Charities should strike better deals on Christmas cards 1

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 9 Nov 2010

Cards Galore has been awarded the 'Scrooge Award' for charity Christmas cards this year, as Dame Hillary Blume criticises charities for failing to work together to increase revenue received from the mechanism.

igh street card retailer Cards Galore has today been outed as the least generous of all charity card retailers by the Charities Advisory Trust in their annual ‘Scrooge Awards’. The trust was critical of Cards Galore for the fact that two thirds of its charity card range gave less than 10 per cent of their sale value to charity.

Regular offender Harrods, meanwhile, was applauded for its redemption with the ‘Reformed Sinner’ award. Harrods, which had regularly appeared as one of the worst offenders in the awards, now gives a minimum of 10 per cent to charity from its entire Christmas card range.

In bestowing the awards, the Charities Advisory Trust also took a swipe at charities for not driving a harder bargain with the manufacturers of their Christmas cards. In a survey conducted by the trust a quarter of charities reported getting less than 2 per cent of the ticket price from the cards sold bearing their name.

High street discounting also drew the ire of Dame Hillary, director of the trust. "I don't think discounting charity donations is appropriate. What do we say to a child in Africa. Sorry, you can't eat every third day because a lady in the UK needed to save money on her Christmas cards?” she said.

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Peter Munro
Treasurer
Borders Family History Society
13 Nov 2010

I find it truly shocking that big name charities get such a small percentage of retail price from cards bearing their charity's name. How do their trustees sleep at night, and aren't the directors, buyers, and managers of the retailers ashamed to show their face in public ? We should all be shouting this from the rooftops. This is immoral and disgusting.

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