A recent survey has found that seeing charity shops on the high street makes people more open to supporting charitable causes.

In April think-tank Demos polled 2,225 adults as part of a project to investigate the true economic and social value of charity shops.

And researchers found that almost two-thirds of people (59 per cent) agreed that the presence of charity shops made them more likely to donate money to a good cause – not only by purchasing items in the physical shop, but also in ways such as donating money, signing petitions and generally learning more about the charity’s work.

Donors are likely to be purchasers

Four out of five people revealed they had donated items to a charity shop in the last year, with half those polled doing so on more than five occasions.

Two-thirds of people (64 per cent) had bought goods from a charity shop in the last 12 months, and the results showed a high correlation between regular purchasers and donors: just under a quarter of people who had donated over 20 items in the past year also purchased at least 20.

Women were found to be more likely to donate than men (83 per cent versus 74 per cent) and people from the south-west of England were the most likely to buy from a charity shop, with 74 per cent revealing they had bought at least one item.

“Most of the people we spoke to felt charity shops bring a variety of benefits, both to them individually but also the wider community,” said Ally Paget, a Demos researcher.

“In addition to making Britons more charitable, charity shops also provide important volunteering opportunities to local people. We need to recognise and appreciate the wider benefits they provide.”

The poll is part of a larger ongoing Demos report, sponsored by the Charity Retail Association (CRA), which is exploring the true value of charity retail through both quantitative analysis of consumer and retail trends in high streets across the country, and taking on board qualitative feedback from retail experts, charities and the public.

Marie Curie: 'Proposed changes to rates are odd’

Meanwhile, Marie Curie Cancer Care has called recent proposed changes to charity shops rate relief in Wales “odd at every level”, and claimed they would cause it to lose more than £20,000 of income per year.

The charity, which came 11th for retail income in Charity Finance’s Charity Shops Survey 2012, was reacting to the idea that rate relief could be cut from 80 per cent to 50 per cent, just one of the suggestions mooted by Professor Brian Morgan’s government-sanctioned report into the issue of rehabilitating the high street in Wales.

“You cannot get away from the fact that if the money goes from the charity to the rates, then it’s not going to fund services,” said Simon Jones, Marie Curie’s head of policy and public affairs, Wales.

He said that while the charity has only nine shops in Wales, the proposals would mean it paying £22,476 in rates.

“At every level, it’s very odd,” Jones continued. “If charity shops close, there aren’t going to be a queues of businesses waiting to move into them.”

Professor Morgan’s report led the CRA to hold an emergency summit in Cardiff last week, where the Association revealed a five-point plan to deal with the Welsh high street’s decline in a way that would not "punish and penalise" charities.

Charity Finance is currently compiling the Charity Shops Survey 2013, which will be released in October.

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