You know the ones I mean - the bags that are posted through your letterbox asking you to give clothes, books, bric-a-brac etc.

They come from Great Ormond Street, Help The Aged, British Heart Foundation, Shelter, PDSA, Arthritis Research, Cancer Research etc.

I live in S12 and we get loads of them, is anybody else inundated with them? We don't have so much spare unwanted stuff that we could possibly fill them all, and even when we do put out the empty bags they usually aren't collected, especially the Ormond St bags.

Anybody know if these are all legit? IE it's not just some local bloke with a van accumulating stuff for his car boot sale?

I've never seen any Great Ormond Street charity shops and their own website states they do not accept donations of clothes?!

and your point is?

The items that you give in the bags do not go to charity shops, needy people abroad, etc.. but get ripped up for rags to use in industry!

These companies are normally operated by shady 'scrap metal dealer' types who legitamise what they are doing my making a (usually quite small) annual donation to charity.

If you've got clothes that you don't mind being turned in to rags then by all means use the bags (I'm all for recycling). However, don't expect that some needy Iraqi is going to get those Armarni jeans you used to love, it's more likerly they be used to soak up a oil spill in some factory in Attercliffe!

look closely on the bags... some are printed with words to the ffect "25% of money raised goes to xxxx charity"...

We never use the bags, well apart from saving us buying bin bags.
When you want to donate clothes to a charity, take it to a shop belonging to whichever charity you support, preferably when it's open, just to save them being nicked by the local low lifes to sell on car boot sales.

well, thanks for this... my mum's filled the bag up with clothes and after reading this i went to the web-site of this clothes aid thing:

http://www.clothesaid.co.uk/

wow, really umm... well designed... they've got their own charity number and everything... someone really should report this to umm... whoever deals with scams like this? =\

Originally posted by OooohMatron
I've never seen any Great Ormond Street charity shops and their own website states they do not accept donations of clothes?!

This one is very crafty. If it's the blue and white bag I'm thinking of, they even put on the GOS logo. It is actually a company called Clothes Aid which is not a registered charity. The charity number shown is the GOS hospital charity number. So beware. If you want to be sure that your unwanted things really go to charity then take them to a charity shop.

We had one of these bags come through and I was a bit sceptical, but I have looked at the GOSH website and found this:

Please contact either of our approved collectors if you would like to support us through the donation of unwanted goods:

Goods and furniture (North London only) - Mr. Isik
Tel: 020 7249 8088

Clothes - Clothes Aid
Tel: 0870 607 4600 or 020 7226 4607

http://gosh.org/news/2003/unauthorised_010603.html

The number on the bag I have matches that number. I even called it as they haven't come to collect the bag.

I've read about people claiming that these bags of clothes are for charities and then proceeding to sell them at car boot sales. :mad:

Made a few enquiries and this is what I've found.

Clothes Aid are legit and if you want to give clothes/shoes to them then Great Ormond Street WILL benefit from the items you give.

HOWEVER, Great Ormond Street will only get a few pence (if that!) for every bag of clothes you give, as brailz would seem to be correct - the clothes get 'ragged' and are sold on to industry who pay a pittance for the bags of cloth.

In my opinion you'd be much better giving your items to charities like British Heart Foundation, Oxfam, Help The Aged, Childrens Society, MIND etc. At least these have shops where items can be sold on for a decent amount of profit.

Plus in Sheffield we have our own Childrens Hospital, so if you want to help children why not help Sheffield Children?

Clothes Aid Ltd are professional fundraisers and the sole licensed collection agents for various charities including Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity, Make a Wish Appeal and Alder Hey's Imagine Appeal. Clothes Aid are professional fundraisers and give 90% of the proceeds of collections to our partner charities in London, Liverpool and Knowsley and 75% elsewhere. We have raised over £1,500,000 for charity including over £400,000 for Great Ormond Street Charity in 2006 alone.

We are contracted by the charity to perform their collections, we are licensed by the government and consistently raise 200-300% more than the targets set.

Made a few enquiries and this is what I've found.

Clothes Aid are legit and if you want to give clothes/shoes to them then Great Ormond Street WILL benefit from the items you give.

HOWEVER, Great Ormond Street will only get a few pence (if that!) for every bag of clothes you give, as brailz would seem to be correct - the clothes get 'ragged' and are sold on to industry who pay a pittance for the bags of cloth.

