What happens to your Oxfam donations?

Raymond Williams, Jeffrey Archer, and the Marchioness of Bath: not the likeliest of literary threesomes. And yet here they are, or their books at least, peeping from the crinkles of a black bin bag, nestling next to a fluffy white hat from Next, a pair of knee-high Kate Kuba boots, five handbags, an old "nana blanket", George Clooney's Solaris, and Boyzone's Where We Belong. It's mid-morning at the Oxfam shop in Enfield, north London, and this bizarre collection is one of 10 donation bags the shop has already received today. But for me, this ragtag bunch of books, clothes, CDs, DVDs, crockery and jewellery has special significance: over the next few weeks, I'll be following many of these items from donor to buyer. For Oxfam's 700 shops, January is the busiest time of the year. Most months, the charity's 21,000 volunteers sort at least 800 or 900 tonnes of donations. But in January, they often deal with more than 1,000 tonnes as Britons embark on new-year clearouts, or dispose of unwanted presents. Most will dump their bag of surplus goods and won't think any more about them. They focus instead on how Oxfam spends the money made from these donations (around £60m a year, or roughly a fifth of the charity's total £318m turnover) or how, in some critics' eyes, it wastes it. Some might also debate whether Oxfam's shops – specifically, its bookshops – make life tough for secondhand booksellers. But the means by which all its donated goods are processed, priced and sold goes largely unanalysed. The crinkled black sack I'm about to track through the Oxfam labyrinth came from Kaye Christodolou. An Oxfam donor for more than 40 years, she pops by the Enfield shop at least once a month with a bag of giveaways. Right now, she is sorting her way through the contents of her loft and, more sadly, the belongings of her mother, who recently died. Today she has brought shop manager Sally Gordon a bag of 38 donations. "This one was my mum's," says Christodolou, holding up a quilt made from soft, bright squares of fabric. Some of the stuff she has donated has been in her loft for so long that she forgot she had it. But other items – such as the blanket – carry great sentimental value. "My mum died at 92, but for years she knitted these squares, ever since I can remember as a child," Christodolou says. "So I thought, I'll give it to Sally and it will move on and my mum will be watching and know it's gone where she wanted it to go." Not everything was such a wrench to give away. Christodolou loves reading but those books, it turns out, were never her favourites. Above us, at the top of a steep flight of stairs decorated with dog-eared fact-sheets about shoes, is the shop's nerve-centre. It's in this musty room – which holds a few mannequins, and several toy parrots lurking behind the net curtains – where volunteers sort and price every donation. It's essential they get it right: the shop has an annual target turnover of around £135,000. Fortunately, Gordon, who joined Oxfam 10 years ago after running her own fashion company, is an expert. "I've lived and died rag trade since I was very young," she says – and it shows. Watching her sort and price Christodolou's jumpers, scarves, shoes and handbags is like watching a croupier deal a deck of cards. It's a mesmerising blur of clothes and price-tags – and, above all, sartorial nous. "This?" Gordon says, dangling a long jumper from her hand. "This is George, and George we won't get very much for. So it's about £3.99." Seconds later, she's called the next item. "£7.99!" And then the next: "£4.99!" Occasionally, she'll stop for a few moments to marvel at a particularly fetching garment. She holds up a beautiful scarf, which Christodolou couldn't keep because she's allergic to wool. "Oh this is lovely! This is merino! Right: £7.99." It takes her less than five minutes to sort 38 items. Next, the clothes are checked for defects, steamed for hygiene, marked for size – and then they're ready for the rails. Exactly where the clothes are hung matters. "We've found it's better if you don't mix middle-aged polyester with a nice young fashion line," Gordon explains. Why? "Because then you just look like a charity shop! We work really hard at trying to make it not look like a charity shop!" She admits it's an ambitious plan. "We can't offer people eight of the same items like a high street shop could do. But we do try and group items so that when you first enter the shop, your overall impression is one of order." If there's one thing Gordon cares about more than presentation, it's her volunteers. Most Oxfam shops have a rota of around 30. Enfield has 72 – and it's easy to see why: the shop has a wonderful, welcoming atmosphere. "We couldn't manage without you, darling," Gordon tells one volunteer, George, and you can tell she's sincere. In return, she has been rewarded with dedication: more than half the volunteers recently won an award from the local council for each racking up more than 100 hours of service. "It's a family atmosphere – the older ones look after the younger ones," Gordon says. "Lots of people are on the dole and they're trying to get jobs – and the older ones go through mock interviews with them. We have a lot of people who come here who life's been a bit unkind to, who come here a bit damaged. And it gives them confidence, and they can achieve great things once they've got their confidence back." One such volunteer is George, whose job, among other things, is to steam the clothes. "George came to us about eight years ago," says Gordon. "He had been working at Asda collecting the trolleys, but they got rid of him. He came in here with Michael, his carer. And Michael asked me to see if he could be given a chance, because he had been made to feel pretty useless. We gave him a go, and George has thrived. He's so bossy that people think he's the manager sometimes!" She laughs. When the first Oxfam shop opened in Oxford in 1948, the intention was to raise money for disadvantaged people outside the UK. That remains Oxfam's core goal, but the charity also fulfils a vital community role at home. The next day, Gordon sends me a panicked email. One of Christodolou's donations, a top from Next priced £6.99, has been nicked. "You would never realise how much we have stolen," Gordon tells me. "We had to seal the mirror in the fitting room because every week you shook the mirror, and £80's worth of price-tags would fall out. People had gone in, taken the price off and stuck it behind the mirror." Gordon couldn't believe people would steal from a charity. "You could have knocked me off a stool with a look." Nevertheless, most of Christodolou's 38 items will sell at some point within the next fortnight. Some of the books – one by Winston Churchill, for example – will be auctioned online. A few items – a necklace, the Solaris DVD and the Boyzone CD – will be "cascaded", in Oxfam terminology, to the charity's Supersaver store in Romford, where they will go for cutdown prices. An old mobile phone and a few plastic plates are sold to recycling plants; a two-piece summer suit will be stored upstairs until May. But most donations sell within days. The merino scarf goes first – snapped up within hours – and a further 23 are in new homes by the end of the week.