Mistletoe on Saturday

This was the last of the donation of mistletoe and we'd sold out by mid-afternoon. Very many thanks to the imaginative donor for a fantastic addition to our Christmas fundraising.

Please keep those donations coming...

We need to turn over 100 items daily at each shop if we're going to meet our targets to fund our clinic and other animal welfare services. 156 Newmarket High Street is a general-purpose charity shop, 188 Mill Road, Cambridge specialises in second hand books, art and music and 61 Burleigh Street Cambridge (Emporium 61) has vintage/retro clothes, accessories and art.

We move donations between the shops, so please don't feel you have to get to any particular one.

Volunteer drivers needed for our shops

We're looking for someone (or several someones) with a car who would be prepared to put in about an hour a week moving stock between 188 Mill Road and 61 Burleigh street. We need to do this because it's often more convenient for supporters to drop off their donations at Mill road and we then sort them there and transfer just the saleable clothes and ornaments.

We're also looking for volunteer drivers who would be prepared to help with house-clearances. This often produces some very good quality stock for the shops (among a lot that can only be sold for recycling) and is very popular because people wanting houses cleared are happy to see the contents going to support a charity rather than being thrown in a skip.

House clearances are done on an occasional basis and usually involve one or more drivers and some helpers working for about half a day.

We reimburse petrol costs.

If you might be interested in this, please email camshop@rspcabookshop.co.uk or phone 01223 212 644

Not just books!

Our charity shop at 188 Mill Road also has pictures (antique and new), posters and music (CDs and vinyl).

Christmas cards available now!

Delightful animal cards now available to buy at 188 Mill Road and 61 Burleigh Street in Cambridge.

All profits from the sale go to support out local animal welfare work.

Rags, but no bones

If you are a frugal person and wear your clothes until they fall to bits it's still worth stuffing them in a bin liner and bringing them to us because we can sell them on for recycling.

In a typical month, sales of rags bring in £200-£300, which is enough to pay for a dog or cat to have a broken leg pinned via our clinic, so is well worth the effort. Diverting worn out clothes from landfill to re-use also benefits the environment and helps to reduce council charges. It's helpful if bags of textiles that are definitely only good for this can be labelled as rags, so that our volunteers don't spend time sorting through them.

Old towels are useful as animal bedding and we can also sell them directly as cleaning wipes, so it's helpful if those can also go in a separate bag.

All of this is increasingly important to us as potential donors of cash start to feel the pinch. Every pound that we can earn by trading activities is new money that doesn't depend on people being able to spare their hard-earned cash in difficult times.

Would your employer let you run a "donate, don't dump" day for us?

"Donate, Don't Dump" is a concept inspired by Mary Portas and basically depends on the theory that pretty well all of us have something stashed away which we are never going to use/wear, but which is in perfectly good condition or else is old enough to be a curio. Examples might be china ornaments that are just collecting dust; kindly-meant presents of clothes that are the wrong size/colour; boxed games no-one ever has time to play, and so on.

Individually you might feel none of them is worth making a special trip to donate to a charity shop, but if 20 or 30 people got together to pool their donations they might well have a collection of items that would raise over £100 when sold.

Of course, the group doesn't have to be based on a place of work: it could just as well be organised by a school; playgroup; book discussion group—anywhere that people get together.

We need to turn over roughly 100 items a day to meet our target of £500 daily takings at 61 Burleigh Street.

If you might be interested in organising a Donate Don't Dump Day, but would like to discuss it with someone first, email emporium61@rspca-cambridge.org.uk or phone 01223 312 802 (closed Mondays).

Nostalgic children's books at 188 Mill Road

Many thanks for the generous donations of books we've had over the past few weeks. As you can see from our window display these included lots of very nice children's ones.

Christmas is coming!

Christmas cards and logo gift items now on sale at 188 Mill Road and 61 Burleigh Street, including these smart T-shirts and our very own photo-mugs with pics of animals rehomed by the branch. Emporium 61 in Burleigh St also has the 50/50 range of new clothes and accessories created by our talented staff.

