Three months into Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland’s pilot of a new loyalty scheme and they have signed up over 10,000 customers, and an amazing 10% of all shop transactions use a Loyalty ID. Customers sign up in exactly the same way as they do for Gift Aid, either at the till, or if that’s busy, on a shop tablet. Sign up is quick and simple and customers earn vouchers which they can spend in store.

Eproductive developed an extract of their Loyalty Value Report that feeds into CHSS’s CRM database and allows them to compare spending between loyalty and non-loyalty customers. Billy Farrell, Head of Income Generation at CHSS, had this to say about the scheme’s success:

“We are genuinely surprised at how hugely popular the loyalty scheme has proved to be. We only finished rolling it out across all shops three months ago, but over 10,000 customers have already signed up and a Loyalty ID is applied to almost 10% of all transactions. That’s an incredibly positive result after so short a time and I expect that percentage will continue to grow as the number of sign-ups increases.

We worked closely with Eproductive to ensure we could feed the new loyalty data directly into our customer relationship marketing, and are excited by the potential new revenue the data could generate.”

Age UK had never sold a single ticket in-store until they added the EPRTouch lottery module this year. They are now selling around 5,000 tickets a week and staff say the combination of speed, simplicity and customer prompts on their CDUs makes all the difference.

William Floyd, Age UK’s Product Manager for Lotteries & Raffles said:

“Eproductive worked closely with Age UK’s lottery management company and our in-house retail team to make sure the set-up ran smoothly. We piloted ticket sales in three shops and then three areas to ensure we could deal with any unforeseen issues before the full roll-out.

It’s been a massive success as shop staff can sell a lottery ticket in a matter of seconds. The combination of a customer prompt on the CDU and a till prompt for staff is very effective, and feedback from the shops has only been positive. We’re delighted with the extra revenue it’s generating for Age UK.”

St Michael’s Hospice, Hastings & Rother, have a similar story to tell as selling tickets in-store was also a brand new experience for their shop teams. Lottery Initiatives Coordinator, Tia Kemp, gave this feedback:

“The technical set-up was really simple with Eproductive guiding us every step of the way. Their advice and expertise instilled confidence in the whole process, and shop staff took to it straight away. We piloted ticket sales of our Superdraw Lottery for just three weeks but the results have been fantastic.”

It’s 25 years since brothers Chris & Nick Cowls registered Eproductive Ltd with Companies House on 22nd September 2000. To celebrate 25 glorious years here’s a walk down Memory Lane…

Repeat Performance

In 2024, EACH raised around £1,500 per week for eight weeks, funding children’s hydrotherapy sessions using an Add Donation Prompt for staff on the till, and a customer prompt on the CDU. In 2025 they did it again with their Let’s Drum up Funds Music Therapy Campaign.

The Let’s Drum up Funds Campaign raised almost £1,500 a week in just six weeks, with £8,564 from over 34,000 individual 25p donations. It was rolled out across the charity’s 53 shops on 9th June until 20th July, giving customers the option to add an extra 25p donation to their purchase.

Feedback from the EACH retail team

“Our customer-facing display units have proved their worth again with 2025’s Let’s Drum up Funds campaign. Over 34,000 individual 25p donations were generated by combining a customer prompt on the CDU and a staff prompt on the till in just six weeks!

We know short campaigns for a specific target are the most successful, and we have the ability to switch images on or off ourselves remotely, and even vary the images on the CDUs in different shops or regions.”

Genine Woodcock, Retail Central Support Manager, EACH

EACH has dedicated music therapists at each of its three hospices – at Milton, near Cambridge, The Nook, near Norwich, and The Treehouse, in Ipswich. Music therapy helps a child’s developmental goals in a fun, musical way.

EACH relies on voluntary donations for the majority of their income, with only 15% of funding coming from the government, county councils and the NHS.

We were delighted to score a hat trick at last night’s Charity Retail Association conference in Harrogate, voted Supplier of the Year (Category B) for the third year in a row.
A big thank you to all the charities who voted for us. We genuinely care about your success, take pride in our customer service, and hope to do it all again for you in 2026!

