SATCoL Scoops Social Impact Award

The Salvation Army has won the Charity Retail Association’s Social Value Award for 2025. The Award honours charity shops that significantly benefit their communities. Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd. (SATCoL), which manages over 260 shops on behalf of the charity, picked up the award in recognition of its broad and far-reaching work.

The award category focuses on how charity shops provide significant benefits to people in local communities, volunteers, colleagues, shoppers and donors. Highlights include the provision of over 6,000 free clothing vouchers for those in need (an increase of 28% year-on-year). A successful trading year saw SATCoL open 13 large format donation centres, refurbish 5 high street shops and serve 6.9m customers in their stores (a 15% increase on the previous year).

SATCoL also runs a number of social impact initiatives including a partnership with HMP Five Wells which has seen over 9,000 denim bags made from unwearable jeans, by prisoners, and sold in its charity shops. An IT Reuse Scheme has seen over 4,000 devices collected, with around 20% refurbished and offered at affordable prices.

In supporting paid and volunteer colleagues, SATCoL has continued to invest in wellbeing, training and benefits. The Charity Shop chain has 10 dedicated wellbeing champions, and 228 managers have completed certified Mental Health England Training with a further 58 trained as Mental Health First Aiders. SATCoL’s award-winning e-learning platform, The Learning Booth,  delivers free, bespoke and certified courses to all colleagues. In the past year, a further 12,000 courses have been completed by paid and volunteer colleagues (an increase of 20% year-on-year).

This recognition adds to the previous CRA awards won by SATCoL: Outstanding Charity Retailer of the Year in 2024 and 2022, and the Environment and Sustainability Award winner in 2024.

The award was presented at the CRA Annual Conference held at the Harrogate Convention Centre on 25^th June 2025.

Trevor Caffull, SATCoL Managing Director, said: “We are truly honoured to receive this recognition from the Charity Retail Association. A core part of our purpose is to help the work of The Salvation Army through raising funds, but increasingly our colleagues have recognised that this is best delivered by being ‘mission led’. Every year we are seeing an increase in the need for affordable items, a need we respond to by keeping prices low, and this is reflected in an increase in the number of people visiting our stores. Additionally, we have redeemed more free clothing vouchers delivered through our work with Salvation Army churches, local authorities and other community groups.

"Our charity shop colleagues and our support teams are at the heart of our vibrant and caring culture. We are dedicated to making our workplace the best it can be, supporting our colleagues so they can thrive and offer even more support to our communities, responding directly to the needs of people that visit our shops across the UK every day.”

SATCoL, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of its parent charity, exists to ‘enable mission and provide resources to help the work of The Salvation Army’. In the past ten years alone, SATCoL has raised over £90m for The Salvation Army.

In October 2024, the company was awarded a 2 Star Outstanding Employer Accreditation by Best Companies Ltd. based on paid and volunteer colleague survey responses.

Picture: SATCoL colleagues accept the awards at the Charity Retail Association 2025 Conference- left to right, Natasha Adkins, Steven O'Hara, Lee Foster, with Garry Smith (Director of Mission) holding the award, and Julie Field.