Door collections: check it is a charity

kev1n3

Just to give you guys some idea of how 99% of the doorstep charity clothing collections work.

A man with a van will ask a charity if he can use there charity name and number on his leaflets on the promise that the man with the van will pay them something like 7 percent of his monthly earning to the charity. He will then put out his bags on the doorsteps wrapped in the charity leaflet, the next day he will collect them (hopefully full of cloths) he then takes them to a preferred rag purchasing company to weigh in. the average earning per week for these often unemployed man and van collectors is in the region of min £1000 per week. There are several of these man and van living in my area that travel daily to Birmingham and other big cities to put out bags. Cloths they hate are: Asian cloths because the rag purchaser can’t sell them to poor Eastern European or African countries.

My advise to anyone that want to help charities, is to give directly the charity shop and cut out the man and van getting rich of off the back of your misguided generosity.

Often the guys that deliver your bags are unemployed, pay no tax, and earn about £30 per day from the owner of the van.

Hope this helps

barjam_2

i never give to charity at my door i always tell the people that i send my donation to the charity itself, as for clothes i always take them to the charity bins in supermarkets ie scope etc.... if you cant get to them your self you could try phoning the charity up , as far as i know they will collect

edda

I don't think it is always possible for certain people who are less mobile and/or without transport to take certain items into charity shops themselves.

However, if you have a reasonable amount of clothes or larger items, you can ring some charities up and they will arrange to collect them directly from you.

Also useful if you live on a road that makes leaving stuff out difficult.

bingo_bango

Just to clarify one point.
In N. Ireland, we don't have a charity register. Charities who are registered in England with the Charity Commission do collect here regularly, and will provide their registered charity number, but it is meaningless here. There are plans to implement a register for NI charities, but this is a while off yet. Some local charities may provide a number on their flyers/bags but this is more likely to be a registered charity VAT number if they are genuine. Still no guarantee that they are actually a charity though.
To carry out door to door collections in NI, a charity must have prior permission to collect from PSNI. The only way to confirm that a request through the front door is genuine, is to contact your local PSNI office, and ask them.

flowerofscotland

Useful point about NI. Also worth mentioning is that the Charity Commission only regulates charities in England and Wales.Scotland has recently set up its own regulator - The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator or OSCR - web site is https://www.oscr.org.ukAnd while I agree that these companies must not mislead their charitable status they will take clothes in any condition whereas charity shops only want saleable goods

tonyivb

We get 1 or 2 of these leaflets every week in Wembley, and I actually left them a bag of stuff this morning.

It was a load of old socks, underwear (clean I might add) and a few pairs of well worn shoes that were covered in slug slime (from where they were left in the porch).

I'm pretty sure that a charity shop couldn't have sold these so hopefully they will get some use.