Do they keep donated stuff?

Miepl why not sell the clothing on eBay? Or, if you're on Facebook, why not try selling them on there (there will be loads of selling pages in your area), then give the proceeds to a charity of your choice?

I stopped using the bags for doorstep collection many years ago, after hearing so many reports of rogue collectors, nothing to do with the charity concerned, picking them up and selling the goods on.
When I donate things for charity I make sure I take them into the shop, and I always empty the bag for them and ask if they want the things. Any items they don't want, I take home, or ask another charity shop.

annep I agree with your comment. There is no problems with volunteers buying things and even getting a small discount but if they get first pick it could reduce the quality of goods on the shelves and the number of people who return to the shop. I buy toys from charity shops which I send to another charity and I know which ones are going to have good stock and which either don't or which charge silly prices.

I am sorry Telly but your report of £6 sales achieved doesn't ring true; surely this is the amount that was achieved through additional gift aid, or there was a mistake in the reporting. I shop in charity shops and know the kind of prices achievable, so this amounts to a dozen items selling for 50p each? Odd. I am not calling you a liar, just think there is more to this than there seems, perhaps your stuff was of such good quality that it was sent to another more high priced stock shop? Or sold on Ebay or to second hand shops. The problem with stories such as yours is that people like Bluebelle who work very hard and honestly on a voluntary basis all get tarred with the same brush. It is an untrue and very unfair assumption that the majority of charity shops are staffed by self-serving thieves and recovering drug addicts. Keep up the good work all of those of you who do volunteer, we would all be worse off without your efforts, however little thank and respect you get!

?thank you for your kind words Gill I have just got back from a days work I came home empty handed? however somebody ( as they do many nights ) had managed to get over our back wall and rifle through some boxes of pottery we had put out ready for going to another shop
Looking forward to tomorrow x

Telly I m afraid you have misunderstood or not read the letter correctly
charities do not send out letters of amounts that your donations have made what does happen is they let people know what gift aid has made on your goods which I think is about 25p in the pound so to have raised £6 your goods would have sold for at least £24
What a shame you didn’t understand and withfpdrew your aid to your charity for no valid reason

Oh I’m glad you explained about the amount raised letter Bluebell. I donated an almost new John Lewis desk and office cupboard that was a mistake for my room and got a letter saying £ 30 which I thought was not much but I guess it actually sold for over a hundred!

Sold for £120 Eglantine to have raised £30 gift aid

I never realised people would think we sent letters out to every donator it would mean hundreds of letters every week ??
I do hope Telly has read this and now understands

Our 2 local charity shops both support local charities and both publish how much they have raised and where the shop has donated annually. The volunteers are lovely and often say that they have tried items on and make no attempt to hide that they buy many items from the shops. IMO my donations are to help the charity so I don't mind who buys them. Also, there are so many donations daily that fast turnover is encouraged which makes for bargains and plenty of choice. There are so many things to learn as a volunteer, giftaid, sorting and cleaning, till use, card reader, health and safety, legal requirements, to name but a few, I take my hat off to them.

I have worked in charity shop. We had a bag for things which were deemed unfit for sale. Once I got something from this bag and made a donation.

It is damn hard work and a thankless task.

The shops are to raise money for the charity, other benefits are obviously providing an opportunity for people to get a bargain, and also to avoid waste. I've never volunteered in a shop but know people who have. Charity shops can't always take everything, and finding out beforehand if you have something a bit out of the ordinary for the sort of things you see in there, might be sensible. I was given some golf clubs cos I said I'd try to give them a home and asked at a shop I often take things to and was told that they found that they often hung around for a long time and they didn't have the space. I rang another nearby shop and was told that they'd recently had a regular asking if they had some, and so they'd love them. Win-win situation. Take items needing PA testing to a shop that has someone to do that not the one that hasn't. Or pass it on via freecycle if you can't and the person will come to you.
I personally have no problem with volunteers paying the price anyone else would for an item. There's only so much stuff you can actually fit in your house, clothing has to be the right size, so you're not going to buy nice stuff if it doesn't fit, and why should you have to wait 4 days before being able to buy something off the shelf or rail, when I can go in and buy it that day; that seems a disincentive to volunteering. With the proviso that it is a fair price for the item and as someone said it absolutely ought to be double-checked by someone that it is, and properly receipted. I'm sure the volunteers take advantage of going there to volunteer to take their unneeded goods so they don't need to make a special journey. Say a volunteer sees perhaps a nice tablecloth that matches her decor better than the one she's using, if she can buy it she probably will bring her old one in for sale, which wouldn't happen if she had not got a more suitable one. If something is ebayed would they not be allowed to bid on it for 4 days?

we had a bag for things that were deemed unfit for sale
What joy, a bag. We have a skip that barely lasts a month!!!
That doesn't include the scanky duvets. We send them to animal charities.

