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6 Reasons Why You Should Volunteer In A Charity Shop

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1. It’s fun.

When I was a kid I used to fantasize about working in a shop. I imagined dressing up, looking glamourous behind the till and making eyes at cute customers. You can do all these things whilst volunteering, though I would recommend wearing low-heeled shoes, because you will not always be sitting behind a till, and don’t wear your best clothes because things do get dusty sometimes. You get to meet new people, do jigsaw puzzles to check all the pieces are there, laugh at the bizarre items that get donated sometimes, and tell customers how much you loved the book they’re buying. If you’ve worked in retail, volunteering is much less stressful.

2. It’s a relatively easy way to ‘give back’.

Altruism is good for you and volunteering is a win win, as donating your time is free. In the UK at least, there are charity shops all over the place, so there should be little travelling involved.

3. It’s work experience.

Yes, it does count as retail experience. After volunteering for a few months I got a paid job with a company that only takes on staff that already have retail experience. Even if you don’t want to work in retail, volunteering in a charity shop can provide you with experience of:

  • Customer service
  • Working in a team
  • Working for a charity/non-profit organisation
  • Answering telephones/dealing with enquiries
  • Displaying merchandise
  • Handling cash.

If you’re currently unemployed, volunteering can help fill the time gap in your CV. If you’re at school, college or university, volunteering in a charity shop can give you access to more opportunities, which I will go into in my next point. I think volunteering in a charity shop is a great thing to do whilst studying for A Levels, if you plan to go to university, as the work experience will help you get a part-time job in whatever town or city you will be studying in.

4. It opens doors to other opportunities within charities.

Why would you want do this? Well, lots of the big UK charities offer internships in their head offices, and if you’ve volunteered for them before, it shows that you are really interested in and enthusiastic about their work. Even if you don’t want a charity internship there are other perks. For example, Oxfam runs a scheme for volunteers to steward at several big UK music festivals – which means free entry, separate camping, and food in return for work – and people who already volunteer for them (ie. in shops) get priority.

5. You get first look at the donations!

Now this is a bit of a controversial one. Every now and then I hear or read people saying that they don’t think it’s fair that volunteers get first pick of the donations. Well, how else is it supposed to work? Should we put items out on the shop floor for a certain amount of time just to sit and collect dust before anyone is allowed to buy them? Why should customers have more of a right to the things we sell than volunteers? In a non-charity shop the staff would be allowed to put aside and then buy anything they like. If a volunteer decides they want to buy something before it goes out, great! That’s money to the charity and space on the shop floor for something else to occupy instead.

6. Your expenses are usually paid.

That’s travel, and lunch if you’re there all day. One more meal you don’t have to pay for, and it means volunteering doesn’t actually cost you anything.

Have you ever volunteered? What did you enjoy about it? Did it help you get paid work?

How To Donate To Charity Shops (an insider’s guide)

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After reading the title of this post, I’m sure most readers will be thinking ‘I know how to do that, you get a bag, put donations in, and leave it to be collected or drop it off at the shop’. Well, prepare to be educated! I have been volunteering at a local charity shop for the last two months and I am going to tell you how you can put in a little extra time and thought and make your donations much more valuable to the shop you donate them to.

There is a lot of work for volunteers to do in charity shops – we have to sort donations, work at the till, put items out on display, price items, clean, organise, steam clothing, alphabetise books, and bag unsaleable items to be sold to recycling companies.

Sorting donations is always our top priority because we don’t have space to keep unsorted donations in bags, and we want to get the best things on the shop floor immediately, but unfortunately it is the most time consuming task. One afternoon I spent almost my whole four-hour shift sorting a couple of bags, whereas last week I spent the same amount of time steaming nearly two racks worth of clothes. As anyone who has ever volunteered or worked in a charity shop, or watched the first episode of Mary Queen of Charity Shops will know, we get some really crappy donations. Stuff that is useless, broken, unsellable. We also get some amazing, good quality donations, but they are often mixed in with the rubbish.

