Customer Success Story
How Save the Children UK standardized training and increased Gift Aid
Save the Children UK replaced text-heavy manuals with game-based practice, and turned consistent training into measurable results for their shops.
2,000+ volunteers trained consistently across shops nationwide
£90,000 in extra Gift Aid estimated as claimable this year as a direct result of the training
3X growth in donor sign-ups from Q1 last year to Q1 this year
11,5% increase in Gift Aid conversion (26% to 29%) after the Attensi training
“I’ve never seen anything like it in the charity retail sector.” Susie Dunstan Volunteering Communities Insight Manager
about save the children
Save the Children UK’s mission
Save the Children UK works to support children wherever they are in the world, for access to education, for health, and for the future they deserve. Alongside protecting children from harm and difficult situations, the charity raises the money that funds those missions worldwide.
A large proportion of its income comes from its charity shops, where people can donate unwanted clothes, books, toys, music, films, and many other items. These shops rely on the generosity of volunteers, with more than 2,000 people giving their time across 81 stores.
“The volunteers are key to success — giving up their free time and bringing all their different strengths, working together so we can achieve what we want to achieve as a charity.”
– Gayle, Shop Manager
The challenge
Making complex training simple and scalable
Running a charity shop demands a lot of every volunteer. They need to know everything from customer service to safeguarding, from processing donations to Gift Aid, which is a government scheme that lets the charity claim an extra 25% on top of an eligible donation. Gift Aid alone touches: HMRC tax rules, data protection, and the manual handling involved in moving heavy donation bags every day.
Historically, a lot of this knowledge lived in paper. Shop manuals were operational, text-heavy, and, in the team’s own words, not very accessible. Training was often repeated in person, which created two problems:
- Shop teams shift constantly and rarely work the same shifts together, so managers found themselves delivering the same training over and over.
- Consistency varied from one shop to the next.
The charity needed one reliable standard of knowledge that every volunteer and staff member could reach, in the same way, anywhere in the country.
“Historically, a lot of our training has been very paper-based — a lot of shop manuals, very operational, very text-heavy, and quite boring, and not very accessible.” Susie Dunstan Volunteering Communities Insight Manager
THE SOLUTION
Real training for real situations
Save the Children UK rebuilt its retail training with Attensi by using gamified training that allow volunteers to practice real-life shop-floor situations repeatedly until they stick. Instead of reading a manual and answering multiple-choice questions, volunteers:
- Pop bubbles, swipe, and talk to avatars whose responses change based on the answers they give.
The format moved training off the two-hour in-person course and onto any device, any time. Volunteers can refresh a skill as often as they like, with no clock running, which matters when you’re asking people who give their time for free to keep learning.
Attensi built the training around Save the Children UK’s own volunteer-led model rather than dropping in something off the shelf.
“They really understood our brand and what we were trying to create — and they got our unique volunteer-led model. We’re quite unique within the sector, so to have someone come in, understand it, and champion us has been wonderful.” Susie Dunstan Volunteering Communities Insight Manager
“When I first saw Attensi I thought it was fun, interactive — and a different way of training than what I’d experienced before.” Jen Webb Knowledge Manager, Retail Team
Save the Children UK using Attensi Creator
The retail team creates and maintains everything itself in Attensi Creator. Games and avatars are templated, so building a module is a matter of adding the questions, answers, and images, then mapping out the learning journey. Jen Webb, Knowledge Manager in the Retail Team said that:
“Attensi Creator is really intuitive. Because the games are already templated, it’s so easy to set up. You just put in your questions, answers, and any images, and it’s done.”
The team also uses AI to speed up content creation. By uploading existing PDF guides, they can have AI generate draft questions automatically, while character voices are created using AI-generated speech. This allows existing guidance and training materials to be transformed into engaging, playable modules in a fraction of the time.
“We Attensify our guides, and it’s brilliant. We also use AI to generate the voices of our characters—it saves us a lot of time,” she adds.
The game mechanics themselves also help drive engagement. Leaderboards have turned refresher training into a friendly competition, with teams challenging one another and employees eager to outperform their managers. As a result, learning feels less like a mandatory task and more like an enjoyable challenge for the volunteers.
Real results from Save the Children UK
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2,000+
volunteers trained consistently across shops nationwide
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29%
Gift Aid conversion up from 26% in 2024 — the share of sold items now carrying Gift Aid
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£90,000
in estimated additional Gift Aid can be claimed by the charity this year — money that goes straight back into its mission
-
3X
Donor sign-ups tripled from Q1 last year to Q1 this year, as trained volunteers routinely asked donors whether their donations could be Gift Aided
The training also delivered the consistency Save the Children set out to achieve, giving every shop the same foundation of knowledge regardless of who is on shift.
“Attensi has been really supportive in how we train our teams. We wanted to increase consistency across our shops across the country — and Attensi has given us that basis of knowledge, delivered the same way to every volunteer and staff member.” Jen Webb Knowledge Manager, Retail Team
“I do find this training more effective and engaging — it’s a lot more interactive and more fun. I enjoy doing it.” Nat Volunteer
“I find this game very engaging and effective, because it’s a lot of fun while you’re learning a lot.” Naza Volunteer