The number of volunteers in charity shops has fallen by around 6 per cent, according to data from this year’s Charity Shops Survey.
The survey, published by Charity Finance and Fundraising magazines, and sponsored by the Charity Retail Association, collected data from 75 charities which between them have around 137,000 volunteers in their shops.
When comparing shops which completed both this year’s and last year’s survey, the survey found a drop of around 9,000 volunteers.
Total hours volunteered in shops also fell, for the second successive year, to 125 hours per shop per week, compared to 133 hours per week per shop in 2014.
This is still higher than the historical level of around 103 to 105 hours observed in the first decade of the new millennium.
Respondents to the survey were pessimistic about future volunteering, with 34 per cent saying they expected volunteer hours to decrease further, compared to 14 per cent expecting them to increase.
Staff numbers remained steady at just over 13,000, but shop numbers rose by just under 2 per cent, meaning that the number of staff employed in each shop fell slightly.
The survey found that almost half the staff in charity shops worked part-time, contributing 35 per cent of hours worked. It also found that staff turnover in charity shops was high. In charities with over 100 staff, almost 40 per cent of employees left their jobs in the last year.
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