There are now over 30 charities on the My Charity Shop app. The latest data for April 2025 shows 14% of Gift Aiders across those 30 charities have installed the app on their phone, but among the top 10 charities 1 in 5 Gift Aiders use it.

Every Gift Aid donation counts towards badges on the app. E.g. if sales of your donated goods reach £50 a badge illuminates and an animation is revealed. There are different animations for number of donations, years of donating, money raised and CO2 saved by donating goods to a charity shop (vs. sending them to landfill or incineration). You can see all the new badge animations here.

In February 2025 the Derbyshire charity Valley CiDS received this unprompted message from a Gift Aid donor:

“Hi,

I just want to say how much I love using the My Charity Shop app when donating items to Valley CiDS - I like that I can have my donor card electronically and it tracks how much money my donations have raised! I love seeing the awards add up and it means I always donate my items to Valley CiDS, even though there are other charity shops that are closer. 

I recently got the £250 award but that’s the highest one available - is there any chance you are able to update the app so the awards go to higher values?

Kind regards,

Jess, Derby”

We duly added three new awards £500, £750 & £1,000 for Lighthouse Charity Shops (Valley CiDS).

By tracking sales revenue for Gift Aided and non Gift Aided items we know that donors who install their Gift Aid card, (to scan at the till), raise roughly twice as much as those without the app. For more details please see our webpage here.

We recently contacted three new EPRTouch clients to ask about the effect of installing Eproductive’s EPRTouch EPOS system on their revenue.

Florence Nightingale Hospice joined Eproductive only six months ago. The EPRTouch installation was quick and efficient. In December 2024 Lily Caswell, Head of Retail & Volunteering said:

“It was a big decision for us to install a new till and Gift Aid system at the busiest time of year, and the team at Eproductive pulled out all of the stops to make it happen. Eproductive are great to work with – hugely supportive, totally approachable, and lovely people. It seems to me that they put charity shop teams at the very heart of what they do”.

Six months later their Gift Aid Sales Conversion has increased by more than a third and Lily expects payback on their investment will be well ahead of schedule:

“We definitely made the right decision investing in EPRTouch. It’s only six months since installation but we expect the additional Gift Aid revenue to have covered the cost of the new system by the first anniversary of the roll out! Our shop teams love the new system, and our Board are very pleased with the results.”

Nottinghamshire Hospice installed the EPRTouch over a year ago. In early 2024 Paula Watkins, Retail Operations Manager, gave this initial feedback:

“The overwhelming feedback is that shop and volunteers love the new system.  We have volunteers who have never wanted to go on the till before wanting to learn which is a huge win.  We have thoroughly enjoyed working on this project with the whole team and look forward to a long partnership.”

A year and a half on, Director of Income Generation, Ross Henderson had this to say:

“Our target was to cover the cost of our investment within two years. In fact our new EPOS system will pay for itself in 18 months! Because Eproductive’s EPRTouch system is custom built for charity retail, the efficiencies it introduced have translated directly into increased Gift Aid & sales revenue.”

Children’s Hospice South West switched to EPRTouch in 2023.  Less than two years later their Gift Aid Sales Conversion has increased by over 40% and is now considerably higher than the sector average. Shop sales of lottery tickets have also seen a significant boost.

Chris Judd, Head of Retail at CHSW said:

"We're now nearly two years on from installing a new EPOS System and I'm happy to say the payback in terms of Gift Aid, Lottery and Sales Revenue has more than covered our investment.  It's a system custom built for charity retail and was definitely the right choice for Children's Hospice South West"

East Anglia's Children's Hospices’ Help Hydrotherapy Happen campaign aimed to encourage customers to donate an extra 25p when paying at the till. The target was to raise £9,000 – enough to fund a hydrotherapy session every week for the next 12 months. Instead, the campaign raised a phenomenal £11,436 from 5th August to 29th September 2024 in EACH’s 48 shops.

