Charities still exploiting their position unfairly

I am publishing this on behalf of a well-respected manufacturer who wants to remain anonymous.

"I thought you may be interested to learn about a letter I received a couple of days ago. An independent charitable organisation has approached us requesting we consider them to become a retailer of our products - no shocks there then, this practice now appears to be becoming very common.

The real shock to me was that they are hoping for big lottery funding at the end of September this year to allow them to set up a full retail outlet for mobility products!! Not only that but in the meantime they have requested that we provide them with an account on a sale or return basis!!

You can't blame them for trying I suppose, but somehow I just can't get my head around the fact that they not only expect us to fund the business venture through charitable donations (lottery funding etc) but they also want the goods they stock for free!!

Furthermore, what about our existing retail partners who are loyal to our products and with whom we have developed a quality business relationship - do they expect us to ignore them?

I am a great believer in competition, I think it engenders a healthy environment for development and improvement but - and it is a big but - there needs to be consistency and a fair, level playing field.

For all the reasons you have previously reported, charitable organisations have the upper hand over non-charitable business, and as a manufacturer we are deeply concerned at the emergence of these so called charity retailers as it puts us and our retail partners in a very difficult position.

Taking this situation to its ultimate conclusion, perhaps all businesses should simply register as charitable organisations? Either that or we could potentially see the slow decline of the business community as we currently know it."

I've written about the commercial activities of charities before, and although I have some sympathy for organisations that are doing good work, and hurting in the current financial climate, I don't see why good, caring businesses - which are probably even more affected by the credit crunch - should be disadvantaged in this way.

What do you think?