Charity shop insurance

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If you’re one of the thousands of charity shops operating in the UK, you’ll know how it can benefit your community, raise much-needed funds, and champion more sustainable shopping. But this doesn’t come without risks. 

Whether it’s customers bagging a bargain, generous donors, hard-working volunteers, or your all-important stock, you'll want to consider financial protection for the risks you face. 

From cover for everyday retail to fundraising events and activities, our team will shape your insurance package around your specific needs.

Expert support

We work with thousands of charities and not-for-profits to help them manage risk

Competitive prices

Value for money matters. We’ll seek out well-priced policies without compromising on quality

Personal service

We'll review, revise and develop your insurance over the term, to help you stay fully protected

What is charity shop insurance?

Charity shop insurance is a specialist type of cover built around charity retailers. It can include a range of covers including buildings, contents, used stock, business interruption, and protection for your liabilities.

From small shops to national networks, the protection needed can vary, so the insurers on our panel keep it flexible. This means we can adapt the policy to the everyday risks yours faces, from volunteer accidents to stock on the move.

We’re proud to be the trusted broking partner to ukactive and Locality, which supports 1,600 community-focused organisations.

What does charity shop insurance cover?

Your policy can include a few different covers, depending on the risks you'd like to protect:

If your charity owns its buildings or is responsible for them under a maintenance agreement, you may need buildings insurance. Accidental damage and subsidence can be added, and we cover listed buildings, too. 

Contents insurance covers your stock, including new and used items, if they’re damaged, lost or destroyed by an unexpected event like a fire or a break-in. This includes equipment and furniture, and cash on premises. Accidental and malicious damage can be covered, too.

Public liability insurance covers the cost of a claim if someone (other than an employee) accuses your shop or staff of causing injury, death, or property damage. This includes legal defence costs and any compensation awarded.

Examples of claims are someone tripping and falling on the shop floor and being unable work, or an accident at a community engagement event where someone's laptop is damaged. 

You’ll need employers’ liability insurance by law if your shop employs anyone. In the UK, charity retail has over 26,100 paid employees, with more than 187,200 volunteers donating their time, according to the Charity Retail Association. 

This insurance covers the cost of a claim against your charity shop if an employee gets seriously injured or ill through their work. Many insurers include volunteers in this type of cover.

Unexpected events like fires, floods, and storms, can stop a charity shop from doing its work. Business interruption insurance covers lost revenue and additional costs, to help you stay afloat and get back to normal operations. 

We can provide insurance cover for your cars, vans, MPVs, and minibuses. Vehicle cover is provided on an any-driver basis, so staff and volunteers can be insured to drive your vehicles (if they meet age and experience criteria).

This covers the cost of claims if someone accuses your shop or its staff of mistakes in their services. Legal fees and compensation costs for claims can be very high, but with this insurance in place, they’d be covered. 

This protects the personal liability of people in positions of authority. That’s your individual trustees, directors, governors, officers, and committee members.

With this cover, if a claim is made against them for committing a wrongful act – such as a breach of health and safety or wrongful dismissal – legal and compensation costs are covered. Without this insurance, they’d potentially have to pay these costs out of their own pocket.

Woman writing on notepad at charity shop counter

More than insurance

  • We’ll build a long-term partnership you can rely on. That's an insurance policy to protect your organisation and its service users, and regular reviews, so you stay protected. 
  • We can help you manage risk in compliance with the relevant legislation. Services include safeguarding, health and safety audits, and risk management evaluation. 
  • Our in-house claims service and close relationships with insurers makes for an easy and efficient claims process. We’ll be by your side throughout, ready to answer your questions and keep things moving.

And if you'd like to know about our range of flexible employee benefits, including group personal accident insurance and workplace wellbeing, we can help with that too.

Donation being passed to charity shop owner

Ready to go?

Message us, or call our charity experts on 0333 234 1358

Charities, not for profit & voluntary organisations enquiry form

To find out how we can best support your charitable organisation please complete the enquiry form below, or alternatively call a member of our specialist charity team on 0333 234 1351. Lines are open Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm.

Small charities

If you're a small charity (income under £350,000 pa), we offer Markel's online charity insurance which is specifically designed to provide cover for smaller organisations at competitive rates.

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Charity shop insurance FAQs

Charity shops have a responsibility to take care of their staff, volunteers, clients, and customers. They must also make sure all activities happen in a safe and responsible way. This helps to prevent accidents.

Some types of insurance can be compulsory for charity shops (for example, employers’ liability if you employ staff). Otherwise, it’s important to identify all the risks associated with running a charity shop and take action to protect against them – including considering insurance.
 

We cover a whole range of charity shops needing different types of protection and levels of cover. For example, you might just need cover for retail purposes, whereas other shops need short-term cover for events and activities – or some may operate across a few sites.

Most charity shop insurance policies are designed around each shop’s needs, based on its size and activities.

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