The Eproductive tills featured staff and customer prompts on both the till’s touch screen and the colour customer facing display (CDU) just before payment for each transaction was processed. Eproductive’s Client Services Manager, Tracey Rogers, explains what made the campaign so successful:

“East Anglia's Children's Hospices decided to replace their six screensaver images that rotate on shops’ customer displays with just one for the whole campaign. Because the impact of a message inevitably fades over time, the campaign was limited to just 8 weeks. Getting shop staff on board was crucial. Managers and volunteers did a great job of promoting the campaign to customers at the counter, ably assisted by the till prompts and CDUs.”

Eproductive will be enhancing Add Donation so that charities can update the message on the CDU using the latest donation data from the till. A half way there, £1,000 raised this week or Just£500 to go message can be highly effective.

Genine Woodcock, Retail Central Support Manager said:

“It has been an amazing success. Shops have really embraced it. The Add Donation prompt made it so easy for shop staff to tell customers about the Help Hydrotherapy Happen campaign. We will definitely run fundraising campaigns this way again in the future”

Eproductive do not charge for this feature and charities can upload their own images direct to their shops’ customer facing displays.

Nottinghamshire Hospice has been piloting a new feature on the till’s customer facing display. When not processing a purchase the large colour display screen usually shows a screen-saver of up to six images on rotation - promoting everything from volunteering to charity events. This November their West Bridgeford store has been showing the shop’s CO2 and landfill savings - calculated on the shop’s total sales of donated goods for the past week.

Research shows that buying second-hand reduces consumption of new goods and avoids significant CO2 emissions exacerbated by the rise of fast fashion. Eproductive’s EPOS system allows charity’s to calculate these savings by using donated goods sales from the till. For more detail see this page on our website.

Paula Watkins, Retail Operations Manager at the hospice had this to say:

“Focusing on CO2 and landfill savings for individual shops brings the ‘buy second-hand’ message closer to home for both customers and staff. The feedback has been very positive and we plan to roll out this free new feature over the coming months”

Eproductive have developed a new app based stocktake solution available to all Touch Till clients at no additional charge. You don’t need to print off stock sheets and walk round with a pen, instead, using the secure MyEPR app, staff simply scan an item’s barcode via your phone or tablet’s camera and enter the number of items in stock. So if you use shop tablets for donor sign-up they can also be used for stock takes.

A picture of the item scanned is shown on the app and it even works off-line, so basement storerooms with no Wi-Fi signal are not an issue. The app saves your stock take as you go ready to upload to your database when back on line.

Eproductive Director Nick Cowls said:

“Paper based stocktakes are time consuming and prone to error.  Using an app massively reduces workload and improves accuracy. Stock levels are automatically uploaded, and Head Office can run reports showing stock levels and discrepancies by shop immediately. We don’t charge for this new feature, it’s free to all our Touch Till clients.”

Age UK donors across the UK are now able to simply scan their phone at the till to Gift Aid a donation. They become the latest charity to join the free My Charity Shop app.

Age UK’s Retail Communications Manager, Lauren Hamer, said “We’ll be promoting the app on our website, in store and through our automated thank you emails we send each time you Gift Aid an item.”

Nick Smith, Age UK Retail Director said “The app is integrated to our Gift Aid database and EPOS system. Based on the experience of the other charities, we expect around 10% of our current Gift Aid donors to install the app on their phone in the first year. Obviously it makes gift aiding a donation easier for customers, but the app also allows us to promote volunteering and charity shops’ CO2 savings through recycling or resale.”

Nick Cowls, Director of Eproductive said “Age UK have been a client for many years and are the first national charity to join the app. The data on donations speaks for itself – people who install the app raise twice as much as those without it. With almost a million live Gift Aid donors Age UK is a big addition to the app.”

Last night we we’re delighted to receive the Charity Retail Association’s Supplier of the Year Award for medium size suppliers (category B).

Enormous thanks to all the lovely charities who voted for us - here’s a link to the thank you video we made from the three recipients for categories A, B & C.

Eproductive’s Sonia Fletcher will be running a session on Retail Gift Aid at this year’s Charity Retail Association (CRA) conference in Harrogate later this month.

Sonia has well over 30 years of experience in the charity retail sector. She has been with Eproductive since 2007, sits on the CRA’s Corporate Member’s Advisory Group and is a permanent fixture at the CRA’s Gift Aid Special Interest group where, along with others, she helps advise and answer questions that many charity representatives have.

