Moving online in lockdown 2.0 – Charity shops reinvented!

In March, life as we know it ended for the Prama Charity Shops, as their community groups for older people closed and demand for their help at home, and home care services rose, they were facing a large funding gap with the closure of the shops. It was imperative the charity develop their strategy for selling online, the way that the national charities do, and at the end of October - just in time for the latest lockdown – Prama opened their Charity Warehouse on the Nuffield Estate in Poole.

Sarah-Jane Southern – Business Operations manager for Prama said “The charity shops income has been vital to the success of the Prama Group of charities, when we reopened our shops we were aware that the pandemic could cause more closures – we knew we needed to move to an online platform to continue to keep our revenue stream alive and develop services to the community that are COVID safe”

Prama Charity shops have created an Ebay shop, with volunteers listing lots of unique donations to generate money nationally for the local charity. They are also having considerable success from Facebook, with page follows up over 400% in the last 2 weeks and lots of positive feedback for their click and collect service selling furniture, décor and Christmas items.