Donate by post for free

Oxfam gratefully receives donations of:

• Clothing e.g. dresses, coats, jackets, knitwear, tops, shirts, skirts, jeans, shorts, and children's clothing in good condition.
• Accessories e.g. Bags, purses, hats, scarves, gloves, sunglasses & belts.
• Shoes any styles but must be in pairs
• Jewellery e.g. watches, costume jewellery and fine jewellery
• Homewares and Toys e.g unwanted gift sets, ornaments, vases, linens, complete jigsaws, children’s games and toys.
• Books both fiction and non-fiction including academic, history, cookery, gardening, children’s, and collectables.
• Technology e.g. mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and cameras

What sells well...

• Tops, shirts, accessories, anything vintage.
• Items made from fabrics like wool, cashmere, silk or leather.
• Our customers love brands like; M&S, Next, Monsoon, ASOS, Levi’s, Zara, Topshop, Joules, Boden, & Other Stories, Nike, Adidas, Puma, H&M, Urban Outfitters, New Look, River Island, Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein & Diesel.
• The better the quality of your item, the more you will raise to help Oxfam fight poverty around the world.

The better the quality of your item, the more you will raise to help Oxfam fight poverty around the world.

We are unable to accept donations of:

• used underwear or socks
• dirty, damaged, or incomplete items
• books that are tatty or torn with the exception of antiquarian books
• electrical items
• identifiable work/school uniforms
• Angora wool products
• anything made from animal skin or fur (leather is accepted)

Additionally, we ask that you do not send items weighing more than 10kg via the postal donation service but instead drop these off at your local shop or donation point – find yours here. Please do not leave donations outside the shop and only donate during opening hours. .

Yodel can only accept parcels under 10kg in weight and with maximum dimensions of 60x50x50cm. This should fit between 15-20 larger items, such as books or clothes, enough to clear a drawer out to give you more space at home! If you have more 10kg or items to donate, just split your items up between multiple parcels or mail bags and sent them separately with a different postage label on each one!

If you still have room in your mailbag once you’ve put in everything you wish to donate, why not ask a friend or family member if they have anything they want to add?

Yes you can donate any of the items listed as accepted above through our donate by post scheme.

When the scheme first started we were only asking for donations of clothing, however, due to the amazing response from our generous donors we have since been able to expand the scheme to include other items too. As we still have stock of our clothing donation bags left we didn’t want to waste them so have chosen to use them up rather than recycle them unused. Sorry for any confusion the change in messaging may have caused.

Yes of course! We introduced our postal donation scheme to provide an extra option for how you can donate, especially for our supporters who have limited travel options for getting to our shops or who don’t have an Oxfam shop in their local area. However, our shops are always on the look out for things to fill their shelves and donations are always gratefully received by all our shop teams. Find your closest Oxfam shop here.

Once you’re ready to donate visit our page at Yodel where you can either:

1. print an address label at home and drop your mailbag off at your local Yodel drop off point or
2. download a barcode to take to your local Yodel drop-off point and get a label printed for free.

Yodel have over 8,000 drop-off points across the UK open seven days a week making it the easy way to donate. Find your closest Yodel drop off point here.

Your donation will be sent to our online hub in Yorkshire where our expert staff and volunteers sort through items and decide the best place for us to sell them. This can be on the Oxfam Online Shop, specialist high street shops and pop-up Oxfam shops at festivals.

Once your donation arrives it will be unpacked, and quality checked. All saleable items will be either listed online or sent out to more suitable shops to be sold with all the profits going directly to Oxfam’s work to fight poverty around the world.

Anything unsuitable for sale will be recycled where possible.

Oxfam pays for the cost of the return postage via our partner Yodel so you can return your bag to us for free. You will also not be charged any postage when you order your bag. The income generated by your generous donations makes it worth us covering the postage costs.

Here at Oxfam, we have a strong history of being innovative in the ways we fundraise, especially when it comes to our retail network, opening our first high-street shop in 1947 and the Oxfam Online Shop, the first independently platformed online second-hand shop, in 2007. By continuing to explore new ways of enabling people to support us, such as this postal donation scheme, we ensure that the amazing fundraising happening across our shop network can keep adapting to continue for the future.

Gift Aid is a scheme run by HM Revenue and Customs that allows charities like Oxfam to reclaim the tax on donations made by UK taxpayers.

Registering to Gift Aid your donation means that when your items sell we can claim a life-changing extra 25% on top of what they raise at no extra cost to you. If you are a UK taxpayer, you can sign up to Gift Aid your donation here. Then just add your name, postcode and donor number to the leaflet provided and pop it in the bag.

When you sign up to Gift Aid with Oxfam you will also receive updates so you know how much your donated items have sold for and the impact that you have had to help beat poverty.

Please note: You must be a UK taxpayer to be eligible for Gift Aid. If you do not pay tax in the UK you can still donate using your mailbag but please do not sign up for Gift Aid or fill in your details when you return your donation.

If you do not pay enough UK Tax to be eligible to take part in the Gift Aid scheme or do not wish to Gift Aid your donation, you do not need to fill in your details on the leaflet but can just seal your bag straight up to post back to us.

Climate change is impossible to ignore – and it’s pushing people deeper into poverty. So, it’s more important than ever to act now, to prevent this global crisis from becoming a global catastrophe.

When a new pair of jeans is made, an estimated 16.2kg of CO2 is emitted – the equivalent of driving over 58 miles in a car. So, by recirculating our clothes – buying, wearing and donating second hand – we can help to reduce the demand for new clothes. And this could in turn help to reduce the damage to our planet.

By donating to Oxfam, you’re investing in vital work to beat poverty – standing with communities worldwide as they fight the climate crisis and speak out against the global inequalities that push people deeper into poverty.

If you no longer wish to make a donation, please pass your donation bag along to a friend or drop it off at your local Oxfam shop for it to be reused.

If neither of these options are suitable, then the outer envelope and leaflet can be recycled at home and the inner bag can be recycled with carrier bags at larger supermarkets.

The donation mailbags are made from 100% recycled plastic and we work with a local supplier to maintain a circular production process. This means that all used bags returned to us will be given back to the manufacturer to be recycled and used to produce new materials. 

We have chosen to use plastic mailbags for this project as research shows that, where plastic bags are used and disposed of responsibly, they are often less damaging to the environment overall than alternative materials. Plastic is rigid, lightweight, and waterproof which allows us to better protect your donations during transit.

We will be regularly reviewing our mailbag scheme taking into consideration new developments in this area.

It would not be possible to accurately measure the comparative environmental impacts of donating via post verses taking donations directly to a shop. To do so would require a set of assumptions about the proportions of donors who would drive verses walk to their local shop, what distance they would be travelling and the fuel efficiency of their vehicle.