# Britons collect £54 million in loose change each week…

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/09/19/britons-collect-54-million-loose-change-each-week/
- Published: 2008-09-19T10:52:58+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

That’s an attractively large sum of money, yet very little of it finds its way into
charity collection boxes.

Although 59% of people save their coppers and loose change in jars, bottles and 
moneyboxes, only 5% of people give away their spare change or drop it in a charity
box, and only 4% give it to their children.

Those are the findings of a survey for moneysupermarket.com.

## Advertisement

In total, the British public stores £2.8 billion of loose change in bottles and 
moneyboxes every year.

The figures are derived from an online poll of 2284 UK adults between 13 and 17 
of June 2008 carried out by Opinium. Results have been weighted to nationally representative
criteria.

So, how do fundraisers persuade their supporters to release some of this change 
to benefit charities? Any ideas?

www.moneysupermarket.com

 * **[SAFE’s guide for street collectors](https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/09/19/safe039s-guide-street-collectors/)**(
   19 September 2008)
 * **[Worlds Biggest Coffee Morning – Macmillan Cancer Support](https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/10/02/worlds-biggest-coffee-morning-macmillan-cancer-support/)**(
   2 October 2008)
 * **[Mrs Bean: Turquoise Reader 1 (Rigby Star Independent)](https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/10/05/amazon-240/)**(
   5 October 2008)

## Comments

### By: KeithGrinsted

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/09/19/britons-collect-54-million-loose-change-each-week/#comment-3272
- Published: 2008-09-19T20:02:23+01:00

when Post Office Counters was the single largest handler of change.

That has steadily changed as Post Offices have lost various parts of their business
to online provision.

You could always take a bag of change in to the PO and they’d cash it up into notes.

The biggest issue I guess is what you do with all that loose change nowadays. It
is too heavy to put in your pockets, you can’t easily get the bank bags you used
to, carrier bags are going out of fashion….

Supermarkets often have the loose change machines (and great fun they are for the
kids) but I have even noticed them declining of late.

So perhaps charities should provide a service through their shops? Although there
is then the issue of them carrying volumes of cash and the security problems.

Keith Grinsted
 07841 312711 [kgrinsted@premiercontact.co.uk](https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/09/19/britons-collect-54-million-loose-change-each-week/kgrinsted@premiercontact.co.uk#comment-3272)
Premier Contact Ltd …making your voice heard!

[http://www.premiercontact.co.uk](http://www.premiercontact.co.uk)