About the campaign
Shelter is a charity dedicated to defending the right to a safe home and addressing the housing emergency. They operate around 80 charity shops across the UK, including boutique, community, furniture, and bookshops, along with an online store. The income from these shops supports their free expert services for people facing homelessness and funds campaigns for long-term change.
Shelter’s shops primarily depend on good quality donations of preloved items from supporters to sell to raise funds for the work they do. Magpie was commissioned by Shelter to develop an ‘emergency’ donations needed pack which could be called upon locally by individual shops when they need donations. The packs needed to be future-proof with messaging that could last for the next two to three years.
Date
Oct 2024 to March 2025
Client
Shelter
Scope of work
- Behavioural diagnosis
- Creative messaging and copywriting
- Training and toolkit development
What we did
Shelter had tried several different approaches to charity donation campaigns in the past. They found that the most effective messaging to motivate donors was to stay true and reflective of Shelter’s cause.
Shelter’s retail team had already done some extensive research, testing and insight into their donor audience. Our behavioural insights team analysed this insight and utilised it to develop key behavioural profiles for each donor ‘type’. We layered these audience profiles with findings from the YouGov Stock Donor Motivation Survey (2024) to uncover how and why people choose to donate. This combined data revealed typical donor behaviours, motivations, and the key factors that encourage action in a charity donation campaign.
When shaping the campaign messaging, we focused on three key donor groups. These were:
- Eco-conscious donors (30%), motivated by environmental benefits such as reusing and recycling.
- Cause-engaged donors (63%), inspired by social causes, such as Shelter’s mission.
- Incidental donors (7%), who give when donating is quick, convenient, or part of their daily routine.
This helped us to come up with a messaging framework and creative concepts to speak to these donors across the various creative outputs.
Developing the creative
We developed several different concepts based on the behavioural profiles and insights. The concept chosen was ‘Turn your pre-loved Furniture into HOME’ for the retail packs.
The focus of the creative and messaging was to promote the cause of Shelter and to encourage ‘cause-engaged’ donors to donate frequently. The idea of ‘turning their pre-loved items into a home’ for someone else to benefit, connected the Shelter cause with the act of donating your good quality pre-loved items.
We designed and delivered two national charity donation campaigns – one focused on furniture donations and another on pre-loved clothing. Each concept reflected the strength of the Shelter brand, pairing bold typography with a flat-lay, fashion magazine–style collage to capture attention and inspire generosity.
Pre-loved furniture
It was really important to Shelter to showcase ‘good quality’ items that people could donate for them to sell on, so true to Magpie’s approach of always wanting to feature ‘real’ people in all our campaigns, we traveled to Shelter Sunderland store to photograph ‘real furniture stock’ in situ. It was important to highlight the Shelter ‘red’ and complement this in the items we chose, showcasing a range of items as well as an array of different shapes and textures for interest.
As well as photographing stock for the campaign, we were able to help photograph staff and the store for their brand photography bank and website. This included important behind-the-scenes shots as well as staff in action in-store.
Pre-loved clothing
We wanted to keep the same look and feel for the pre-loved clothing campaign, again highlighting the importance of showing ‘real’ stock from a store to highlight the kind of quality donations Shelter are after. We gathered a range of clothing stock from Shelter shops as well as donations and photographed an array of different items in a studio to use for the final campaign artwork. We created materials for female-only, male-only and unisex clothing and accessories and produced outputs for stores to use in-store as well as a range of digital assets for paid digital and email campaigns.
Let them be loved again…
Following the success of the retail toolkits we worked with Shelter again to develop their Spring charity donation campaign. ‘Let Them Be Loved Again’, is a campaign that encourages people to consider what they might have in their wardrobes that they could donate and be loved again by someone else. By framing familiar scenarios – like ‘the shoes that never really fit’ or ‘the jacket that’s not your colour’ – the creative encouraged people to view donating as an act of kindness, both for the clothes and to support Shelter’s life-changing charity work. Drawing on behavioural insights into empathy and narrative, the campaign helped people connect emotionally with their pre-loved items, making the decision to donate feel both meaningful and impactful.
Impact
Both campaign toolkits included a range of assets for Shelter stores to use including large POS, tent cards and leaflets. We also produced a digital toolkit to accommodate paid digital and email campaigns as and when are needed. The toolkits have been rolled out across 77 stores across the UK. We have seen a positive response from Shelter stores with an increase in furniture donations seen when the toolkits were rolled out in October 2024.
4% increase
in items sold across Shelter stores.
5.8% increase
in total sales of donated goods.
10p increase
in average sales price, suggesting the quality of donated items had also increased.
TESTIMONIAL
“Magpie’s work directly linking behavioural insight to creative output was very effective, allowing us to be streamlined and focussed on our objectives, translating into a clear and coherent campaign. We saw a year-on-year increase in all available quantity donation metrics including total bags donated and new donors. Finally, we were delighted to receive very positive feedback from our shop managers about the campaign creative visuals and messaging.”
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