Living and Giving for Lewis-Manning Hospice
When you give to a charity shop are you donating or dumping? The answer to that question is often the latter, as retail guru Mary Portas found out to her astonishment during her new BBC series ‘Mary, Queen of Charity Shops’.
Mary Portas found that only 25 % of donations are fit to be sold. This means volunteers who man charity shops end up spending a lot of time and effort sorting rather than on the shop floor selling. Profits are then lost as the charity has to pay for the ‘rubbish’ to be taken away. Lewis-Manning Hospice has to foot a refuse bill of around £10,000.
‘Shopping neutral’ is the way forward for savvy, environment conscience shoppers with a heart. Like being carbon neutral, the idea is for people to offset new purchases with the donation of an old one. Shopping neutrally provides the feel-good factor that comes with giving to a good cause. Charity shopping is also environmentally friendly recycling.
Shopping neutral though, does not mean donating the moth-eaten jumper lost at the back of your wardrobe. It means giving something in good condition that just isn’t you anymore or that you know you’ve outgrown.
Lewis-Manning Hospice is encouraging people to follow the example set by Mary Portas’ ‘Living and Giving Shop’. Next time you buy a new book, ornament, clothes or accessories take the equivalent item to one of their Hospice Shops. They are looking for clean items that are in good condition. In this shopping neutral era, the phrase ‘it’s too good for charity’ no longer applies.
Lewis-Manning Hospice charity shops are located in Broadstone, Ferndown, Poole, Westbourne and Winton (x2) and a furniture warehouse on the Nuffield Estate.
Elizabeth Purcell CEO LMH said, “I know that no one who donates to LMH shops would want us to actually have a bill at the end of it but over £10,000 each year is spent by this hospice in paying to dispose of unsellable stuff. We have to get rid of so much tat, it is such a shame and it costs us, which means less money towards the care of over 650 local people living with cancer and other life threatening illnesses – that can’t be right.”
