I was recently approached by MoneySupermarket to take place in their Retail Royalty Challenge. The challenge is simple – I was given £30 to buy items that would greatly benefit a local charity. Not only does the challenge mean that I can support a local charity, but it also means that I’m in the running to win a Harrods hamper – considering the name of my blog, I was really up for this!
Choosing a charity was not a problem at all. Branching Out is a charity in my village that helps adults with learning disabilities. I was first introduced to Branching Out when I was 15 and working in the newspaper shop – seeing the clients come in with their support workers. I really looked forward to their visits and helping them to make their purchase. My family have been supporting the charity for years – when my Mum died 6 years ago we asked for donations to Branching Out in lieu of flowers. My Dad, a keen gardener, often takes them plants for the clients to grow and resell. So my mind was instantly made up – I’d be supporting Branching Out.
I had no idea where to start. Branching Out has a head office that supports the clients, and a charity shop that serves two purposes – the first being to obviously raise money for the charity, but the second is to provide work experience for the clients. You’ll often see clients in the store performing a number of tasks including sorting out donated items, upcycling furniture for resale as well as serving customers and working the tills. I headed to the shop one Saturday morning thinking that I wouldn’t get very far – I work full time during the week and thanks to my long commute I’m not home until late. I explained the situation to the deputy shop manager, Nicola, and we batted some ideas between ourselves, not really getting anywhere, until she piped up with “you know what? We actually can’t function without volunteers, and I think the money would be best spent trying to get some volunteers”. Okay, this was slightly different to the brief, but talking to Nicola and having a tour of the shop, my mind was made up – I would hold a volunteer recruitment day.
Whilst £30 can buy a lot of items for a charity (especially with clever negotiating and deal-hunting), volunteers can help the charity shop to stay open and making a profit, meaning that long term, the charity can raise more money for their cause. Any items I spent the £30 on would soon be used up – whether that be food, games, books, etc. Hopefully volunteers would contribute a heck of a lot more.
Gulp. Nicola explained that a lot of the volunteers come on an adhoc basis – with very few having set hours. Over the summer holidays, parents who volunteer need to cut back due to childcare issues, meaning that over summer the shop sometimes has to close, and it leaves Nicola feeling very stressed out. During this chat Nicola also explained to me that the charity pay for the CRB (actually now called the DBS) check needed to volunteer in the shop, and even if someone can only volunteer for one summer they are more than happy to foot this cost as volunteers are valuable. We set a date there and then for the recruitment day – 13th July. There – it has to go ahead now.
I walked out the shop and it wasn’t until I got home that I panicked slightly and wondered what I’d let myself in for. A recruitment drive? Could I really do this? How could I spend the £30? How could I stick to spending only £30? Is this even in the rules?
So I had a date set. What next? First I had to liaise with head office about my ideas, their ideas, boring things like risk assessments, fun things like publicity and refreshments. Because there would need to be refreshments! I hit my first snag when head office didn’t get in touch with me, so I spent a week sitting on my hands until I dug out their email address and explained who I was, my conversation with Nicola, etc. I didn’t have the best first impressions when they hadn’t heard of me, but i soldiered on.
For publicity, Nicola said they could help with the printing and distribution of leaflets as they already had the systems in place – all I had to do was design a leaflet. Easy enough, I fired up my Paint Shop Pro (because I don’t like Photoshop, okay! Don’t judge me) and came up with a few ideas to take to the shop the following weekend. Once we’d agreed a design I was able to also provide Branching Out with images suitable for their Twitter and Facebook accounts.
I created a poster using the “Keep Calm And…” that seems to (still) be all the rage at the moment. In place of a crown I used the charity’s logo, and stuck to the main colours that the charity uses.
Now I had to figure out how to best spend the £30 provided. The charity agreed to pay for refreshments out of their petty cash, so that idea was out of the window. Until the charity suggested that they purchase a banner for the shop. They’d already received some quotes so the £30 would enable them to go ahead and purchase the banner. After checking that everything else was covered (cost wise) for the day – refreshments, printing and publicity, I couldn’t think of anything else they’d need the money spent on, so I agreed.
The banner arrived in the week leading up to the recruitment drive, and here it is, proudly displayed in their window.
The day arrived and I was feeling very nervous. I had naively thought that I would just be helping out, not running the recruitment day! When I arrived I was told where everything was to set up…and off I went. Now I will be the first to admit that I was completely out of my comfort zone. I’m not the most confident person in the world, and trying to find my way (metaphorically) around a charity I wasn’t used to; trying to set up and also trying to talk to customers…it was a bit of a disaster to start with. The people coming into the shop seemed to be regulars who would go and talk to Nicola, and I found myself being a bit of an unnecessary babysitter when I didn’t know what else to do. I was completely left to it and I felt completely out of my depth. At around 11 I decided that I needed a drink and I needed some help. I took 5 minutes to go out the back and compose myself, and upon my return, Nicola gave me some useful advice. She said that the customers are used to service users, who suffer from learning disabilities, approaching them, so they’d be more than okay with me telling them what I’m doing and inviting them to have some cake. With encouragement from Nicola I found it much easier to talk to people, and found that if they were interested, they’d ask questions, and if they weren’t, they just moved on to browsing through the store.
Although I offered to help out with the shop, Nicola told me that I could just focus on the recruitment drive, which meant that at times I was stood around doing nothing. During these times I was able to observe other volunteers helping out. An older lady volunteers on Mondays, but had kindly baked some biscuits for the recruitment drive, came in for a couple of hours. Another volunteer is a young man who commits to a few hours every Saturday who loves being on the till and interacting with customers. I also witnessed numerous donations arriving – all of which were gratefully received. What really intrigued me, as someone who loves selling, is that something arrived – I think it was a baby chair, and it was instantly checked over and put out for sale, and it was bought by the very next person to come into the shop! If a volunteer hadn’t been there to check the item over, price it and display it, then it may not have sold for weeks! Seeing an instant result from a volunteer really made me interested in getting involved. I also loved seeing the pile of items to be sorted – I really wanted to go rummaging through and seeing what treasures were there. Whilst I was there, the charity shop sold 2 pairs of Sketchers and a pair of Joe Browns shoes (the latter may have been to me though…). It certainly isn’t full of tat!
I have to admit that I was very grateful when 12.30 came along, because it was so hot (I believe it was the hottest day of the year so far), I hadn’t had time for breakfast (and thanks to starting Weight Watchers earlier in the week, I resisted the really amazing looking cakes!) and I’m really not use to being on my feet (thank you office job). Nicola agreed to keep the refreshments and volunteer information out all day and I was able to make a quick getaway.
The interest that we received was great – we had someone sign up to volunteer that day with more saying that they’d think about it over the weekend and come back in on Monday. But more importantly to me, I decided to sign up to volunteer! I can’t dedicate much time, especially as I work full time – right now I can’t even figure out when I can go and complete the DBS forms, but I can certainly dedicate a few hours every now and then to help out.
Volunteering seems like such a great idea – not only do you get to help out a charity, but selfishly, it means you can pad out your CV and perhaps even gain experience in an area you’re hoping to expand your career into. If you’re interested in volunteering, don’t be worried about needing to regularly commit, like I was, but get in touch with local charities to see what you can do to help.
