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The Charity Shops Survey is published annually by Charity Finance and reports on various aspects of charity retail including income, costs, volunteer hours etc.
This year, the number of charities reporting Gift Aid income has increased dramatically, and once again, we are delighted to see that the Top 12 performers* are all Eproductive clients. These top performers reported 30% or more of donated sales gift aided.
One of the top performers was St Margaret's Hospice Somerset, reporting 41% of their sales being gift aided.
Peter Bushell, Retail Director at St Margaret's Hospice says, "We have been with Eproductive for a number of years, and the extra income that we have made from Retail Gift Aid in this time has been invaluable. EpR Gift Aid has been simple to use, and the Eproductive team have always given us a huge amount of support."
Eproductive also launched EpROS this year, the EPOS system designed specifically for charity retailing. Already being implemented across Age UK's 460 shop chain, St Margaret's Hospice will also be introducing EpROS into all of their shops next year along with many other charities.
Peter Bushell says, "We are very impressed with EpROS and can see that it is ideally suited to the needs of shops operating in the charity sector. We look forward to implementing it early in 2012."
* performance ranked by % donated goods sales gift aided
Read what Age UK and Keech Hospice Care had to say about EpROS, the EPOS solution for the charity retail sector from Eproductive.
Reproduced from the Charity Finance Charity Shops Survey 2011. Copyright Civil Society Media Ltd 2011.
Members of the Eproductive team had a very worthwhile couple of days at the Charity Retail Association’s annual conference in Keele University earlier this month.
The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Unlocking Potential with a Winning Strategy’ and included sessions on communicating with remote volunteers & staff and how to use Gift Aid sign-ups to benefit the charity. This meant that it was an ideal opportunity for two launches which have these areas covered – EpR Team and EpR Gift Aid +.
EpR Team is an HR system specifically designed for the charity retail sector. It helps charities manage and communicate with paid staff and volunteers.
EpR Gift Aid + is an extension of the highly successful EpR Gift Aid. With EpR Gift Aid + charities will be able to communicate more effectively with their Gift Aid donors through a personalised webpage.
If you would like to know more about either of these, EpROS (our highly cost-effective EPOS offer) or any of our other module, please contact us on info@eproductive.com
Eproductive was also pleased to sponsor the Association’s Prize Draw for the third year running.
The lucky winners of the Prize Draw were:
1st Prize (Apple iPad2): Nicola Hawkesford, Cornwall Air Ambulance Trust(pictured with Eproductive’s Chris Cowls)
2nd Prize (2 nights dinner, B&B for 2 at a Ramada Jarvis hotel): Amy White, CLIC Sargent
3rd Prize (Apple iPod Touch): Julia Hall, Save The Children
Congratulations to all of the winners!
Eproductive was proud to be a joint sponsor of the Charity Retail Association’s Scottish Conference earlier this month.
Over 60 delegates attended the conference in Glasgow which provided valuable networking opportunities for charities operating retail chains in Scotland.
Chris Cowls and Shirley Kay of Eproductive attended the conference and were able to demonstrate the wide range of services that Eproductive offers to the sector, including EpR Gift Aid and mycharityshop.com.
Eproductive will also be attending the main annual Charity Retail Association conference in Keele Conference Park on 4th – 5th July 2011. Why not pop along for a chat if you’re there!
The annual Charity Shops Survey was published by Charity Finance recently with a Gift Aid section being included for the second year. We were delighted to note that of these charities, the Top 15 performers* were all Eproductive clients.
Top ranking were St Giles Hospice with 42% of their donated goods sales being gift aided.
Lynwen Truesdale, Income Generation Director for St Giles Hospice, says: “The extra money that we have made from Retail Gift Aid since 2007 has given us the confidence to make substantial investment in our Hospice at Home team.”
“EpR Gift Aid is very simple for our shop teams to use and Eproductive are extremely supportive, ensuring we have the right training, an effective suite of reports and a dedicated helpdesk. They are always looking for ways to enhance the system, including the introduction of email notifications, which has saved us money on postage costs.”
Eproductive’s Chief Executive Chris Cowls says: “There have been some great results for our clients in this year’s Charity Shops Survey. We are looking forward to seeing next year’s, when hopefully even more charities will take part in the Gift Aid part of the survey.”
* performance ranked by % donated goods sales gift aided
Click on the images to view the reports:
Reproduced from the Charity Finance Charity Shops Survey 2010. Copyright Civil Society Media Ltd 2010.
Barnardo’s Retail and Trading has more than doubled their profits in the last two years from £2.4 million in 2008 to £5.7 million in the current year. Gerard Cousins (pictured), Director of Retail and Trading explains some of the elements that have made up this achievement.
“Gift Aid has undoubtedly played a significant role. We saw the opportunity early on and selecting EpR was the obvious choice given their experience and the depth of the service they offer.
The Eproductive team has a wealth of experience in our sector and it shows. It’s not just about installing the software and letting you get on with it. They help with audits, provide workshops on improving conversion and with over 2,500 stores online they can provide excellent benchmarking of our performance against our peers. We are in our third year now and are continually improving our performance with a forecast for £1.5million of Net Gift Aid income in the current year. In addition we have signed up nearly 200,000 donors and there is a great opportunity to develop our relationship with these donors.”
