17 odd donations to charity shops
Howard Lake | 6 July 2012 | Blogs
Charity shop volunteers and staff never quite know what they are going to find in the next bag of donated items. Some donated items are very odd indeed.
Every year the Charity Retail Association asks its member charities for examples of the more esoteric donations, and have even created a special category in their annual awards for the most unusual item donated.
Here are the entries for 2012:
· Cat – donated to All Aboard
· World War II gas mask – donated to British Heart Foundation
· Victorian dress – donated to British Red Cross
· Stuffed tortoise – donated to Second Chance Furniture Reuse
· 1900 Enema kit – donated to CLIC Sargent
· Bluebird Land and Water Speed Projects of Malcolm and Donald Campbell and Howard Webster – donated to Compton Hospice
· Doggy steps – donated to Dog’s Trust
· Bacon rashers – donated to Kirkwood Hospice
· Bottle opener with kangaroo scrotum attached – donated to Overgate Hospice
· A silver Freedom Casket for the Borough of Colne, Birmingham, c. 1926. – donated to Oxfam
· Pop-up Karma Sutra and toilet seat – donated to Scope
· Car – donated to Sue Ryder Care
· Camera “gun” from a Second World War Spitfire – donated to Tenovus
· 1939 telegram from Buckingham Palace – The Trussell Trust
· 13 bottle tops off laundry liquid bottles – YMCA
· Two boxes of unused condoms which read ‘do not use after April 1976’ – donated to Helen and Douglas House
· Pole dancing kit – donated to Arthur Rank Hospice
The winner was – the live cat called NikNik donated to the the All Aboard charity shop in Finchley Road, North London. Following the death of his owner, her daughter donated the cat to the shop explaining that her mother had been a long time supporter and that NikNik, although he had received all of his injections, was “not streetwise” and needed a good home.
My favourite odd donation – but that is hardly the appropriate adjective – is still the hand grenade donated to the the St David’s Foundation shop in Caerphilly in 2007. Generosity and lethal stupidity combined.
Can you do better? Have you had a more peculiar object donated to one of your charity’s shops? Share it in the comments below.
Photo: bacon rashers by Telia on Shutterstock.com
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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.