What the Charity Retail Association does

• Lobbies on key issues for charity shops including Gift Aid, waste charging, sustainability and donated stock supply

• Provides a sense of community and collaboration amongst charity retailers through a range of events

• Promotes best practice through Primary Authority, policy guidance and practical resources

• Increases public support for charity retail through campaigns and media work

• Carries out and commissions sector-specific research

• Provides charity retail-specific training and learning opportunities

History of the CRA

The Charity Retail Association, formerly known as the Association of Charity Shops, has its origins in the Charities Advisory Trust (CAT) in the early 1990s. CAT was, and still is, a group dedicated to improving the effectiveness of charities, especially in their trading and income generation dimensions, and was started in 1979 by Dame Hilary Blume. Dame Hilary responded to the large increase of charity shops in the 1980s and early 1990s by offering training sessions and advice, and it soon became clear that there was an appetite for a forum dedicated to discussing the issue of retail in the charitable environment.

Charity Shops Group

As a result, the Charity Shops Group was formed at an inaugural meeting at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in 1992. CAT acted as the secretariat for the Group, which offered networking, lectures and seminars, working lunches and other ways of exchanging information. This proved so successful that a steering committee was formed, whose first chair was Colin Sandford of the British Heart Foundation. At this point the group was also starting to attract smaller charities as well as the established large retail chains.

In 1999 this led to a separation from CAT, and Lekha Klouda, who had been running the group for CAT, moved to become the first director of the Association of Charity Shops (ACS).

ACS’s first offices were donated by Nicholas Walter of the Rationalist Press Association - a couple of rooms off Upper Street in London’s Islington, swiftly moving to new offices on Shoreditch High Street. The first memorandum and articles of association were drawn up pro bono by Oxfam’s legal advisor Joss Saunders, and at the first AGM Colin Sandford was elected chair. One of the first services delivered to members was the quarterly market analysis of sector performance - continuing today in an almost unchanged format.

ACS became established as the leading voice of the sector. The first conference, held in 2000 at Church House in Westminster, attracted 200 delegates, and became a successful annual affair with a trade exhibition attached. 2000 also saw the first website, the first special interest group and the first corporate members. Subsequent years saw additional member services, the website members’ area, more interest groups, lobbying, advocacy and the Charity Retail Awards.

In 2004 ACS, by then with five staff and a much bigger membership, moved to share premises with the Association of Charitable Foundations in Bloomsbury, central London. The following years saw a gradual increase in the profile of ACS within government and the appointment of the first Head of Policy in 2007.

• A move to new premises in Holloway Road, London (2010)

• Strengthening of lobbying and PR activity with the appointment of Wendy Mitchell (2012)

• Change of name to Charity Retail Association (2013)

• Publication of “Giving Something Back”, the Demos report on the social impact of charity shops (2013)

• Blockage of the Welsh Government’s attempt to charge business rates to charity shops (2014)