John asks how much do your shops make? why not employ more staff rather than just volunteers?

In April 2009 - March 2010 we made £22 million profit - this is great as it all goes back into our research, prevention and care activity.

We currently have over 2200 paid staff across the UK in our 661 shops. The number of paid staff per shop are related to how busy the individual shop is. On top of this we've got 18000 excellent volunteers who are vital and we're always looking for more people to get involved.

We've very lucky that a number of our paid staff started out as volunteers and so have great experience and motivation.

We feel this number of paid staff gives us the right level of cover without excessive cost - as all costs reduce the money we can put back into our life-saving work.