Her Retail Gift Aid expertise is probably unrivalled, and includes dealing with legislative queries, liaising with HMRC on behalf of clients and assisting charities to maximise their Retail Gift Aid income through research, development and training at all levels.

Sonia’s conference session is called ‘Striking the balance with Retail Gift Aid’ and her session will explore ways to make the Gift Aid process as simple as possible for shop teams to maximise the value of donations; how to identify the challenges faced in achieving this, as well as Gift Aid training and auditing to ensure HMRC compliance.

See us - Stand 41

Hear us - Wednesday 4.15-5.10pm

CRA 2024, Harrogate Convention Centre, June 26th-27th

Background

Valley CiDS have 34 Lighthouse Charity Shops, a distribution hub and a café  spread across the counties of Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire. They joined Eproductive in Autumn 2022, rolling out EPR Touch tills, colour 10” Customer Display Unit (CDU) and our EPR Stockroom Hubs in November & December 2022.

Impact of the EPRTouch system

1 Gift aid sales conversion has increased to 30% from 12% pre-installation so far, and is expected to grow even more

2 Gift Aid Revenue grew by over £100,000 (Jan-Oct 2023 vs. pre installation Jan-Oct 2022)

3 90% of all donors are now signed up with an email address

Feedback from Valley CiDS

“The move to Eproductive has been a great success.  One EPOS system might seem much like another, but our experience with Eproductive dispels that. It’s boosted revenue, staff morale, and made managing our retail operation so much easier.  I think the EPR Touch system along with Eproductive’s customer service is the best on the market.”

Harriet Webster, Retail Director, Valley CiDS

The tills’ Add Donation prompt on the till and CDU has already generated £16,000 extra for the charity and the EPR Touch software has been well received by volunteers and staff in all areas of the business, improving attitudes towards Gift Aid.

Eproductive have a reputation for excellent training and support with a highly regarded helpdesk. Valley CiDS were particularly positive about the specialist Gift Aid and New Goods training given to the retail senior management team, recently posting unprompted feedback about Eproductive on LinkedIn:-

“A quick shout out to Eproductive – having moved just over 12 months ago we have seen some amazing results and were able to use a vast amount of data from various reports to help support our changes and highlight positive impact”

LinkedIn post March 2024, Harriet Webster, Retail Director, Valley CiDS

Last week the final and most northerly EPRTouch till was installed by Eproductive in Blythswood Scotland’s Stornoway shop on the Isle of Lewis - over thirty miles off the coast of mainland Britain. The shop was once a bakery and even a hat shop but now serves the local community.

Ian Matheson, Head of Operations said:

“This completes the Eproductive roll out to 22 Blythswood shops in Scotland and Northern Ireland, all with stockroom Hubs and 10” colour customer facing displays showing CO2 savings when you buy second hand. Gift Aid in Blythswood Northern Ireland has seen a great increase since that roll out completed last summer and we’re expecting a similar boost to Gift Aid revenue in Scotland.”

Katharine House Hospice in Stafford have piloted new CO2 data on their customer facing displays. When you buy a donated item the till calculates the CO2 saving verses buying an equivalent new item for that shop department, and displays the CO2 saved at the end of the transaction.

Simon Dodd, Retail General Manager, said:

"Promoting sustainable shopping is great for charity retail, and being able to tell a customer how much CO2 they’ve just saved by buying second hand rather than new is really effective, but I’d love to see standard CO2 conversions for the most common shop departments. I’m sure there’s lots of data out there, but the only CO2 calculator for charitable recycling I’ve seen is actually from Australia! Eproductive have set up a system that allows each charity to enter their own conversion factors for different shop departments. For textiles there’s quite a bit of research but it gets more tricky for furniture, electricals and other shop departments. It’s still early days, but if you’re in charity retail and interested in taking this forward do get in touch.”

Our latest analysis shows charities using a till and customer display lottery prompt are achieving many more sales per shop than those without.

