Charity collection bags

meester

Any idea about these? We got one from Help The Aged (apparently) through the letterbox, in the small print it say the stuff is being collected by a commercial company which gives half the proceeds to the charity.

How do they sell the stuff? Will they get a better price than the charity shop would?

sams247

my daughter works for a charity and the collection company that has an agreement with that charity pays £3 per bag collected to the charity. I am not sure what they do with what they collect, I'm sure they make a lot more than £3. I guess its a difficult thing - at least a charity gets something, but in my view it would be far better taking the stuff you'd put in the bag to the shop, they could get more money for it that way. It isn't such an easy choice if you cant get to the shop though I guess.

lamb7994

Hi

I'm work for help the aged although this isn't an official answer.
We use a commercial company which puts the bags out and collects them and they sell it on through various ways ( can't say how as it's not for everyone to know)
We get more money then if we had our own drivers.
We use the company because in some areas we have problems recruiting staff . Also it's cheaper as we don't have to pay for :

• Vechile costs - the company have their own vechiles
• Staff costs
• Tax and Ni costs

Each bag which our own stock collector delivers to our shop costs £3 which takes onto account vechile,staff and tax/Ni costs.

So we do make more money.
If the bag is yellow/orange and black it's an official Help the aged bag.

If you can get to a shop i still recommend taking it in as there are alot of people stealing bags from the streets at the moment.


Hope this help and feel free to ask anything else

James

ahai1

Thanks for the info.

jembie

I wish they would actually come back and collect the bags when they say they will.
I always end up chucking them in the wheelie bin cos they have been sitting out there in the rain for a week.

meester

lamb7994 wrote: »

Hi

I'm work for help the aged although this isn't an official answer.
We use a commercial company which puts the bags out and collects them and they sell it on through various ways ( can't say how as it's not for everyone to know)

Why can't you say? People donating stuff want to know where it is going.

We get more money then if we had our own drivers.
We use the company because in some areas we have problems recruiting staff . Also it's cheaper as we don't have to pay for :

• Vechile costs - the company have their own vechiles
• Staff costs
• Tax and Ni costs

Each bag which our own stock collector delivers to our shop costs £3 which takes onto account vechile,staff and tax/Ni costs.

So we do make more money.

Not sure I follow that, presumably if the goods are sold in the shop they will fetch a better price than 50% of what this company can get selling them itself (do they get worse or better prices than the shop does), otherwise there'd be no point in operating the shops, and you'd pass the shop goods onto this company.

The £3 is presumably an average per bag cost of you collecting the bags yourself, but whether it's better surely depends on how much stuff is in the bag? If there's £100 worth of stuff in there, you'd be better off collecting it yourself, but if there's only £10 worth in the bag, you'd be better off getting what this company will give you.

fengirl_2

I think you will find that these commercial collectors sell the clothes for scrap value and then sort the rest of the stuff for sale or waste. Not everything which is donated to shops is saleable and then the shop has the chore of getting rid of the rubbish. As meester says, someone else doing the running around has got to be the best use of resources. After all, Age Concern (or whoever) are there to service clients, not run a recylcing scheme.
If you are donating goods to charity to sell on, I think you need to understand that they will be sold for the best price and that this is just to raise funds, not to go directly to beneficiaries. If you want your old stuff to go direct to epopel in need, then you need to donate to a charity which will do this, eg the Salvation Army - although just ebcause people are in need, they should be accorded some dignity and one should not expect them to have to accept rubbish.

lamb7994

meester wrote: »

Why can't you say? People donating stuff want to know where it is going.



Not sure I follow that, presumably if the goods are sold in the shop they will fetch a better price than 50% of what this company can get selling them itself (do they get worse or better prices than the shop does), otherwise there'd be no point in operating the shops, and you'd pass the shop goods onto this company.

The £3 is presumably an average per bag cost of you collecting the bags yourself, but whether it's better surely depends on how much stuff is in the bag? If there's £100 worth of stuff in there, you'd be better off collecting it yourself, but if there's only £10 worth in the bag, you'd be better off getting what this company will give you.

As i'm not here to give an official answer , i only work for them in their retail division. I can't say what happens to the stuff, If you want and answer write to Help the aged directly and ask them.


James

meester

fengirl wrote: »

If you are donating goods to charity to sell on, I think you need to understand that they will be sold for the best price and that this is just to raise funds, not to go directly to beneficiaries. If you want your old stuff to go direct to epopel in need, then you need to donate to a charity which will do this, eg the Salvation Army - although just ebcause people are in need, they should be accorded some dignity and one should not expect them to have to accept rubbish.

Who said anything about rubbish?

The question was about how much income the charity will get from these third-party companies, whether the clothes end up in a market in Bangalore, a recycling facility in Barking, or someone's wardrobe in Brentford is not something I'm concerned with.

One assumes there's no money in recycling per se, since they say they only want saleable clothes, not old rags, so I guess they are selling them on to be worn again.

ahai1

I thougt old rags were sold to the rag trade for recycling.

DKLS

ahai1 wrote: »

I thougt old rags were sold to the rag trade for recycling.

Most of it does, some charities licence their names and logos to the rag mills, the rag mil then pays then charity between 6-12pence per KG.

The clothes are sorted and graded, Vintage Dealers and Market traders buy some stuff, whats still wearable is shipped off to Nigeria etc, and the rest ground up for industrial wipers, mattress stuffing etc.

Ultimate in recycling, and hugely profitable business.