Free service helps charity shops turn non-saleable items into income
Melanie May | 25 March 2021 | News
Vintage Cash Cow for Charities, a free service that helps charities turn their unsold and non-saleable donations into income for their cause, now has over 2,000 charities registered.
The service accepts a wide variety of items from jewellery, watches and small clocks, cameras and accessories, to pre-decimal and foreign currency, medals, militaria, and toys, in any condition, even broken, damaged or with missing parts, and repurposes and rehomes all the items that are purchased.
Since Vintage Cash Cow launched its charity shops’ service, it has bought over £200,000 of unsold and non-saleable donations. It also has a metal price promise, which pays a guaranteed minimum of £1per kilo for non-precious scrap metals such as brass, pewter, copper and silver plate.
Charity shops wanting to find out more can fill in a contact form on the website and they will receive a phone call to answer any questions about the service. Shops receive a welcome email and have a charity pack posted out to them, which includes a product brochure, posters and flashcards, showing which items can and can’t be accepted.
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Boxes of items can weigh up to 30kg and the service provides free and insured home collection or Post Office drop off.
Garry Wilkinson, head of Charity Partnerships at Vintage Cash Cow, said:
“It has been some time coming and impacted, of course, by lockdown of the charity shops for a significant part of 2020. However, the great news is that we now have over 2,000 charity shops registered to use our free service and we are looking forward to working with them once again when shops reopen. We also have several trials ready to launch with national charities in the forthcoming months. I feel confident that, before too long, we will be celebrating 3,000 shops and even more, as charities recognise the need to replace as much lost income as possible through easy, accessible means.”
British Red Cross is one of the charities recently signed up to trial the service once its shops reopen. Alexandra Ehlen, British Red Cross stock generation and gift aid manager, added:
“We have recently decided to start using Vintage Cash Cow as another way to raise money from items that cannot be sold in British Red Cross shops, helping to further reduce the number of broken pre-loved items that may otherwise end up in landfill. Money raised will support our life-changing work to support people in crisis. Vintage Cash Cow has been really informative and supportive in getting our shops set-up ready to start sending in boxes of items once they have reopened. We are looking forward to working with them on this initiative.”
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.