Turn out your wardrobes!

Do you have any clothes you don't wear any more, or maybe unopened packets of underwear you bought when you were a size smaller?

All of them can be used to raise valuable funds at our charity shops at 188 Mill Road, 61 Burleigh Street, Cambridge and 156 High Street, Newmarket. Even worn or damaged clothes can still be sold for recycling and ones that are in good condition but old-fashioned are surprisingly saleable at the moment.

We can also sell "quirky" items such as musical instruments, old cameras and 1950s wireless sets, as well as ornaments, pictures and books.

188 Mill Road specialises in 2nd hand books and 61 Burleigh street in vintage clothes, but either of them would be delighted to receive your donations and we will arrange to transfer them to the appropriate shop if needed.

We would also be grateful for donations of old towels for use as washable animal bedding.

188 Mill Road and 156 High Street, Newmarket are open Monday-Saturday and 61 Burleigh street is open Tuesday-Sunday.

Blog Action Day 2009: Did you know?

Buying secondhand from charity shops and donating unwanted items instead of chucking them in the bin is a way to reduce your carbon footprint.

In the UK, between 4 and 5% of domestic waste is made up of clothing and other textiles. About 25% of this is recycled by charities and their associated trading companies.

The Salvation Army Trading Company recently sponsored research to find the energy used by reuse/recycling of textile items and whether this resulted in net energy saving benefit (and hence reduced carbon emission).

The energy footprint of textiles was estimated using a streamlined life cycle assessment which was restricted in scope in order to target specific aspects of the footprint, in this case energy consumption.

Taking into account extraction of resources, manufacture of materials, electricity generation, clothing collection, processing and distribution and final disposal of wastes it was shown that for every kilogram of raw cotton replaced by use of second hand clothing approximately 65 kWh is saved, and for every kilogram of polyester around 90 kWh is saved. Hence, reuse and recycling of donated clothing results in reduced carbon emissions in comparison to purchasing new clothing made from raw materials.

(Life cycle assessment for reuse/recycling of donated waste textiles compared to use of virgin material: An UK energy saving perspective Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 94-103. Anne C. Woolridge, Garth D. Ward, Paul S. Phillips, Michael Collins and Simon Gandy)

Where we are in Cambridge City


View RSPCA in Cambridge in a larger map


Map showing the location of our clinic and shops.

Do you have any clothes from the 60s, 70s or 80s (or earlier) that no longer fit?

Clothes and accessories that were new then are very fashionable again, and are a valuable source of funds for our work. We can also sell related items such as packets of nylons, dress-making patterns, sewing sets, cookery books and leaflets that might not immediately occur to you as useful donations to a charity shop.

Ornaments, pictures, crockery etc. etc. will also sell well, and the reproduction pictures that were popular in the 60s are fashionable too.

If you would like to drop off donations by car at the 61 Burleigh st shop, please phone ahead (01223 312 802) for directions to the unloading area behind us on Paradise street and to make sure someone is available to open the back door.

61 Burleigh St., Cambridge is open Tuesday-Sunday (closed Mondays), 188 Mill road, Cambridge Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday) and 156 High Street, Newmarket Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday).

Branch photo mugs now available

£5 per mug. Available from our shop at 61 Burleigh Street now and shortly at 156 High Street, Newmarket and 188 Mill Road, Cambridge. These are a trial fundraiser and if they sell we'll have more printed with different photos of animals rescued by the branch

Fantastic Saturday for E61

Andrew and his team of volunteers have worked like trojans this week and Saturday was their best result yet. We can now be confident that the branch investment in E61 is going to pay off in terms of providing a reliable regular income stream to fund our animal welfare work.

As we took on the lease towards the end of one of the three monthly rent periods, a full three month's rent falls due at the end of one month's trading, so money will be tight until October, because we don't want to draw on the Co-Op bond fixed-term investment and lose interest. After that, provided we can keep building on this wonderful start, we will have enough secure income to fund our animal clinic and boarding of rescued animals.

