when you walk into one of these shops it is actually set out like any other shop. All items are departmentalised; the place is pleasing on the eye and easy to shop. There are nice displays of shoes, bags and outfits, and yet it's easy to forget that everything you see came out of a bag which was donated by some random person in some random street and brought together by the staff and volunteers into something you would part with your hard-earned for.

Barnardo's is very dear to my heart. I saw the good that this money was able to achieve. It is for children and it is for UK children where poverty unfortunately still exists in this country.

So when you go to a charity shop, don't gripe, just think of the good you're doing. I'd much rather the profit from a purchase I make go to a needy child than a rich corporate fat-cat. And if you're one of these people who couldn't bear to be seen in a charity shop and would rather buy your clothes straight from the designer boutique, then the least you could do is donate them once you've had your wear out of them, that would be just as good!

For more information on some of the great work Barnardo's do you can visit their website http://www.barnardos.org.uk

Summary: A GREAT WAY TO DONATE!