British charities earned £7.5m from online shopping site eBay last year, an increase of 20 per cent on the previous year.

The money was raised via the site’s ‘give at checkout’ option, seller donations and more than £4m was raised by charities selling their own goods via their own eBay stores. The biggest online charity shops are owned by Sense and Oxfam, both of which reported sales worth over £200,000.

Last year’s total represents a significant increase not only on 2009 figures, but is double the amount raised in 2007. eBay suggests that the ‘My Favourite Charity’ function, which allows users to preselect a charity they would prefer to donate to at checkout, has been key to this increase with its own research suggesting that users who pre-select charities are 17 times more likely to donate than those who do not.

eBay UK has now raised more than £19m for charities since 2007 and counts 5,000 among its beneficiaries. Globally last year eBay raised £34.5m for charity.