Home-Start Mid & West Suffolk Story

How smaller charities can benefit from selling online

A child’s early years are critical to their future, and the trained volunteers at Home-Start Mid & West Suffolk offer vital support, advice and friendship to new parents who are feeling isolated, vulnerable or simply in need of a helping hand. Although it is part of the national Home-Start network, Home-Start Mid & West Suffolk operates autonomously as a small, local charity that’s run by a hard-working team of dedicated volunteers. They have a successful charity shop in Eye, Suffolk, but also understand the benefits of selling some donations online, where they can generally achieve much higher prices.

Shopiago
Shopiago

The Challenge

Unlike most larger charities, Home-Start Mid & West Suffolk didn’t always have an online hub to manage online sales and donations, instead everything had to be done via the limited space in their store.
One of the charity’s volunteers was already selling some donations via eBay from her own account, but the time it took to list and dispatch items was a challenge, so they turned to Shopiago for help, setting up an eBay charity hub in the process. 
"

We’ve always understood the value of selling donations online, but have been limited by what we have the time and resources to list. This isn’t a challenge that’s unique to us, so many smaller charities are in the same position, but I’d encourage them to talk to Shopiago - you can achieve so much more via online sales with a platform like this.

"

Rebecca Mclean, eBay Manager at Home-Start Mid & West Suffolk

The Shopiago Roll out

Selling donations via Shopiago made the process of listing and dispatching stock sold online much faster, which in turn freed up limited space in store for other donations. Shopiago also enabled the team to keep a closer eye on sales, particularly when it came to briefing the shop team on items to look out for that sell well online.
"

Support and training from the Shopiago team has been great, it’s easy to use and our shop volunteers are really invested in it. There’s so much that smaller charities can achieve online, with the right support.

"

Rebecca Mclean, eBay Manager at Home-Start Mid & West Suffolk

Results

Home-Start Mid & West Suffolk have seen a big increase in online sales since rolling out Shopiago, and are now seeing monthly online sales of £1,000 - £2,000, which is a significant part of their fundraising.
Recent successful eBay sales for the charity include a Paragon dinner set sold to a customer in Thailand for £420, a cricket bat that sold for £630, and a wooden jigsaw puzzle that sold internationally for £151.

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