By joining the CRA you are adding strength to our collective voice of more than 460 charities of all sizes running over 9000 shops. Harness our services to drive sustainability, success and trust in our amazing sector. Help us to put charity shops first and foremost in the minds of shoppers and enable your retail operation to raise optimum funds for your parent charity.
Charity retail expertise for 25 years and counting
Why should charity retailers join the CRA?
Encouraging charity retail growth, innovation and recognition.
The Charity Retail Association vision
“A sustainable, inclusive and trusted charity retail sector, successfully supporting the causes it serves”
Leadership
We aim to lead the way on issues that matter to charity retailers and be ahead of the game on innovations and challenges. We contribute to Government consultations, hold parliamentary events and 2024 saw our best year ever in terms of media exposure. Our influence helps to shape a successful charity trading environment on issues such as retail Gift Aid, business rates, reuse and safeguarding.
Our highly rated research programme adds not only weight and credibility to our lobbying efforts, but also allows you to benchmark your retail performance. We encourage all members to take part.
We released the Charity Shop Manifesto for the general election in 2024 with an emphasis on reuse - receiving positive responses from 83 General Election candidates.
Examples of support
- Our volunteering toolkit takes you through each stage of the volunteering journey from recruitment to recognition
- Your staff and volunteers have access to Retail Trust’s excellent online wellbeing provision
- We have over 100 policy guidance notes on all aspects of charity trading, from sale of goods to HMRC-compliant Gift Aid operations
- We encourage sharing of expertise through case studies and our online forum
- We provide low cost recruitment advertising
- Your shops appear on our Find a Charity Shop online search, which attracted 900,000 hits in 2024
- We have a calendar of social media campaigns for our members to take part in on all the big issues – volunteering, sales, donations, sustainability, recruitment and more
- Always with diversity and inclusion in mind.
Community
95% of members say they would recommend CRA membership to another charity. Our packed calendar of events holds 50+ opportunities to meet fellow retailers, whether online or face to face. Our learning and development events link you with charity retailers from operations of every size. Take advantage of 10 different types of special interest group and special groups for hospices, small retail chains, nationals, area-specific groups and our flagship events – the Charity Retail Conference and the coveted Charity Retail Awards.
Join now!
Together we put charity retail firmly on the shopping map – outdoing other high street retailers in performance and sustainability. Let’s go forward together, onwards and upwards into the next 25 years.