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.

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.