A charity has seen huge improvements in donations after diversifying its online sales.

Oak Tree Animals’ Charity, based in Wetheral, recently saw a rise in donations after taking part in the free six-month eBay Charity Connect programme, delivered by eBay For Charity.

Charities apply for the programme and are paired up with a specialist advisor who tries to boost their eBay profile, equipping them with the skills to get the most out of donations.

This involves diversifying their e-commerce, targeting individual markets where items will best sell.

There are also webinars, and an eBay shop facility is provided.

Caroline Johnson, general manager at Oak Tree, said: “They taught us a lot through that programme.

“We had a great advisor, Eoin, who gave us really good pointers and looked through our accounts and talked us through the programme, what we’re doing well, and we could’ve done better.

“E-commerce is so important to us in helping animals in our region, so having the expertise from eBay you understand things like algorithms.

“We were getting about £50 a week on eBay, afterwards, we were able to put more listings on and it was working up to about £1,500 through donations as we developed our skills.

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“There are all these complicated algorithms and it’s just allowed us to navigate those”

Caroline said the charity needs about £2,500 a day to operate and explained how she and her team have developed their shop network: “People give us a range of donations so we’re developing it to not only get the best income we can to support the work we do but also to provide additional touch points where people can access our services.

“People are so unbelievably generous and what it’s allowed us to do is access a huge customer base.

“One gentleman gave us a donation of retro video games.

“Talking to that donor we said we were going to use eBay and that one donation raised £7,000, if we sold it another way I don’t think we would have made that much money.

A spokesperson from eBay for Charity said: “eBay for Charity provides charities with online storefronts from which they can raise money, acting as an additional source of income.

“This has been pivotal in the past two years, during which time Covid-19 forced charities to close their stores and lose vital fundraising opportunities.

“There are currently over 11,000 charities active on eBay, which continues to grow day by day.

“To date, eBay’s community has raised £199 million for UK charities.”

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