Charity

[Stanley Leisure]

Just reading the Geldof thread (defo a c*nt), and the subsequent discussion of charities, it got me thinking about who I give to and why.

 

I don't consider myself a particularly charitable person but I was quite moved by an ad from Crisis, urging people to donate £21.62, which guarantees a homeless person a meal and a bed at christmas. I thought it was quite a neat way of getting people to donate (which you can do here: https://community.crisis.org.uk/christmas-appeal-2014). After I donated, it struck me that it was probably the idea of a CEO who is on double what I earn, but I guess a good cause is a good cause.

 

I sometimes buy a Big Issue, I always donate to Guide Dog charities when I see them, the RNLI (I was obsessed with Lifeboats when I was a kid) and I normally buy a Poppy. I'll usually pledge money to friends who are running marathons etc - I figure if the cause is important to them, then I can thrown in a tenner.

 

Thing is, written down, that's not bad, but I have mates who have sh*tloads of direct debits, are putting themselves through various feats of human endurance or are flying out to Ghana to build orphanages, and it makes me feel a bit useless.

 

I think one thing that puts me off donating more is the in-your-face methods employed by some charities - I find the notion of charity muggers very distasteful; drama students on £9 an hour to pretend to be my best mate as I'm walking to work. I have a real problem with that sort of canvassing but it seems to be the norm now.

 

Anyway, charity: who do you give to and why?

Edited November 17, 2014 by Stanley Leisure

[kop205]

When you pay on card now at the garage at the bottom of my road the machine asks you do you want to round up to the nearest pound as a donation to charity. No indication of what the charity is. f*** that.

 

Anyway, I give to a variety of charities by direct debit - some environmental ones, some health related ones, some international aid. No massive rhyme or reason to it, just stuff that for whatever reason at the time I wanted to support. Every couple of years I review it, cancel a couple and maybe start up a couple of others instead. I gave a one-off donation to DEC Ebola appeal partly because I spent a while in Sierra Leone myself with an NGO a few years back. I also used to run summer camps for kids from a couple of tough city centre estates in Liverpool but my do-gooding (if it even is such a thing) is mostly by standing order these days.

 

I've done a fair few charity walks and stuff but to be fair that is something I enjoy doing anyway and so it was an easy way of getting money out of mates and colleagues for stuff that I've wanted to support at the time.

 

I really should do more in my local community. I'd like to maybe help a bit more hands-on at a foodbank but don't know if I;d be able to commit to a regular slot, which I think would be important.

[domlfc]

Hadn't seen the crisis ad, I think that'll be £21.62 well spent. I don't give anything regularly but always put loads of change in to the pots in shops if air ambulance, a cancer related charity or children's charity.

[Falconhoof]

I'm a bit selfish and I don't earn a lot so if I'm honest I don't give much cash to charity. I will have a think about that and try to give more.

Sometimes, I think I concern myself too much with the fact that governments and big business abdicate their own responsibility to help people in need, but it shouldn't stop me making my own efforts. Particularly the charity 'help for heroes' i have an ill thought through lack of support for.

I do give up my Sundays for Marie Curie as it's a charity that helped my mrs when her mum was in her final days. I'm not sure I can go on with that long term, it's been about a year now and I've started missing the things I used to do on a Sunday..

 

I would like to give some money to help a kid get an education which just reminds me of an old story I heard about an arl woman, called Edna, who died and left a sum of money to educate specifically a 'white child' which caused all sorts of problems, could never be used, and was a horrible thing for their family to think about in the midst of grief.

[Cobs]

I buy a lottery ticket nearly every week

[Sion]

Just reading the Geldof thread (defo a c*nt), and the subsequent discussion of charities, it got me thinking about who I give to and why.

 

I don't consider myself a particularly charitable person but I was quite moved by an ad from Crisis, urging people to donate £21.62, which guarantees a homeless person a meal and a bed at christmas. I thought it was quite a neat way of getting people to donate (which you can do here: https://community.crisis.org.uk/christmas-appeal-2014). After I donated, it struck me that it was probably the idea of a CEO who is on double what I earn, but I guess a good cause is a good cause.

 

I sometimes buy a Big Issue, I always donate to Guide Dog charities when I see them, the RNLI (I was obsessed with Lifeboats when I was a kid) and I normally buy a Poppy. I'll usually pledge money to friends who are running marathons etc - I figure if the cause is important to them, then I can thrown in a tenner.

 

Thing is, written down, that's not bad, but I have mates who have sh*tloads of direct debits, are putting themselves through various feats of human endurance or are flying out to Ghana to build orphanages, and it makes me feel a bit useless.

 

I think one thing that puts me off donating more is the in-your-face methods employed by some charities - I find the notion of charity muggers very distasteful; drama students on £9 an hour to pretend to be my best mate as I'm walking to work. I have a real problem with that sort of canvassing but it seems to be the norm now.

 

Anyway, charity: who do you give to and why?