Susan Kerber, Retail and Commercial Manger at St Margaret’s Hospice in Somerset said:

“Turning on the lottery prompt has doubled our sales in just 3 weeks.”

Sonia Fletcher, Client Services Manager and Eproductive’s Gift Aid & Lottery specialist explains more:-

"I knew the prompt was having a positive effect but the difference in ticket sales between those with the prompt and those without is very significant. Obviously there are several other factors affecting sales, but the prompt on the till acts as a reminder for staff, while the customer facing prompt makes asking a customer if they’d like to buy a ticket a little less awkward.”

The wording of the prompt can be customised for each charity and appears just before the transaction is processed. When not showing a transaction the colour display shows a screen saver of up to six images on rotation.

Eproductive doesn’t charge extra for it’s Lottery Module. You can set up the till so it’s a requirement of the transaction to record name and contact details, or you can opt out to avoid queues and make the sale as fast as possible.

Learn more about our Till & CDU here

We were delighted to be awarded the Charity Retail Association’s Supplier of the Year 2023 by receiving the most votes from our charity clients.

Lot’s of charities are taking part in The Great Big Green Week with hundreds of events across the country, from beach cleans to repair shop drop-ins all happening the week of 10th - 18th June. Charity retail is doing its bit by promoting the environmental benefit of buying pre-loved with customisable posters available from the CRA website.

To coincide Eproductive released their new Green Report to all EPRTouch clients giving landfill and carbon dioxide savings by shop or area for any time period.

Lynn Preece, Retail Area Manager at Severn Hospice said:

“We love the green reports - second hand and sustainable is what works for this generation. Being able to put a figure on each shops' contribution is such a smart idea. I’m sending out to shops today and some will be using in their window displays. It really does support our shops in their mission of sustainability.”

Estimating the amount of landfill avoided by reselling an item is calculated by assigning an average weight to each shop department.  When an item is sold the average weight for that department item is recorded and added to your total landfill saving. For example the default average item weight for the department Ladies Tops is 0.4kg and for Sofas it is 40kg.

To estimate carbon dioxide emissions research from a number of different sources, including academia, trade associations and specialist recycling companies, produced a default conversion value of 13.48kg of CO2 saved per 1kg of manufactured textiles. For example buying a preloved 0.4kg ladies’ top saves roughly 0.4 x 13.48 = 5.4kg of CO2 verses an equivalent newly manufactured item. Charities either use this default conversion for all departments or input their own estimates of different conversion factors for different departments.

Eproductive’s My Charity Shop app has been shortlisted for 2023’s Mobile Innovation of the Year at the Retail Systems Awards.  Winners will be announced on the 29th June at London’s Waldorf Hilton.

Director Nick Cowls said “We’re delighted to be shortlisted for this national retail award. Almost three years of development work went into the My Charity Shop app and this year things have really started to take off.  We have over 20 charities live on the app and 10 more soon to join.  Gift aid donors all receive an automated thank you email after donating, and 10%-15% decide to install their gift aid card on the app. We also know those donors raise twice as much for their charity as non-installers.”

Recent innovations on the app include What’s in Store, a tile that allows shop managers to list an item with a photo and description in moments – perfect for specialist furniture shops. Find out more about the What’s in Store tile here

Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire based charity Valley CiDS joined Eproductive in Autumn 2022, rolling out touch tills and 10" customer facing displays across their portfolio of Lighthouse Charity Shops.

Just before a transaction completes, the customer facing display shows a prompt asking if you’d like to add a donation to support the work of Valley CiDS. There is a corresponding prompt for staff on the till. The latest results show on average each shop is raising on extra £720 per year. At the top perfoming shop in Matlock an amazing 1 in 3 customers choose to add a donation to their purchase!

Valley CiDS chief executive officer Ian Tannahill said “We’re delighted with the results and aiming to raise an extra £1,000 per shop in the first year. Eproductive doesn’t charge for this feature so 100% of donations will go to help support our work across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.”

The manager at Matlock’s Lighthouse Charity Shop said “The prompt on the customer display removes any embarrassment staff might feel asking for a small additional donation, and since the display also has screensaver images promoting our work, customer reaction has been really positive.”