I too work in a charity shop, we do sometimes see things that we might like to buy but the manager always has to price it up first. Sometimes they are generous but without a bit of leeway I don’t think they would have any volunteers at all as we struggle to recruit people. Don’t often have the time to find anything to buy as we are always inundated with donations Have to say an awful lot of it is total rubbish, dirty or unusable. Had a bag of someone’s bills once, and dirty pants go straight in the bin, we are used as a place to offload everything

Personally, I don't care. If it's stuff I do not want, and someone else can use it, I'm glad for them to have it.

I don't think it can happen where dd lives. She frequents several local charity shops and finds fantastic bargains - really nice, good quality, nearly new or even unworn things - for relative peanuts.
Virtually all her clothes come from charity shops. Even the dress for her reg. office wedding did - she'd looked all over for something new, couldn't find anything she liked - and then found a beautiful silk dress for under £20.

I donated a very expensive coat which I didn't think my husband would miss but unfortunately he did. It had only been in the shop about 4 hours and shouldn't have been put out for 48 hours . I rushed back down to the charity shop to retrieve it and the very red faced manageress said it wasn't there and must have been sold or bagged up by a volunteer. I said why would a good coat like that go for recycling before it was put out for sale . She snapped very defensively "Madame I don't have the space" I spoke to a volunteer who I know away from the shop and he said she always blames the volunteers but it's her and that she had no idea about designer labels and often threw out Ted Baker but put out Primark. He said she often took a cursory look inside the bag of donations and put them on the recycling pile because she didn't have the space. I won't donate to that shop anymore you think you are giving something they will appreciate but they don't know the value of it

This is a very old thread revived.

When MiL died, we took her good stuff to our local Hospice. The staff couldn't even be bothered to greet us and told us to 'take the stuff round the back' where there was a huge wooden building and we literally threw the bags in, on top of hundreds, if not thousands of others. I often wonder if they've got around to opening them 10 years later.
She also worked in a Charity Shop, which I won't name and won a luxury weekend in London, first class travel and 4* accommodation - I never donated to that cause again.
I worked as a volunteer (not in a shop) 16 hours a week, for a well known organisation and we had to fund our own tea bags and biscuits - a bit disappointing when we found out the salaries of HO workers though.
I do donate clothing to a favourite shop - I've seen someone working there wearing 'my' jumper - but if her need's greater than mine, then so be it. Better than going in the bin.

Long held tradition that volunteers have first pick and I have often been in a charity shop when a volunteer on leaving their shift clutching a carrier/bin bag has spoken to the supervisor to see that they need to pay for the items they have in the bag.
I used to organise our local WI Jumble Sale - we had several volunteers that were not members and one in particular without fail used to come in to help sort in the morning and walk out at the lunch break with several bags that she said she would try on , bring back the items that didn't fit and make a donation. Don't think she ever donated anything, apart from her time, whereas the rest of us all put our hands in our purses before we left at the end of the day.

I don't know about charity shops but I do know I upset the dinner ladies dreadfully in one school when I stopped them going into the PTA Christmas fair before it was open to the parents and snapping up all the bargains for peanuts. Some teachers did the same; the donations didn't even leave their classrooms.

My friend and her husband was a regular luxury cruise traveler. When her husband died suddenly she donated a number of very expensive, barely worn dinner suits, jackets etc all cleaned to a local hospice charity shop. As she thought she wouldn’t go on any more cruises without him she also gave very expensive designer dresses and jackets to the charity all barely worn. After a few weeks she went into the charity shop and couldn’t see any of her items, she asked where they were and was told they get so many donations they don’t have time or staff to sort through them so most are sold by weight as bulk scrap material and sent abroad. She was absolutely devastated and she completely lost faith with giving anything to charity shops.

I volunteer at our hospice shop two afternoons a week. We can buy an item with a 20% discount and it is always priced fairly by the manageress. So, a small amount compared to what my time would cost if waged. Come on peeps, if you aren’t volunteering don’t have a gripe at those who do

I worked at a charity shop for 25 years as a volunteer and yes we got first choice BUT we paid the same as the person in the street and didn't receive any discount. I was fine with that as there for the cause and we had a very strict manager who didn't believe in anyone having a freebie which is quite right.
But having first pick is not a crime just a perk of the volunteering job we all did as we still paid the same as said as the customer. But I suppose each charity shop has their own policy.
Also to people who do donate and go in to see the price of their gifts, it didn't always happen they went for sale in our shop and certain shops in different area's had a call for certain items and we were all aware of this and bags in the bag labelled for example "Manchester/Glasgow shop" where they had a higher call for certain items. The driver would collect and they were sent to a central depot and then delivered to the various other shops. I saw this in action when I was offered a day to the central warehouse and found it most interesting to see how it was run and the best possible use made of donations.

Sorry meant bags in the back storage room!

It really doesn’t matter what happens to the donated items. It is stuff not wanted or needed by the person that donates.

Presumably it is thought to be to good for recycling so what else could you do with it.