THANK YOU to everyone who worked so hard to make this possible, particularly to Andrew, Fiona, Wayne, Sharon and Ed. (and to all Claire's children who cheerfully gave up their Sunday morning to help move tons of "stuff" out of the basement at 188).

Opening date for Emporium 61

Emporium 61: our new charity shop at 61 Burleigh Street, Cambridge CB1 1DJ will open for business at 10.30 am on Friday 21st August. We hope you will think it has been worth the wait.

E61 will focus on high-quality vintage/retro fashion, kitsch, collectibles and accessories. A veritable Aladdin's cave.

Raising funds and awareness for the RSPCA Cambridge & District Branch.

The phone number for the shop is 01223 312 802.

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Our bookshop at 188 Mill road will continue to improve its offerings of second-hand and antiquarian books, prints and music now that more of its storage space is available to dedicate to shelving.

If you live closer to Newmarket, why not visit our wonderful shop at 156 the High Street.

Rejoicing over shop slightly premature

As we weren't allowed to transfer the initial rent payment at the same time as paying the rent deposit and paying for the fixtures & fittings, I'd rather hoped we would be able to pay the landlord by cheque, which is a straightforward process that can be done by post.

Sadly, like everything involved in the never-ending Burleigh Street Shop saga, that would be too easy, so Kit and Janine will be turning up in person to initiate the payment at the branch of Cambs. Building Society which opens on Sundays.

With any luck this will be the absolutely final step before we can get the keys and we will be able to make a start on cleaning and decorating next week.

The banner above is Andrew's absolutely inspired design for the shop frontage. Note that the phone number is only a dummy as we've not got a line installed yet.

If you are interested in volunteering to help with setting up the shop, please ask Andrew or Ffiona at 188 Mill Road. If you would like to drop off donated goods by car there is vehicle access and a parking space at the back of the shop from Paradise street, but for the moment, please still take donations intended for 61 Burleigh street to 188 Mill road as we'd like to do a thorough clean before moving in any stock.

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Music and pictures as well as books at 188 Mill Road

Just a reminder that our charity shop at 188 Mill road sells collectable vinyl records, CDs and art as well as second-hand books. 

We're always grateful for donations of any of these.

Please remember our charity shops

Spring is just around the corner and if you are having a clear-out, please remember that our charity shops can make good use of discarded textile items—things like curtains and cushion covers as well as clothes. Prices for rags to recycle are still good, so even worn-out items can still help us raise much needed funds. 

Non textile items need to be in reasonably good condition so that they can be sold in the shop, as they don't have a value when recycled. 

Please make sure donations are reasonably clean (no abandoned sticky sweets in pockets, please!) so that they're not unpleasant for our volunteers to sort. 

If you have a mix of worn-out/damaged and nearly new clothes, it is extremely helpful to us if you can pre-sort them into separate bags so that the worn-out ones can go straight into the recycling area. 

Donations can be handed in at either of our shops: 156 High Street, Newmarket or 188 Mill Road, Cambridge. We can usually arrange to collect if you have large amounts and live reasonably close to Cambridge.

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Improving our fund-raising in 2009

We urgently need to increase our fundraising. If we had not received a substantial legacy last year, we would have been in very serious trouble — and we cannot expect a similar windfall this year. 

Last year's legacy will see us through 2009, but we will then have to start cutting back our services unless we can scale up our fund-raising efforts.

If we can succeed in opening a shop in a busier part of Cambridge that will help, but we cannot hope to do this instantly, and it will take time for sales to build up, even if the general economic climate picks up.

One way in which we can make more money without any extra setting up costs is to increase the amount of textiles which we sell on for recycling. Prices per ton are now actually higher than they were this time last year, and the recyclers will take even worn or damaged clothes in order to recover their fibre content. 

If you live near to either of the shops (188 Mill Road, Cambridge or 156 High Street, Newmarket) and are thinking of clearing out your old clothes, please don't throw them out with the rubbish. 

Providing they are clean (so they're not unpleasant for our volunteers to sort), we can use almost all textiles, including curtains, sheets etc, but not duvets or carpet.