Charity begins at home?

Apr 13, 2011

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There are 9 charity shops that I know of in our town centre. It’s possible that I’ve missed one or two down a side street, but those are the ones on the two main shopping streets. There are places where they neighbour each other, jostling against each other for your charity donations and cash.

I’ve been feeling quite good about donating to them and buying from them, but lately I’ve been thinking harder about this, wondering how it all effects the local economy. You see, very few of these shops are related to the local environment, while there is a local hospice shop, the majority of them are national or international charities. Money spent there leaves the area – I daresay several of them will have paid managers, but otherwise there aren’t even wages being pumped back in to the economic cycle.

So, is this a problem? I don’t really know. But I do know that there is little variety in our town centre. That while I am recycling clothes and keeping down our environmental impact by buying secondhand, I’m giving money to huge charities that I have no control over. Some of which have their own agendas and are less than transparent in their financial dealings.

As always, I have a choice. I can pick and choose which shops to donate to or buy from, though if I don’t want to climb in a car or travel via (somewhat expensive) public transport realistically there isn’t a lot of alternative clothes wise in this town. But I just wonder whether these big charities ought to be thinking a little more about the towns they are relying on – would it be reasonable for them to pay their workers a wage? Would improve local economies as well as the far off ones they are boosting. Does continual charity involvement actually help, or are they being an artificial crutch preventing ppl from helping themselves? (Again, it’s a question, not an accusation, don’t flame me, I already have a headache.) And do all these little shops force potential startups out of the market? There’s no space here for a little boutique or clothing exchange like those in other towns. It’s entirely possible that if one opened, ppl just wouldn’t use it as we’re conditioned to think that charity is always good.

I’m just beginning to wonder if that’s true.

It’s where it is

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Comments

27 responses to “Charity begins at home?”

