A couple of weeks ago, several national newspapers ran pieces predicting the decline of charity retail, triggered by a rumour that Oxfam was planning to close 100 shops. Oxfam denied it. The Charity Retail Association’s Chief Executive Robin Osterley responded robustly. Charity retail is trading strongly (c.£800m gross revenue per year) and the public still loves charity shops (around 22m people visit a charity shop every 3 months, and another 25m donate goods each quarter). Robin has a point. The doom laden coverage was not grounded in any evidence. Maybe August had been a quiet news month?

But the media debate asking if charity retail is thriving or failing is in my view asking the wrong question. For fundraising professionals and charity leaders, a more important question has gone unasked. Even if your shops are doing well, is your fundraising team benefiting from them?

The gap nobody is talking about

We worked recently with a hospice and found they had a well-run retail operation, generating significant unrestricted income, with healthy footfall. It is a real organisational asset. When we asked how many of the people visiting those shops were known to the fundraising team, the answer was ‘not enough’.

The shops were thriving, but fundraising was not benefiting from it.

This is not unusual. In most charities with a retail presence, the shops and the fundraising team operate in parallel worlds with separate databases, separate KPIs and most importantly, separate cultures. The retail team focuses on revenue. The fundraising team its donor database. And the supporter who donates goods on a Tuesday morning, volunteers on a Saturday or stops to read a leaflet about the cause. Well this is the person who falls through the gap.

Supporters do not experience charities in silos. We do.

The real cost of the silo

Think about who is already walking through your shop doors. Regular goods donors. Some of them with a deep connection to the cause. Long term volunteers who have given years of their Saturday mornings because they genuinely believe in what you do. These are not peripheral relationships. They are some of the warmest supporters in your organisation. And in most charities, the fundraising team has never spoken to them.

Legacy fundraising alone represents an enormous missed opportunity here. The loyal, long-term shop volunteer is, almost by definition, exactly the kind of supporter who might consider a gift in their will. They are deeply committed, emotionally connected and often of the right generation. But if the legacy team’s database has never included volunteers, the conversation never starts.

The hospice we worked with had exactly this problem. Their retail and fundraising teams were running separate systems. A supporter could give goods at the till for a decade and remain entirely unknown to the fundraising operation. The data existed. The bridge between it and the income strategy did not.

Structure alone won’t fix it

The structural response of creating a Director of Income Generation to bring retail and fundraising under one roof is increasingly common, particularly in the hospice sector. But in our experience, the structure alone rarely solves it. Culture does not reorganise itself to match a new reporting line. If the KPIs and databases remain separate, the silos survive.

What actually changes things is simpler and more specific. Here are some suggestions. Map the supporter journeys you want to enable, identify the two or three operational changes that would make the biggest difference, and run small pilots before you restructure anything. Unified consent capture at the till. Set a 48-hour welcome to new Gift Aid contacts. Organise a monthly conversation between the retail manager and the fundraising manager. These things cost very little and signal that retail supporters are part of the fundraising community, not a separate commercial category.

The question worth asking this week

Charity retail does not need defending from inaccurate media coverage. Robin Osterley has done that ably. The sector is resilient, the public appetite continues, and the 223,500 volunteers giving their time to charity shops across the UK deserve recognition and thanks, not scaremongering.

But while the debate rages about whether shops are opening or closing, the more useful question for any charity leader to ask is this. Does my fundraising team know who walked through our shop door last week? If the answer is no, you may be sitting on one of the most underused fundraising assets in your organisation.

Contact

If any of this resonates with challenges your organisation is facing, we would love to hear from you. At Craigmyle, we work with charities of all shapes and sizes to help them think differently about how retail and fundraising can work together. Get in touch at first@craigmyle.org.uk or visit https://craigmyle.org.uk/

 

Sources

Civil Society (2025) Charity Shops Survey 2025. Available at: https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/product/charity-shops-survey-2025.html

Charity Retail Association (2023) Charity Shops Statistics. Available at: https://charityretail.org.uk/charity-shop-stats