Majority of charity shops now selling online, says Charity Retail Association
Howard Lake | 15 September 2011 | News
The Charity Retail Association reports that 56% of charity shops are now selling items online, with 94% of these using eBay. The auction site generates 76% of these charities’ online sales, compared to 60% in 2010.
The Association’s Selling Online survey 2011 confirms the growth in online retail by charities. A quarter of charities which were trading online said that it made up between 3% and 5% of their sales. Only 9% of charities reported this in the 2010 survey.
In addition to the focus on eBay, 31% of charities sell items on their own websites.
Not surprisingly 87% of charities surveyed expected online sales to increase and more than half of these expected them to increase substantially.
The survey received responses from 75 charities, which between them operate more than 4,000 charity shops.
CLIC Sargent, the cancer charity for children and young people, has 29 high street shops across the South West of England, and launched its online shop in 2006. Jeremy Lune, Head of Trading at the charity, said: “CLIC Sargent has enjoyed fantastic success with its own online shop and we have noticed, year by year, an increase in overall online sales. Over £32,000 was taken from our online shop in 2010, a 10% increase from 2009. We’re also proud of achievements made through our eBay shop, with 2010 sales accounting for £220,000, or 9% of the charity’s total retail income.”
Given the success enjoyed by so many charities, why were others holding back? Charities told the Association that it was down to not have appropriately trained staff and not having the necessary ICT equipment. Also two thirds of the charities found it difficult to fulfil of online orders efficiently.
To counter this, MissionFish UK, eBay’s partner charity, recently launched a small grants scheme to help charities tackle these barriers to online trading. They received 89 applications, of which eight have been shortlisted for support. MissionFish has also published a free guide to help charities trade online. So far over 2,000 copies have been distributed.
www.charityretail.org.uk
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.