Greenwich charity shops have been struggling to accept donations and closing both early and sporadically due to volunteer shortages.

Many of the shops currently have job advertisements inside and outside of their stores pleading for more volunteers to spare even “just a few hours” per week.

Several of these stores in the Greenwich area have been closing early and temporarily throughout the day so that their staff can get lunch due to a shortage of volunteers.

The Cats Protection Charity Shop, located in Blackheath, has even had to refuse donations throughout November as there were no volunteers to sort through the items.

Many of the organisations behind these charity shops believe that the lower volunteer levels are a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jon Harding, an Area Manager at Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice, said: “We, as a retail charity business, have noticed a reduction in the number of volunteers over the past two years.

“We believe that Covid has impacted this massively with people choosing to favour a less customer-facing role to retail.”

Research shows that those aged 65-74 are typically the age group most likely to participate in formal volunteering through organisations.

Harding said that this was a large factor in the recent decline of volunteers within charity shops because the age group were more vulnerable to Covid-19.

The 2020/2021 statistics show that there was a nine per cent decrease in those aged 65-74 who volunteered at least once a month, and an overall decline of eight percent who said they volunteered at least once a year compared to 2019/2020.

As of December 2022, the British Red Cross said on its website that there were nine open shop volunteer positions to apply for in the Greenwich shop.

This is the highest number of open applicant spaces within the Greater London British Red Cross shops.

The shop volunteer role involves talking to customers, creating displays and sorting and pricing the donations.

The low level of volunteering means that there are problems with less accessibility to the goods sold in these charity shops.

When people can access these goods, and what goods are on offer are both being significantly reduced as a result of the volunteer shortages.

UK-wide issues

Harding said they had not experienced disruption to their steady number of donations but getting these items priced and displayed requires volunteers.  

The cost-of-living crisis has shown an increase in demand for charity shops as many people struggle to meet the costs of goods elsewhere on the high street.

Harding also said that less people being able to give up their time to work for free because of the recent cost-of-living crisis.

This problem impacts not only Greenwich but also other places all over the UK.

Across the UK, the number of volunteers at charity shops has decreased by 24 per cent since 2019 according to Charity Finance magazine’s Charity Shops Survey 2022.

According to the Charity Commission’s Covid-19 Survey 2021, access to volunteers has decreased for a third of charities as a result of the pandemic.