The suggested donation can be customised for each individual shop, and with more and more charities adopting this feature, Eproductive will be analysing the data to help clients choose the most appropriate value.

St Margaret’s Hospice has five furniture shops spread across Somerset. This week three shops started photographing their donated furniture and uploading it to the My Charity Shop app’s new feature called What’s in Store.

Susan Kerber, Retail and Commercial Manager said:

“We’ve been struggling to find a quick and easy way to let people view furniture before they visit for years but found it very impractical to update items on our website. It only takes a minute or two to add a price and description to a photo, which they can do securely on shop tablets or phones using Eproductive’s MyEPR app. They’ve uploaded over 70 items just this week!”

“We’re promoting the app with instore posters and our automated donor thank you emails. Shop managers think it's a great idea!"

The Shakespeare Hospice became the 20th charity to join the app since it’s launch in November 2021. Over the last year 13% of gift aid donors have downloaded and installed the app across all charities, with the first two charities to join hitting levels closer to 20%!

Becky Fuller, Retail Operations Manager at The Shakespeare Hospice said:

“The app doesn’t just keep your gift aid card handy, it’s also a great way to engage with donors about everything from events to volunteering. We’re promoting the app on our website and supporting that with in-store posters, till receipts and email.”

Action Cancer is Northern Ireland’s leading local cancer charity, whose mission is to save lives and support local people through cancer awareness, prevention, detection, and support. The charity has been an Eproductive client for 13 years, using the EPR Gift Aid system to raise more funds for their vital work.

In October and November 2022, they upgraded to new EPR Touch tills with 10” customer display units. The new customer facing displays promote everything from volunteering in store to their free furniture collection service. During a transaction the display prompts customers to ask if they would like to donate an extra pound to Action Cancer. Retail Operations Manager Peter Lynch said

“The 10” customer display is fantastic – the customer can see the whole transaction, the rotating images allow us to promote all aspects of the charity  and with the “add donation” feature we are gaining an extra £20 per week of income per store – we’re delighted”.

This week Great Oaks Hospice in the Forest of Dean will be the first charity on the app to go live with a new What’s in Store feature.

Retail Manager Pauline Fosbery said:

“When someone donates to our Bride Shop, we can take photos, write a short description, add a price and within a minute or two it’s listed on the My Charity Shop App.  People can sit at home and browse all the wedding dresses for sale on the app, it’s very quick and simple”.

For charity furniture shops the What’s In Store feature has huge potential, with shop managers and volunteers able to list an item within a minute or two.

Susan Kerber, Retail and Commercial Manager at St Margaret’s Hospice in Somerset said

“We’ve been struggling to find a quick and easy way to preview furniture for years but found it very impractical to update items on our website.  This is a built for purpose solution that can be easily administered by a shop manager or volunteer, and adds minimal additional workload.  We’re really excited and hope to launch within a few weeks”.

1 in 8 donors install the app

Since it went live last December 2021, 13% of donors have installed the app after receiving an automated Thank you for your donation email with a download link.

Average Donor Value 50% more for app installers

What’s more, when gift-aiders are split into those that downloaded the app and those that didn’t, app installers are twice as likely to donate again within the next 2-3 months. The Eproductive EPOS system can also calculate an Average Donor Value. It does this by adding up the sales of gift-aided items and assigning that value to each item’s donor. When we looked at the first 1,000 donors who installed the App, their Average Donor Value was £94.  Non-installers Average Donor Value by comparison was only £62.

Over a dozen charities now on the app

As of May 2022, there are now over a dozen charities on the My Charity Shop app, with more joining each month. This week sees the release of version 1.05, which features an updated Green Tile calculating CO2 and landfill savings from the reuse and recycling of donated items.

Sobell House Hospice was one of the first hospices in the UK and has been providing specialist palliative care in Oxfordshire since 1976.

In September 2021, Eproductive started installation of new Touch tills and digital Gift Aid sign up using tablets, rolling them out across Sobell’s 10 shops and donation warehouses. Stock processing was similarly automated using Eproductive’s Hubs, allowing volunteers to scan a barcode from a donated bag and simply press a button to print barcodes for the price tags.

