St Peter's Hospice Story

How Shopiago helped St Peter’s Hospice to grow their online sales of shop donations

In 2021, St Peter’s Hospice - a Bristol based charity offering care and support to palliative patients and their families - rolled out Shopiago to maximise fundraising by growing the charity’s online sales. Although the charity has been actively selling donations through eBay for a number of years, internal systems used to manage this process were incredibly complicated and training was hard to implement. Shopiago has offered St Peter’s Hospice a means of expanding their sales across multiple platforms, managing the process from the shop floor through to despatch, resulting in more efficient time management which is constantly improving through reflective insights and reporting. By September 2021, all staff and volunteers in St Peter’s Hospice’s high street stores and eBay hubs were trained to use the software to its full potential. To date, the average value of listings has increased by 22% (from £36 to £44), and St Peter’s Hospice is now +10% up on Gift Aid targets outlined in their 2021-2022 Budget.

Shopiago
Shopiago

The Challenge

For over 40 years, St Peter’s Hospice has been supporting people in Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset who face a daily battle with progressive and life-limiting illnesses. The charity provides both hospice and at-home care for critically ill patients suffering from conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and debilitating neurological illnesses - offering both physical care and emotional therapy.
At St Peter’s Hospice, the hit of the pandemic led to a number of operational changes, with some patients, nurses and volunteers adapting to online care in place of face-to-face treatment. Without events and new volunteers as a means of support during the continuous lockdowns, the charity had to rely heavily upon fundraising online, including online sales of shop donations. More recently, the charity has been able to onboard new volunteers, and the operational changes implemented during the pandemic have led to the creation of a hybrid model of services that the Hospice offers to the community it serves.

Why sell online?

St Peter’s Hospice have been using eBay to sell donations for a number of years. Through their incredible work, the charity has a community of supporters who donate generously to their high street charity shops - receiving a vast number of items that would be impossible to shift through high street stores alone. Having the ability to sell on eBay began making a massive difference to keeping up with stock turnover - and St Peter’s Hospice began to realise the difference that could be made by selling online.
By accessing the vast online resale market, St Peter’s Hospice also began to achieve greater prices for donated items. The decision to donate high-value items, such as family heirlooms, became easier for the charity’s supporters, who may have otherwise been concerned about the true value not being reached on the shop floor. Having seen the many benefits of selling donated items online, the charity decided to grow its online resale presence, helping online sales to become a cornerstone in its fundraising strategy.

The Shopiago roll-out

Previously reliant upon a system that was complicated, disjointed and difficult to provide training for, the charity sought a more inclusive software that could handle all their needs - from easy listing across multiple sites, to stock management and scheduling. St Peter’s Hospice relies a lot on volunteers, so upgrading to a system that was user-friendly was a vital part of their search. This led to the charity’s decision to roll out Shopiago, the online software that helps charity shops move stock faster, get better sale prices, and operate more efficiently.
Operating economically and efficiently is so important to the charity. St Peter’s Hospice came to realise how transformative time management tools could be in implementing successful recommerce strategies, and how much time they had been wasting on existing processes. Shopiago could not only help them to sell more and for higher values, but the software has been instrumental in freeing up time across the organisation that can now be better spent raising vital funds.
Shopiago

Results

  • Average value of listings has increased by 22% - from £36 to £44.
  • +10% up on Gift Aid target as outlined in their 2021-2022 Budget.
  • Easily able to see the quality and quantity of listings, as well as where training needs are required.
After rolling Shopiago out to 46 high street shops, as well as the St Peter’s Hospice eBay hub, 98% of the charity’s stores have now been trained to use the software, accessing the platform to gain full visibility of the items sent into the hub. The adaptable training process has also provided St Peter’s Hospice with the opportunity to create more direct lines of communication with each high street shop, tailoring training to their varied needs and helping to improve engagement with volunteers.
Although they’re still early in their journey with Shopiago, St Peter’s Hospice has already seen an increase in online engagement and a step up in sales, which they expect to continue. The Insights & Reporting feature Shopiago provides has become an essential asset for St Peter’s Hospice, providing the team with data such as listing speed, that they were unable to access before. Reporting also allows the charity to spot issues quickly and work to resolve these with greater efficiency.
Since using Shopiago, the charity’s eBay operations hub has received a number of visits from other hospices who are keen to see the software in use. With this, the team at St Peter’s Hospice witnessed a sense of community and shared progress within the charity sector, where organisations support each other through sharing ideas and best practice.
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One of the things I find most useful is looking at the education and training that Shopiago offers - this helps both me and the team realise new ways of doing things faster and better. We love how Shopiago are really supportive, but also really honest. They’ll tell us what is likely to work and what isn’t, helping us focus our time and effort on areas that will make the biggest difference. A lot of our business plans actually revolve around Shopiago for the future - as their platform evolves, we can too.

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Sally McCleary, eBay Manager at St Peter's Hospice

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