Obviously we appreciate all donations, pretty much everything we get will be sold, if not on the shop floor then to recycling companies, but if you want to help us maximise the profit made for our charities, there are a few, simple, not very time consuming things that you can do to reduce the time we have to spend sorting and otherwise dealing with items that cannot be sold.

1. Do the research

Make sure that the shop you are donating to actually accepts the items that you want to donate. My manager had to turn away a large donation of bed linen because we are a very small shop and don’t have the space to display it. Another charity shop in the same street as the one I volunteer in doesn’t take clothing donations as it is an even small shop than ours, they only take books, cassettes, CDs, records and bric a brac.

Most charity shops do not take electrical items, because they have to be tested by a qualified PAT tester before they can go on sale. The shop I volunteer at does take electrical items, because we have someone to test them for us. All you have to do to find out whether the shop can take electrical items is ask! If you don’t regularly pass by the store and they are part of a large charity with its own website, you can look up the charity online and there should be a section for stores that lists addresses and phone numbers.

There are also other items charity shops cannot sell, for example, anything that can be used as a weapon, which includes metal knitting needles! Here is the British Heart Foundation’s list. You are better off finding a new home for things that are in good condition but can’t be sold in shops by using a local e-mail list or putting an ad in your local paper.

Charity shops also won’t sell games and puzzles with pieces missing, we have to check through before putting them out to make sure all the parts are there, so make it worth our while!

Charity shops usually have deals with rag collectors, and at the shop I work at, the vast majority of the items we can’t sell on the shop floor can still be sold to recycling companies, we very rarely throw anything away. But our shop seems to be a bit of a special case, on Mary Queen of Charity Shops one of the shops that was featured had to spend a lot of money having unsaleable items collected by the council and taken to landfill. If you don’t have time to ask, it is best not to donate unsaleable items – except clothes – and to put them in your own bins.

2. Inspect clothing

If the clothes have stains or holes you are not willing to repair yourself, or otherwise look very worn, charity shops won’t be able to put them on the shop floor, but they can sell them to a rag collector and make a few pennies per kg. You can save volunteers time sorting by putting them into a separate bag and writing “rags” on it. They will still check through it but it will be a lower priority.

Please make sure the clothes are clean. If they have any marks on them, even marks that are obviously not stains and would come out in the wash, they will probably end up in a rag bag. Very few charity shops have washing machines on the premises.

However, clothing donations don’t need to be ironed! Charity shops usually have irons, at least, in the shop I volunteer at we have a steamer. After being folded in the bag they will need to be ironed or steamed anyway, so don’t worry about making sure they are pressed.
3. Don’t think too small

Most charity shops don’t have the space to take large items, like furniture, on a regular basis, but often they can take one or two, just ask. The shop I volunteer at had a chair, several mirrors and a bookcase when I last went in.

Large organisations that run charity shops often have specialist shops that do take furniture. Check out their websites to see if there is a store near you. Here is Oxfam’s list.
4. Don’t think too big

One of our biggest sellers is jewellery! We have lots of bangles and ‘karma beads’ -remember how every teenage girl in the UK had those back in the early noughties? They’re taking over a charity shop near you right now!

Make sure any earrings you donate have backs, and if something is real gold or silver, write a note so staff can make sure that they price it accordingly, or let someone know when you hand it over.

There are a couple of baskets by the till at the shop we work at, and we fill them with little things like yo-yos and packs of cards and marbles and keyrings (and a few karma beads of course). People often pick up these items whilst they’re waiting.

Make sure they get to use in good condition and wrap them in a couple of bags or tissue paper, or put them in a box.

5. Have a look round whilst you’re in the shop!

Obviously if you’re donating using one of those sacks that get put through your doors and not visiting the store this is irrelevant, but if you are coming in, take a look round! Charity shops have loads of great stuff, the cardigan or scarf or hat of your dreams could be awaiting you!

Coming soon: How To Shop At Charity Shops/Thift Stores (an insider’s guide in three parts)