Sarah Bradford, the charity’s Finance Accountant, has been amazed at the effect in just the first four months:

“Switching from paper to digital has been brilliant for everything from donations to end of day processes. Everything is now so quick and simple, shop staff just love it. The effect on Gift Aid was immediate. The Gift Aid donor conversion jumped from 37% to 65% in the first 18 weeks vs. pre-pandemic 2019. Despite the number of bag donations to shops dropping by over a third relative to 2019, our Gift Aid claim for the same 8 shops has actually grown by 42% – all down to going digital!”

“Added to that, around 99% of all repeat donations are now processed on a tablet or till, freeing up time for staff at the counter, and changing the whole mindset towards Gift Aid. The extra revenue means a lot to us and it’s going to make all the difference to a small local charity like ours – we’re delighted!”

Guild Care opened their first shop over 40 years ago on the West Sussex South Coast.  They provide a broad range of care services, and are a well-loved local charity.

Towards the end of May 2021 Eproductive started to roll out new Touch tills, allowing both donor look-up and bag label printing at the till.  At the same time stock processing was automated by using Eproductive’s Hubs – minimising the time and effort spent in the sorting room.

In the last five months to November 2021, Guild Care’s Gift Aid Claim rose by 500% compared to the same period in pre-pandemic 2019 for the same 10 shops.  Meanwhile the percentage of gift-aided donations has almost quadrupled from 15% to 54%.

Director of Retail, Adam Rider, has this to say about upgrading from paper to digital:

“The default used to be not to ask at all, because the manual gift-aid process was so long and convoluted.  All that manual process disappeared overnight, and literally one day post installation, once staff had physically had a go, everyone just switched on and it just took off.  It was just probably one of the biggest successes of any product launch, IT launch, anything we’d ever done.  The whole system is positive. It was seamless in the installation, the volunteers have taken to it like ducks to water; it’s easy - bearing in mind a quarter of our volunteers are people with learning difficulties, they use it as well.  It’s now business as usual as if it’s been here forever, but it was like that after the first week. I can’t think of any negatives really – it’s just simple and easy.”

St Luke’s Hospice Sheffield is a charity which cares for people in Sheffield, aged 18 and over, who are affected by terminal illness, whilst supporting their families and carers. The charity has 13 shops across the city of Sheffield, including online, all of which sell a wide range of donated second-hand goods.

In November 2018, St Luke’s Hospice went live with our EPR package. Due to the ease with which donors can sign up to Retail Gift Aid, an additional £80,000 has been raised through the sales of donated goods in the first year of the launch.

In February 2020 (a month before charities were told to close their shops due to COVID), we spoke to Marie Egerton, Head of Retail at St Luke’s, to ask how the installation had gone.

“It was so easy and hassle-free. During the implementation and installation period, Eproductive staff members were there to do extensive training for the shop managers and for key members of the volunteer teams.

It’s been nothing but a success. The new process has been really welcomed. It’s a lot quicker in the backroom which means that stock is getting onto the shop floor more quickly. And people aren’t afraid of processing Gift Aid now. There is less paperwork because everything is being done digitally, which means it is more GDPR-compliant. Email capture has significantly increased, which means fewer bounce-backs when thank-you emails are sent out, and our postage has been significantly reduced.”

In terms of monetary value, after seven months from when we did our first claim with EPR Touch we had raised the same amount of money that we raised annually with our previous supplier. Those figures are phenomenal. We have shops which were doing well before, but they are doing exceptionally well now – they’ve consistently got over 50% Gift Aid conversion. Every shop has increased their Gift Aid conversion.”

Marie added: “And because it’s been such a dramatic increase, it has re-ignited the passion for asking for Gift Aid. With the thank-you emails that the donors get, even though it’s a do-not-reply inbox, they do reply and say ‘thank you for the thank-you, it’s a pleasure’. We’re getting really good feedback from being able to send donors thank-you emails.”

When it comes to working with Eproductive, Marie said:

“You are a company that develops solutions which the client wants. Everything that’s been important to us at St Luke’s has either happened or is coming, so we do feel really valued as a customer.”