Having installed the computers and broadband to enable Gift Aid to be claimed, Barnardo’s then signed up to EpR’s Takings and Bankings module. Cousins says: “The system was built for the sector and tailored to our existing till system so it was straightforward for our shop managers to adopt. We now have completely reconciled sales by first thing Monday morning across the whole organisation with a full suite of reports covering performance against budget and last year, sales mix and the recently introduced space management reports that show which parts of the store are underperforming. This electronic system cuts down on the human error factor and gives us a more accurate picture of our business and where we should be driving the business forward”.
Retail and Trading Management Accountant Phillip Northcott adds: “Our understanding has improved at all levels. Electronic filing of results by store managers has improved timeliness and accuracy and reduced head office processing costs significantly. Store managers and field staff can see fully reconciled results immediately and take any necessary actions”.
Since implementing the Takings and Bankings module Barnardo’s has taken 3 more of EpR’s modules – the Van Collection module which assists in maximising the yield from vans, the Branch Visit module to manage the actions arising from store visits and the Documentation module which allows all documents to be stored remotely and viewed by shops as required. Two further modules (Workflow Management and Staff Management) will be deployed in 2010. Cousins says: “We have an excellent team with technology that enables us to make informed and timely decisions about the way forward. These are very exciting times to be in charity retail and I see real opportunities for further improvement in the coming years”.
More and more charity supporters are making sure that their charity shop donations are worth that bit more this year.
Charity retail management system supplier Eproductive’s EpR Gift Aid module is in use in 2,700 charity shops across the UK and in the period Jan 1st to July 31st 2010, over 500,000 new donors signed up. This brings the total number of donors to over 2million across EpR clients.
Signing up to be a Gift Aid donor means that the charities can claim an additional 28% from the HMRC on the value of the goods donated at no extra cost to the donor!
Chris Cowls, CEO of Eproductive, said: “In the same period last year, 360,000 new donors had signed up to Gift Aid using our system, so this is a huge increase. Not only are more charities seeing the benefit of claiming from the HMRC, but UK taxpayers are more aware of the scheme.”
“For the sake of filling in a simple form that takes no longer than a couple of minutes, every donation of goods made after that is worth an extra 28% - and the charity is then able to tell you how much your donation was worth. Why would you not sign up?”.
To see which charities use the EpR Gift Aid system, go to www.eproductive.com/epr_clients.php
St Peter’s Hospice shops are celebrating a gift of an extra £500,000 from its Gift Aid scheme in its chain of 48 shops throughout the region.
The Gift Aid scheme was launched in the shops in February 2009 and staff and volunteers have worked tirelessly to sign up 37,513 customers who have donated unwanted items. This has enabled the charity to claim an extra 28p on every £1 at no extra cost.
St Peter’s Hospice provides 85% of its care in people’s own homes and the money raised through Gift Aid could fund 5,000 visits from St Peter’s Hospice team of 16 Community Nurse Specialists (CNS) based in North and South Bristol.
Wendy Balmbra, Team Leader for North Bristol CNS said:” On behalf of all the patients we have cared for in the past year we would like to thank everyone who has signed up to the Gift Aid scheme in our shops which has raised an amazing extra £500,000. It costs £6 million every year to provide our specialist services in the community and at our site in Brentry so every penny really does make a difference to St Peter’s Hospice. We hope people realise how very grateful we are to everyone who has joined the scheme and that they will continue to donate regularly to our shops.”
Karen Wiffen, Gift Aid Manager for St Peter’s Hospice said: “All the shops staff and volunteers have worked incredibly hard to sign up Gift Aid donors and I’m thrilled that we’ve reached such an incredible milestone. It’s such an easy thing to do and once we have explained to the donors that there is no cost to them, and they just need to be a UK taxpayer, they have all signed up willingly to help raise extra funds for the Hospice.”
Anyone who has not signed up to Gift Aid with St Peter’s Hospice shops but wishes to do so should speak to staff or volunteers in their local shop when they next take in a donation.
Photo (L-R): Wendy Balmbra, Team Leader for North Bristol Community Nurse Specialists and Karen Wiffen, Gift Aid Manager for St Peter’s Hospice
Eproductive were happy to provide the prizes for the draw at the Association of Charity Shops annual conference for the second year running.
The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Tomorrow’s Retailing World’ with a strong focus on looking to the future with sessions on online charity shops proving popular. This was an ideal opportunity for Eproductive to promote the launch of www.mycharityshop.com which gained a lot of interest from clients and non-clients alike.
The lucky winners of the Prize Draw were:
1st Prize (Apple iPad): Ilana Ebrahimi, All Aboard (pictured with Eproductive’s Chris Cowls))
2nd Prize (2 nights dinner, B&B for 2 at a Ramada Jarvis hote): Pam Senior, St Ann's Hospice
3rd Prize (Apple iPod Touch): Tariq Thubani-Hacker, CLIC Sargent
Congratulations to all of the winners!