Just re your CEO comment (and I'm not accusing you of this) it really winds me up when pepple moan about high earners at the top of charities. A good charity today will be run as a not for profit business. Just like a business, a good CEO can be the difference between a charity making 1 million a year or 5 million, and yet people can't grasp that you can't expect a readily available queue of excellent CEOs ready to work for minimum wage. And when it actually comes down to it, the average wage compared to their corporate counterparts is still a fraction.

 

Similar is when people moan about charities charging admin fees on donations. First off the vast quantity of donations allow for gift aid, so unless the charity is charging more than 25pc it isn't eating into the original donation. And secondly, even if manned entirely by volunteers, just how do people think they are supposed to pay back office costs like rent or utilities.

[Stanley Leisure]

Just re your CEO comment (and I'm not accusing you of this) it really winds me up when pepple moan about high earners at the top of charities. A good charity today will be run as a not for profit business. Just like a business, a good CEO can be the difference between a charity making 1 million a year or 5 million, and yet people can't grasp that you can't expect a readily available queue of excellent CEOs ready to work for minimum wage. And when it actually comes down to it, the average wage compared to their corporate counterparts is still a fraction.

 

Similar is when people moan about charities charging admin fees on donations. First off the vast quantity of donations allow for gift aid, so unless the charity is charging more than 25pc it isn't eating into the original donation. And secondly, even if manned entirely by volunteers, just how do people think they are supposed to pay back office costs like rent or utilities.

Not a moan, just an observation. It just occurred to me after I donated, that the advert had done its work on me and that it's as much to do with their strategy as their actual charitable work.

[Falconhoof]

. Just like a business, a good CEO can be the difference between a charity making 1 million a year or 5 million, .

How do we know this is happening ? It sounds plausible but there's no data to support it is there ?

[Sion]

How do we know this is happening ? It sounds plausible but there's no data to support it is there ?

Its just common sense surely? Better staff = better performance. You're unlikely to find a charity which makes CEO performance public.

 

Salaries are set by the supply and demand of the labour market. If you have a demanding job where you're working 60 hour weeks and working alongside politicians and senior management of corporate organisations, then unless you are already independently wealthy, you're going to want fair compensation.

[New York Red]

I give to my university for scholarships. Also to Velindre Cancer Centre, a few local environmental groups, the Grameen Foundation and the African Wildlife Foundation.

[Stevie H]

isn't this one of them things that nobody used to talk about? used to be absolutely personal and nobody else's business? guess times change.

 

i direct debit to a few UK ones. RNLI is a great and massively underfunded cause 'cos i don't think it operates as a business even still, doesn't have the marketing engine that others do. just a bunch of volunteers risking their own lives often to save d*ckheads who've hired yachts and gone out sailing when they don't know how to and have been told not to.

 

over here old clothes go to the temple for distribution to local homeless and migrant workers. there's just been a blanket drive for northern hill tribes to try and save so many of them from freezing to death this winter so chipped in on that.

[cymrococh]

SImilar to Falconhoof I have been trying to cut down on my outgoings so I have given less in the last few years than I used to. I have however tried to raise money by doing various sponsored stuff and I have raised far more that way then I would have been able to donate myself, so I feel OK with that.

 

At one low point in the past talked by a particularly attractive chugger into giving up smoking and donating the money I spent to Cancer Research instead, so I set up the direct debit but I didn't give up smoking. I got an invite from the charity to a reception at the the house of parliament that christmas but didn't go because it was on a champions league night.

[Swan Red]

I think it's good to talk about Steve, if we are supporting organisations that do good work we should advocate for them as well. I disagree with Sion's assertion that it's common sense that better charity leaders cost more and I also find that the best charities do make the performance of their leaders public, it's part of the criteria by which the better charities seek to be evaluated.

 

I give $250 a month to GiveDirectly who are GiveWell's top rated charity. I give €200 a year to the Lebanon Trust because I work with one of the volunteers, assorted donations to fund raisers in work because of the companies gift matching program and €25 a month to St John of Gods.

 

I am going to miss my target of donating 10% of my net salary but should reach that next year when we start donating to Belong To an organisation working with and advocating for LGBT youth and the Abortion Support Network a group assisting people from Ireland travel to Britain for a legal abortion.

[RP]

I give a few quid each month to a variety of charities - Macmillan is probably the main one, for personal reasons.

 

But a few years ago, I decided I could help more by getting directly involved in a couple of charities. Yes there is an element of selfishness in the decision as I wasn't feeling particularly fulfilled by just dropping a few quid by direct debit into what seemed like various bottomless pits. I wanted to feel like I was actually making a difference and that has worked out really well.

 

So I'm currently working with Spear www.spearcourse.org who work to help "the unemployable" find employment and also Action for A-T, a charity helping fund mediacal research into A-T (look it up - I can't spell it). Also helping The Dame Vera Lynn Trust, as it was a great source of assistance for a friend of mine whose daughter was terminally ill - and so I just fell into it, and finally Crohn's & Colitis UK.

