Subject: Recession hits charity shop donations?

Hi

Yes I run 6 shops for Age Concern Lancashire.  We have noticed donations reducing and there are a number of reasons that we can work out. 

The value of rags has increased we are getting more for our rags than ever before from our rag merchant, others pick up on that.

We have noted bogus collectors leaflets appearing in our areas. We have contacted trading standards as they falsely cite that donations are made to charities (us included - nothing received) but they don't leave any contact information.

We have also had problems where local councils have sold contracts to companies to collect rags etc, from households it helps the Councils achieve thier recycling targets but doesn't help charities raise money. 

We have also noted larger charities becoming more agressive with their stock collection campaigns widening their areas of collection and becoming more frequent. 

We are recruiting volunteer collectors to help compete with the aggressive collections strategy of larger charities and also looking at other methods of achieving stock.  We are able to move stock around between our shops as some shops fare better than others, we also have poster, leaflets and press releases out.  Any events in the area are also and opportunity to promote the charity and ask for stock. 

If anyone has any other ideas I would be grateful to hear them.

Hi Deborah, sounds like you have put lots of effort into working out what is going on and are taking positive steps to tackle the situation. Hope this is starting to pay off.

Are you finding the Trading Standards are helpful when you are reporting the bogus collectors?

Are other people finding that the market for donations is more competitive? If so, what are you doing to address this?

Speaking as an individual rather than a fundraiser, I have recently been put off donating to charity shops.  I am sure this isn't the case with you Deborah, however where I live in Leeds, we are being plagued by charity shop bags.  Everyday we receive between 1 and 3 bags, often from the same charities.  These along with all the bogus charity collection bags, have been put on my doorstep on the day of collection and have not been collected.  It makes me wonder who is carrying out these campaigns and more importantly how much it is costing.

I think careful targeting would help this cause, however some of the larger charities are just overwhelming communities with the sheer volume of requests for support.  I have taken to putting my donations in the Yorkshire Air Ambulance Collection Point at the local refuse site.

I think if it is anything like this in the rest of the country, many charity shops will be suffering.

Hi Kgrimshaw.  I think you have a valuable point there.  Many people will eventually select a charity to support and donate to them, unfortunately many will not which is where bag collections play an important part of gathering stock.

Article in today's Third Sector 'Charity shops face crisis as recession hits stock levels'. Article reports that footfall is up whereas donations are down. 

Are you experiencing this trend? If so what are you doing about it?