Sally
13 April 2011
Wow, that’s a really interesting question. I guess it is a shame that the charity shops on our local high street are international, rather than supporting the local economy.
We do have one brilliant charity shop that supports a local children’s play park and funds new skate ramps, basketball courts and so on – I love it because you can literally look across the street and see how it’s helping the local young people and improving the community.
Great post.
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1. Jax
  13 April 2011
  Glad you liked it – was a bit nervous about posting it tbh as I didn’t want anyone to think I was just having a pop as it were. It’s just we hear so much about the local economies, and I wonder if these big charities should be a bit more responsible about how they operate, particularly in small towns.
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Tbird
13 April 2011
I’m picky which charity shops I donate to – our local hospice shop is my usual port of call and if they have no space it’s the Heart Foundation. I don’t donate to Red Cross (they get enough out of me already!) and I don’t donate to Banados (the only other charity shop on our town) I rarely buy anything from any of them as alas they never seem to have anything I like! I did pretty much clothe Aprilia on a “rental” basis from the hospice shop… it all got bought from there and all went back again once it was outgrown – I’d love to know how many babies those things went on!
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1. Jax
  13 April 2011
  @Tbird I have been donating to Red Cross, and tending to buy from there, but I’m beginning to wonder how much I really know about them. At least I can hope I’m contributing to a bit of salary for you and yours?
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Ailbhe
13 April 2011
I like using our local Mind shop, and Help the Aged, but charities are constantly in trouble over the amount they spend on internal admin including paying wages, so I doubt we’d see an increase in paid staff any time soon!
There is one charity shop nearby which is run like a “real” shop and I have a strong feeling that the staff are paid at least a bit. It’s much better to shop in than the others, which are volunteer-staffed and tiny and jam-packed.
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1. Jax
  13 April 2011
  @Ailbhe They don’t seem to have any qualms on paying fundraisers though do they? Which seems a little odd.
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Merry
13 April 2011
Ah ha! Hopefully you’ll add yourself to my “changing how you shop one basket at a time” badge-y thing I’m organising myself into :)I’ve got to work out how to do something clever y with code, but it is my new slant on my local shop/buy with small business crusade 🙂
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Merry
13 April 2011
Sorry, got distracted by some wailing. I suppose you can sort of balance up local job/empty shop against money leaving area. I’m not sure about a lot of charities really; I’ve started to support things which a person has personal involvement in, as I like the idea of that person, or the person they do it for, having some emotional comfort from it.
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1. Jax
  13 April 2011
  @Merry I’m wondering whether charity shops actually block other businesses chances though – so in our town there are so many charity shops, if all of those were empty presumably the town would be really eager to get other businesses in?
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Circus Queen
13 April 2011
Very interesting topic! I think charities should be paying those who work in their shops. They pay their telephone fundraisers and chuggers on the street so I think the only reason they don’t pay shopworkers is because they can get away with it. It’s not good for the local economy and it’s part of quite a dangerous trend, in my opinion, toward devaluing charity work by always trying to get everything for free. That said, I mainly buy from charity shops and get things off freecycle, though I’ve been known to buy from local craftspeople if I’m buying a present.
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1. Jax
  13 April 2011
  @CQ ah yes, that was the sort of thing I was thinking. I’d like to buy from local craftspeople, but I don’t know where to find them!
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Allie
13 April 2011
I like buying from and donating to local charity shops too. So they are my top choice. But I try to use any charity shop over chains that sell cheap, mass produced clothes – e.g. Primark. That’s just to re-use rather than encourage yet more production of throw away clothing.
I am a bit irritated by the recent price hike in most of the big charity shops, TBH. (Should probably blame Mary Portas but have a bit of a thing for her so won’t!) I feel there is little incentive for people to use charity shops if the second hand clothes cost pretty much the same as the cheap new clothes – e.g. paid Â£6 for jeans in charity shop at the weekend. I also think it’s really tough on people living on a very small income that a source of affordable clothes, books and toys for their children has been removed. I find that the shops supporting our local charities (community association shop or local hospital friends’ shop) have kept their prices lower.
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Allie
13 April 2011
Re. paying shop workers – I didn’t know until recently that some charity shop workers are serving community sentences in that way. (Makes me look at the kindly old women in a more wondering way 😉
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1. Jax
  13 April 2011
  @Allie I avoid the more expensive charity shops – although buying well made jeans secondhand has to be an improvement on cheapies. We struggle on children’s clothes though – basically we’ve got Peacocks or the charity shops. And I too shall look slightly askance at all the older ladies now.
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Tech
13 April 2011
It annoys me that they don’t even pay rates so they have an unfair advantage over other businesses and, as you say, pay nothing back into the local economy.
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1. Jax
  13 April 2011
  @Tech they don’t pay rates? Whyever not?
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Susan Mann
13 April 2011
I try to only donate and buy from cancer research as it’s a charity close to my heart. I do try to use local businesses especially since I come from a small town originally. I understand what you are saying and it’s a great point to make. x
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1. Jax
  13 April 2011
  @Susan I think we all tend to have a charity that speaks to us – I tend to favour the local hospice shop simply because my sister supported her local hospice shop. I’d love if we had more truly local businesses, I don’t know what to do to support them to begin though.
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Ailbhe
13 April 2011
They outsource things, so they don’t appear on the accounts as wages, so it doesn’t look as though they are channeling money internally.
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1. Jax
  14 April 2011
  @Ailbhe hm, I wonder why. Perhaps if we were expecting them to support local economies as well, that would change.
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Tech
14 April 2011
Because they’re charities, hence why you see empty shops that couldnt sustain a business being taken over by charity shops.
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1. Jax
  14 April 2011
  @Tech Sounds like an unfair advantage though, is it possible that they force other shops out?
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Tech
14 April 2011
It would seem feasible in these days where there are so many of them selling so many different types of products – many of which are new.
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1. Jax
  14 April 2011
  yeah, that rather annoys me. We’ve got ones selling jewellery, pottery, gift type items, all alongside the charity donations. Not really on.
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Tbird
16 April 2011
re RedX, basically they are okay Jax although they waste money like you wouldn’t beleive sometimes, hence why I balk at subsidising them any more than I already do. Like our new uniform. I keep thinking about having a bloggy rant about our new uniform…. They do a lot of different stuff, the first aid side is sort of a “bye line” rather than what they really do which is humanitarian stuff abroad. Most of the stuff from national fund raising campaigns goes to humanitarian aid abroad, most of the services provided in this country are done on a volentary basis (messaging and tracing reletives of refugees etc) or funded via social services (shopping for old dears and the likes). First aid is paid for by event organisers, there is a certain ammount of bickering when we provide cover for charity events (and usually we just don’t tell the paid staff we are doing them so no bill is generated and in return they usually offer us a donation as there’s no point having a charity event if you then have to pay most of it to another charity is there….)
hmm, that’s probably more information than you needed…..
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vinnivee
16 April 2011
There is a limit to how much of the shop can be new products as versus secondhand goods. Otherwise it gets classed as a regular shop and they do have to pay rates. Im pretty sure that our local Oxfam must be stretching this limit – fully half the store is new goods.
As charities have become big businesses they have been able to afford higher rents, so pushing up rent may not be the intention but it is the effect, and that is one of the reasons that high streets hardly have any independent shops anymore.
Also, the big charities collect together all the best quality stuff donated locally – books, records, clothes – and send it out of the area to richer towns who pay more. Thats why you have things like Oxfam book shops. It isnt for our convenience – they choose carefully where to set them up, as in where they can get most profit. This might work for them but it means that they drain good quality secondhand goods away from poor areas where they are most needed.
Another effect is that because they have a completely free (apart from their own transporting costs) source of books etc, that they kill off local businesses. Specialist )eg book only) charity shops set up where there is already a thriving independent new or secondhand bookshop, then steal their customers. The small business cannot compete with a shop that pays no rates and doesn’t have to pay for stock.
Charity shops and supermarkets have together created the conditions that have emptied high streets of everything except themselves, estate agents, and pubs/offlicences. I dont know if there is a way back, I suspect not, because both industries have so much power politically.
Then there is the stuff charities sent abroad. For example, charities like Oxfam collect clothes donated to their shops or the big donation banks you see in supermarket car parks etc, and sell those on in bulk to businesses which in turn reap their own massive profit by shipping those goods to very poor countries. The clothing manufacturing industry in those countries is then wrecked because they are priced out of the market. People go from manufacturing jobs to independent trading, buying an unexamined bag of clothes in the hope of turning a profit by selling the pieces on.
So charity shops cause problems for local communities here and abroad in all sorts of ways.
Independent local charity shops operate differently. They take local donations, throw little away, and dont ship in bulk out of the area, so everything stays local. They deserve support as part of the local community. Big charities only community is big business, imo.
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Mother Badger
20 April 2011
A very interesting topic. When I have time to browse, I look at charity shops for clothes for Baby Badger. We do have some new stuff that was given to us and a few things I have picked up in the sales, but I do baulk at buying new clothes that will last a few months while perfectly serviceable second-hand clothes are available and in danger of going to landfill.
We’ve made a big effort not to buy new unless we had to (car seat, mattresses), but we have been very lucky in terms of hand me downs. Obviously there’s the financial aspect, but my main driver is to try and reduce the impact my family has on the planet.
I hadn’t considered the possible impact of charity shops on local economy, but your arguments and questions are good ones. My current bugbear is the charity bags that get dropped off on the doorstep: when you read the fine print regarding how much money ends up with the charity, it’s a pitifully small amount. I guess these join the bags that are shipped to the developing world.
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