Catherine Sipson is manager of the Waipuna Hospice Shop in Te Puke, assisted by her dog Jock.
If it can be on-sold, the Waipuna Hospice shop would like it.
This week hospice shops across the district are having a donation drive to get more stock on the shelves, floors, displays and racks.
Waipuna Hospice general manager of retail Jace Dowman says the hospice provides a free end-of-life service to the community.
“A large proportion of our funding comes from our shops,” he says.
A donation drive is often held if donations appear to be down.
“There are dips throughout the year and when we see there is a dip we try to get a drive going, to just bring it back up.
“Like everything, there’s a lot of other organisations that are all great causes too, and there’s only a finite amount of donations out there, so it’s about keeping ourselves in the forefront of the pubic eye.”
With winter setting in and a large number of overseas workers in the area for the kiwifruit season, warm clothes and warm linen are particularly in demand.
“Warm clothes are great - we have gone through our season change now and we are in winter and they are flying out the door. We can never get enough warm linen.”
He says overseas visitors who are heading to the snow are also looking for warm clothes.
“Furniture’s also always great ... and books - our books fly out the door so we can always take more books as long as they’ve got life left in them.”
Bric-a-brac, cutlery, crockery, kitchen utensils and trinkets are all also good sellers, and at the other end of the scale, furniture is something else that can bring in funds.
“We sell stuff that’s $2 and we sell stuff that’s $2000, so we cater to all demographics. We love any support we can get as long as it’s up to a standard we can actually sell it.
“The main question we ask when we are training staff is, ‘would you pay for that?’.”
Jace says it is an unfortunate fact of life that some people use charity shops as a dumping ground.
“With the cost of living going up, people struggle to pay dump fees, and we do understand that, but when we do our drives, we try to educate people around the fact that if you dump stuff you are going to throw out on us, it adds a cost to us and goes against our cause.”
For bigger items, there is a free collection service that operates Monday to Friday. Call 07 281 1755 to book.
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