 

I like the fact that I can give money to them personally and I get to see it put to good use. But also, I add a lot more value by giving them my time and publicising their fundraising efforts and events amongst a broad group of people who ahve subsequently provided them with huge amounts of support ... way more than I could ever do personally.

[Swan Red]

Which I think is a really compelling reason to share what you do. Whatever we can do as individuals is likely to be far exceeded by encouraging a reasonably moderate number of new contributors.

[Dan]

I've got a couple of direct debits; one for Anthony Nolan after seeing a brilliant presentation at my work some years ago. The other is a homeless kids charity. I'll buy a bag of food for the food banks every now and then as well when they're in my supermarket.

 

I think I read somewhere that we, in the UK, donate more to animal charities than human ones. Not sure if that's true but if it is, it's a bit sad.

[Tosh]

My in-laws have been amazed since moving here from the US how much more widespread "charity" is here than in the US - where there's more philanthropy (isn't that just charity by rich folk?) than here.

But the chugging, boxes, collections, rounding up to the next pound, etc means that they think more people give money here than in the US

 

Our regulars are

Operation Smile

Global Fund for Children

2 Universities

and Cancer Research UK - she is leading their Women of Influence initiative

[Molby]

good thread this

 

I think it's good to talk about what you do, as it encourages others, as long as the delivery is good

this always puts me in mind of the philosophical question of whether giving to charity is as much an act of selfishness as spending the money on treats for yourself, but that's for later...

 

I have my monthly DDs, always look for the charity box when I get my change and (mainly at the behest of my son's mother) do a few runs, cycles and swims each year to raise money

 

Once I'm in a position to do so, I've always imagined setting up a home for wayward boys (and girls) on some compound in the Lakes or somewhere

[Kvarme Ate My Food]

I generally don't like charities. Particularly the "chugging" bit. I might be out of date on this, but it certainly used to be the case that they were mostly "employed" by the same "companies" that used to send students door-to-door selling vouchers. these "companies" are more akin to mindwashing cults than proper businesses IMO and exploit their "workforce" horribly.

[cymrococh]

I generally don't like charities.

I'm uncomfortable with the reliance on charities, but when I see how much good work is done I am compelled to do something to support them.

[Sion]

I've got a couple of direct debits; one for Anthony Nolan after seeing a brilliant presentation at my work some years ago. The other is a homeless kids charity. I'll buy a bag of food for the food banks every now and then as well when they're in my supermarket.

 

I think I read somewhere that we, in the UK, donate more to animal charities than human ones. Not sure if that's true but if it is, it's a bit sad.

 

Charities like the Donkey Sanctuary are incredibly wealthy. I think theyre the richest charity in Devon.

 

There is such an absence of mistreated donkeys in the UK that they now operate globally. Which to me seems mad when there are starving children dying daily, but there you go.

[dave]

Currently only giving via DD to the Devon Wildlife Trust.

 

My main job is working for a charity and I volunteer for a charity too.

[Earl Hafler]

I buy a lottery ticket nearly every week

 

 

 

I have several DD's set up, each only a few quid a month. I also value items for local charity shops. Don't work as hard as some friends though, who are regularly running marathons and the like, promoting the charity itself.

[Swan Red]

I generally don't like charities. Particularly the "chugging" bit. I might be out of date on this, but it certainly used to be the case that they were mostly "employed" by the same "companies" that used to send students door-to-door selling vouchers. these "companies" are more akin to mindwashing cults than proper businesses IMO and exploit their "workforce" horribly.

 

I'm generally not a fan of the need for charities but once we accept they are necessary I think we have to consider what our position with regard to them should be.

 

Personally I used to consider charities an effective way of having states abrogate their responsibilities, stuff that the state should be looking after is left to well intentioned individuals but I don't think it's that clear and I certainly think that those with intuitive support for big states are in danger of missing the point.

 

I would have argued that I would pay more tax for better services for those that need them, the question then becomes why I don't give that money directly then if the state is not taxing me, it's often some sense of fairness that prevents people from donating because of the unfairness of richer people choosing not to give. I can't really control what they do I can only decide what I do.

[Senrab_nhoj]

Charities like the Donkey Sanctuary are incredibly wealthy. I think theyre the richest charity in Devon.

 

There is such an absence of mistreated donkeys in the UK that they now operate globally. Which to me seems mad when there are starving children dying daily, but there you go.

 

I'm on the charity committee of our London office and I can echo Paul's sentiment about engaging with a charity being a very rewarding and effective way to deliver 'good' to a charity in a direct way. I was appalled to find out the level of support donkey's get in relation to refuge a superb charitable organisation. This was the trigger for me to do the sky dive last year, and I know that my efforts meant that the funding for one refuge in London was sufficient to keep it open for another year, personally far more rewarding than any of the donations I have made in the past.