In my opinion you'd be much better giving your items to charities like British Heart Foundation, Oxfam, Help The Aged, Childrens Society, MIND etc. At least these have shops where items can be sold on for a decent amount of profit.

Plus in Sheffield we have our own Childrens Hospital, so if you want to help children why not help Sheffield Children?

I agree, give them straight to the charity ... these people are out to make a profit.

I never fill them and leave them out.
1) i don't trust them
2) leaving bags outside your house just attracts the eye to the fact that you mat not be in
3) i always put my old clothes into a recycle bin
4) i did it once and it went uncollected

they can keep posting them though coz they are good for bin bags :)
i reckon these genuine organisations would be better going a mass collection using a skp at recycle centres.

I only ever fill the Sheffield Childrens Hospital bags anyway - Use the others for the Bin..... :hihi:

Anyone else noticed this thread is 3 years old. Quite apt I suppose when it is kind of about recycling:)

a quick rule of thumb regarding large charity collections.
most door collectors or bag collections do it 'cos they get paid.
lots of street collectors including some childrens charities likewise take at least 20p of every £1 as a fee.

however donatiions to charity shops etc are still used to finance "overheads" for the store - unless someone donates cleaning products and refreshments in all of them.

Clothes Aid are a not for profit organisation, and of course we take a fee that covers the cost of the collections only. This frees up the charities from having to perform the operations themselves, they can then concentrate on delivering healthcare in the region.

The public make their own decision regarding how they give but the service we deliver is very welcome by many including our charity partners (we've collected for both Sheffield and Birmingham Children's hospital recently and currently for Great Ormond St, the Make a Wish Appeal, Alder Hey's Imagine Appeal and Yorkshire Cancer Centre) and the service is also welcome by those who are not able to carry their donations to a charity shop or textile bank, maybe because they don't have a car, have children or are elderly.

We are strictly governed by both licensing regulations and the contracts we have with our charity partners and we also adhere to Institute of Fundraising codes of practice.

"clothes aid are a not for profit organisation" this is a joke the directors etc get paid huge sums of money and maybe someone could tell me this i got a clothesaid bag/leaflet through my door today that said that they will give £50 per tonne to the charity ok so lets do the maths shall we how many items of clothing are in a tonne ? lets say there is 200 just as an example because there would be far more in a tonne , if they were sold in a charity shop at a minimum 1.99 thats £400 wheres the other £350 gone ? its a well known fact that your clothes that you donate have now ended there life when they get put in a clothes aid bag because one of two things happen they either get ragged for industry as several have already stated or they get shredded for use in mattress fillings. personally if i give clothes that i have spent alot of money on i dont want them shredded or ragged i want someone else to benefit from them, this is why imo you should support your local charities and charity shops the huge charities have massive overheads and pay out massive wages to its upper echelons of staff, for example the director of the a well known british charity gets well over £150,000 per year well i could easily make a £100,000 donation per year to this charity ..... give me the job on £50,000 a year simple maths. If you really want the likes of great ormond street and papworth hospital to benefit from the clothes you dont want go do a car boot and then send the profits from it to your chosen charity.

I only ever use them to put household rubbish in - not had any for a while.
If I have items to give to charity, which I often do, they are collected by someone I know who takes them to his charity shop.

I've had quite a few of these bags. I don't fill them any more, I just take unwanted clothes etc to charity shops. Mainly because the few times I did fill a bag and leave it out, nobody bothered to take it.

great ormand st will not post out bags any more due to severing there partnership with rip of clothes aid . they are a rag merchant that ships all of it clothes abroad for prophit . they now put out under the name of make a wish foundation and all the clothes still go to eastern europe . a small donation is made to the charity unlike the bag collectors who work for british heart , cancer research scope etc who take all bags collected straight to the shops were they are sorted and then sold in the shop . please do not tarnish them all with the same brush as these new rag merchants have only been doing this for a few years unlike the proper high st charity that have been around for decades doing this work . there main aim is the rag money and a good rule to sort out the good from the bad is do not give to the ones that state no bric a brac or do not have shops in the high st . these private rag companys are springing up all the time and they put out 5000 bags upwards a day compared to the small 500 a day from the local charities . the way i see it is for every bag they make £4.00 rag money from the likes of british heart foundation etc loose around £30 because this is on average the amount each bag makes when sold in your local hich st shop .. so in the long run even if they do donate a small amount it is nothing compared to the amount they take away form the ones that do it properly and make the most of your donated clothes ...