PICTURES: Gift aid could help Moray Reach Out's garden bloom
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GIFT aid could help make our garden bloom – that is the appeal from a Buckie-based charity thrift shop.
Moray Reach Out's (MRO) Thrift Shop at their HQ on the town's East Church Street is hoping to continue to benefit from the local community's generous donations of goods to sell.
However, the charity, which provides training opportunities for vulnerable adults at sites in Buckie, Elgin and Lossiemouth, is keen to encourage those who are eligible to use the gift aid option when making donation of items.
Christine Malcolm, team leader at the Thrift Shop, explained the difference it could make to one of MRO's major projects at the HQ site.
She continued: "Gift aid really is a huge benefit to us as it allows us to put any profits we get from it back into the business and help with other projects.
"Our main project for this forthcoming year is our garden so our gift aid is very much focussed on that side of things.
"For the first £100-worth of donations we get up to 25 per cent back, which is quite a chunk for us.
"There are criteria for giving gift aid. You have to be a taxpayer, whether it be to a private pension or job, it's literally as simple as that.
"We issue [people who give via gift aid] an annual return and a newsletter. We're coming up to our first year of gift aid this April so it's still all quite new to us, we've not done anything like this before. Obviously it's something we'd like to see grow, it's something the community can get involved with and can see working.
"It has been going quite well. Obviously there are people who don't qualify as they don't pay tax."
Looking at the garden project, she said: "Obviously due to the weather it hasn't been progressing too fast at the moment but as far as I'm aware we're hoping to have it open by the summer.
"It'll be open to the public so they'll be able to see what we've done and what we actually do here.
"The whole idea of the project is to give an outdoor space to our trainees and to put back things into the garden that we've taken out. For example, we've taken out a certain amount of trees so there'll be indigenous trees going back in. There'll be flowers going in to bring back insects and bees into the garden and we're also hoping to do some sort of vegetable planting."
She added that, working in conjunction with local schools, the vegetable plot could be used to illustrate to youngsters where many types of food actually comes from.
Last year – the first full 12 months free of Covid restrictions – and the festive season proved to be profitable for MRO.
Ms Malcolm said: "We've really been improving over the last year or so and I think we've been a good asset to the community as Moray Reach Out as a whole.
"There's nothing in this building that we don't recycle or reuse in some form, right down to the timber that comes in through to the clothes, even things that aren't good enough to sell on the shop floor or go to other end users.
"There's absolutely that leaves here that doesn't go somewhere.
"We've done really quite well as a Thrift Shop, surprisingly, actually, even for us – we thought 'Wow! We're doing quite well'.
"The mainstay for all of our projects, not just the Thrift Shop, is our trainees because they're the ones who benefit. They benefit from having a sense of purpose and participating, having a job to do.
"It's a good community spirit because everybody is treated exactly the same, whether you're a volunteer or trainee, nobody is in any sort of minor role. Everybody mucks in."
The Thrift Shop has a total of eight trainees on its books, who come in on a rota basis.
The year ahead has plenty to offer for the charity, Ms Malcolm said.
"For Moray Reach Out in general at the moment things are looking good.
"Obviously we always think that we could help more businesses, get ourselves out there more but we're slowly but surely getting there.
"We're trying to make other people and other companies aware of what we do. We are only a small concern, we're not a huge organisation we're a local charity and we strive to keep as much as we can locally.
"We're very lucky our premises here, we're not scrunched up at all, it's a lovely place to work."
Read more about donations to the Thrift Shop visit their blog at https://morayreachout.org.uk/embrace-goodwill/
Find out more about Moray Reach Out and what they do at there website https://morayreachout.org.uk/
