Written by Johanna Strauss, Manager at Durbanville Children’s Home
I believe that if Non-Profit Organisations (NPO) such Durbanville Children’s Home do not implement a diverse marketing strategy, they will not be able to survive. We are therefore consistently looking for innovative ways to generate income.
The dream for our charity shop started when we sold second hand clothing to informal traders and saw that it was a lucrative market. A need arose to find a market for vintage and more expensive adult clothing that the informal traders were not interested in.
We started our charity shop in 2015 by converting three rooms and a garage space into a shop. We opened it on Mandela Day in 2015 and called it DCH Boutique.
The vision for the shop was to utilise donations from sponsors in a responsible manner and generate income for the Children’s Home. It also gives customers the opportunity to buy good quality clothing at affordable prices. We are blessed with volunteers who sort through all the donations, stock the shop and sell the donations.
Subsequently, we were approached by KykNet in 2023 to film an episode of “In die Sop” at Durbanville Children’s Home. Through this initiative, they sponsored the upgrade of the charity shop and added a counter with space to sell sweet treats, and a braai stand. This enables us to generate more income by selling coffees, boerewors rolls and sweet treats to charity shop visitors. They also rebranded the shop and called it Annie and Finn.
The Charity Shop has been a huge success and also a blessing. We have managed to generate R 92 664,00 per month on average during the 2022/2023 book year and have increased our profit in the 2023/2024 book year to R121 760,00 per month.