The annual Help the Hospices Retail Conference took place in Manchester this year, and Eproductive was happy to part-sponsor it once again.
There was a fantastic turnout, with attendees from hospice charity shop chains across the UK. Speakers included Warren Alexander, Chief Executive of the Association of Charity Shops and David McCullogh, Head of Trading for Oxfam.
Four representatives were available to discuss the wide range of services that Eproductive offers the sector, including the imminent launch of mycharityshop.com – a new initiative that enables every charity shop to have its own webpage.
Eproductive has around 40 hospice clients – see the EpR clients section of this website for more information.
The UK charity retail sector has the potential to raise an extra £75million from the tax-man each year* – and it’s as simple as a signature to help it reclaim these much needed vital funds.
Currently 4,000 charity shops in the UK are claiming gift aid on donated items (which represents approximately half of the charity retail sector) and collectively raised an estimated £18.7million through the tax efficient system in the financial year ending March 2009*.
Although Gift Aid on donated items was established by Sue Ryder Care three and a half years ago (May 2006) – in which time the healthcare charity has secured an extra £5million to support it provide health and social care nationwide - the full potential of the system remains unrealised.
Minister for the Third Sector, Angela Smith, showed her support for the Gift Aid system by becoming a member when she visited her local Sue Ryder Care shop in Essex recently. She said: “Gift Aid is a simple way for people to help charities raise extra funds they so desperately need to support a wide range of voluntary services and organisations that improve the quality of lives – and the society we live in - nationwide.”
The Gift Aid System, which is compliant with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, works by allowing the charity to track all gift aided sales by donor. All that is required is signed permission from the person donating the goods for charities to claim 28p Gift Aid on every pound raised on the sale of donated items.
Angela added: “In these recessionary times, every extra 28p counts and, as Sue Ryder Care has proved, collectively can equate to millions of pounds. Sue Ryder Care’s success at reaching £5million from Gift Aid demonstrates that a simple signature really can make a difference.”
All money raised through the sale of gift aided donated items at Sue Ryder Care’s shops helps the charity to provide end of life and long term care to people living with conditions including; Cancer, Stroke, Brain Injury, Multiple Sclerosis, Dementia, Huntington’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease and Motor Neurone Disease.
Julie Beames, Retail Business Development Manager at Sue Ryder Care – who implemented and manages the Gift Aid system in the charity’s 350 shops, added: “Our shop staff, volunteers and customers have really embraced the Gift Aid system as a means to help the charity raise much needed funds. We currently have 300,000 gift aid members that support us, and on average 40% of all donated items sold in our shops are gift aided. However, with 60% of donated items to our shops nationwide not gift aided there is still huge potential to raise even more extra funds.
“I’d encourage everybody to sign on the line and become a gift aid member. By doing so, people can help us to make a real difference to the quality of thousands of people’s lives.”
*figures supplied by the Association of Charity Shops
On 10th November, Eproductive held its first ever conference for its charity retail clients.
There were around 70 delegates on the day, representing 35 charities from all across the UK.
The conference was held in St Martin’s Hall at the newly refurbished St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square where Eproductive CEO Chris Cowls is a Trustee of the Development Trust.
There were sessions led by representatives from HMRC Charities and specialist fundraising agency beautiful world and presentations given by Eproductive staff, informing of enhancements and developments to current systems, as well as a taster of what we have in store.
The day was a great chance for our clients to get together, share ideas and best practice and celebrate the success of EpR Gift Aid. With over £4.6million of Gift Aid-able sales entered via the system each month, there’s certainly been a lot to celebrate!
Eproductive is happy to welcome The Katharine House Hospice as the 50th EpR Gift Aid client.
The Katharine House Hospice is based in Adderbury, Oxfordshire and has six charity shops supporting it, including a furniture shop.
Katharine House’s Retail & Trading Manager, Scott Bloomfield says: “We have been signing donors up to Gift Aid in our Banbury furniture shop for about 18 months now using a paper-based system, and have seen great results with a conversion rate of around 40%. We wanted to roll the scheme out to our other shops, but a manual system is a lot of effort to maintain, and doesn’t allow us to see up-to-date results on a daily basis, so we decided to sign up to EpR Gift Aid.”
Scott continues: “Although our shop managers were concerned at first that the system would be difficult to learn and mean more work, all their worries have already been put to rest. The training provided by Eproductive was excellent and in our first week we have already signed up nearly 200 donors across the chain! We are looking forward to receiving our first month’s benchmarking results to see how our performance compares to other chains.”
Between them, EpR Gift Aid clients are using the system in well over 2,500 shops across the country and have the details of over 1.3million supporters.
This month, Charity Finance published their annual Charity Shops Survey in association with Professional Fundraising. There were 69 charity retail chains that responded to the survey, with over 5,000 shops between them.
We were pleased to see that the introduction included a report on Gift Aid from the sale of donated goods. In the survey period (to Mar/Apr 09) respondents had claimed over £6.5million in Gift Aid from HMRC. This is a huge increase on the £2.2million stated in last year's survey.
Respondents also claimed that the investment needed to implement a Gift Aid scheme, including the necessary technology/hardware takes an average of 5.3 months to recover.
