TL;DR
St Mary's Hospice ran a 90-day pilot of ListAid across two shops. Result: 80% less time to list each item and a 10× increase in in-store stock selling online. This piece breaks down exactly what changed and what to steal.
See it in action
Unlock more value from every donation.
A 20-minute walkthrough of ListAid on your shop's real donations. No slides.
Book a demoSt Mary's Hospice is a Birmingham-based charity running a network of shops that fund end-of-life care. Like most charity retailers, they had a growing pile of donations that were too good for the shop floor but never quite made it online.
The starting point
Before the pilot, listing an item online took a volunteer roughly 8–12 minutes end-to-end: photo, research, title, description, category, price, publish. That put a natural ceiling on how many items ever made it to eBay — around 40 per week across the participating shops.
What actually changed
- 1
One tool for the whole flow
Replaced a spreadsheet, three browser tabs and a shared email inbox with a single app on the shop iPad.
- 2
AI-drafted listings, human-approved
Volunteers now snap a photo and review the AI-drafted listing rather than writing from scratch.
- 3
POS-connected sales
Online sales flow back into the till system, so Gift Aid, stock and finance stay in one place.
The numbers, 90 days in
| Metric | Before | After 90 days | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to list one item | 8–12 min | <60 seconds | 80% faster |
| Listings per week | ~40 | ~410 | 10.2× |
| In-store stock sold online | 1× | 10× | 10× uplift |
| Gift Aid capture on online sales | Manual | 100% | Automated |
Three lessons other shops can steal
- 1Start with your top 15% of donations — the effect on revenue is disproportionate and the volunteers get quick wins.
- 2Fix Gift Aid attribution at listing time, not sale time. Retro-fitting is painful.
- 3Measure listings-per-hour weekly. It's the single number that predicts revenue three months out.
What St Mary's is doing next
The team is rolling ListAid out to the wider estate, with an early focus on cross-shop stock transfers so the best donations from any shop can be listed by the strongest online team.
