‘You just can't get the staff these days’: the challenges and opportunities of working with volunteers in the charity shop – an Oxford case study

The introduction of paid staff to charity shops has been a major innovation in charity retailing and while the traditional stereotype of volunteers as ‘selfless older woman with time available to do good works’ is a fair description of a core group of volunteers in the charity shops studied, this is far from adequate to describe the variety of people and their varying motives for volunteering in what has become a very heterogeneous group. Discussion here centres on innovative schemes on the part of charity shops to broaden the recruitment base of volunteers, meet volunteers' own needs and mesh volunteers with paid staff in order to meet the demands of an increasingly pressured and professionalised sector. Some of the most fruitful initiatives employed in Oxford have been based on the use of probationers or licensed prisoners completing Community Service hours through ‘volunteering’ in charity shops or their support networks. Copyright © 2000 Henry Stewart Publications