Looking to make a large charity financial donation. If you work at a charity HQ and know how the money is spent... would you recommend?

[Whatawaytogo]

And if you would recommend, such charity is it?

I went to make sure that a large financial charity donation that I will be making is definitely going to be be used effectively.

I usually donate to Uk charities, with a particular focus on hospices, but happy to try others.

TIA

I manage the fundraising function of a charity that supports victims of torture in Dublin caled Spirasi. I would make contact with any charity to ask for a chat or a meeting (or a visit to the office pre covid) and they should jump at the chance if its a large donation. In my case I would be showing you two case studies of where your money would go and be spent and offer to meet our survivor group of refugees and asylum seekers whom are largely all victims of abuse at their hands of militia, to explain first hand about how our therapy and rehab services have helped. Finance should also happily answer any questions you have about the accounts and Board Management structure! Go for SMALL (under £1.3 Million max) charity please! It will mean so much to them. Above that and theres a LOT of admin and management costs that I don’t believe in. We are the only charity in Ireland to provide this North and South but consist of a small struggling staff of 30, most of which are part time. Lastly... well done. What a lovely, generous thing to do xx

The charity I work for does a 'pay for a day's care' feature and then they show on their Facebook page who has paid for that day.
It's just under £7k I believe.
It's a children's hospice and supports children and families in a defined area.
I would definitely choose a local charity if it was my choice, in the same way that I would only work for a local charity that I feel passionately about.

Most charities have team members whose specific job is to liaise with higher-end donors such as yourself and have 1:1 conversations to ensure that the gift is directed in the way that the donor is happy with.

I disagree with pp suggestions about smaller charities being better. Being small doesn't make an organisation immune from inefficiency, wastefulness and poor decision making. Being big doesn't doom a charity to being bureaucratic and inefficient. There is nothing wrong imo with some proportion of any gift being directed towards the running costs of the charity, including paying the wages of talented and skilled staff members who deserve good pay for their work. If you believe in the work a charity does then money spent on the costs of raising the next big gift after yours is also an effective use of the money.

To find an appropriate charity I would suggest thinking of what issue would be most meaningful for you to be part of finding solutions for, and frame a question about that which you then google.

e.g. "How can we ensure no child is denied an education?"

Scroll through the Google results, including looking at p2,3,4 etc of the search and several charities web pages will pop up. Ask a slightly different question again and look through the results again (e.g. the question above could be How can we ensure no girl is denied an education?) and look again. After 3 or 4 question googles like that, you will start to see one or two charity names that keep popping up and that will indicate a charity whose concerns and focus most match your own priorities.

Agree with others - small bespoke charity.

Ds has a rare genetic disorder and the childhood tumour trust support children and adults with it. They would be able to tell you how they spend everything and also run specific programmes/activities so would likely even let you contribute to a specific thing. They've had days out for kids, parental engagement sessions, pr activities, campaigns, books, online classes etc. The also work closely with Barry wells trust (boxes for kids) as. Rays of sunshine who again, would be able to tell you what they were using funds for.

I would def recommend you speak with a charity that supports something close to your heart and see how you can support it and if they have any projects you could directly support

I think if I were you I'd choose a charity thst is meaningful to you. So the hospice idea is a good one.

I work for a middle/large charity, but have been involved in charities of all sizes.
First as many have said I would think about why you want to give and therefore what cause matters to you. If you want the money to stay incredibly locally you might like to consider a smaller charity. If you want to support a specific cause eg research you are likely to get far more bang for your buck with a larger charity.
All charities should be able to restrict your donation to a specific project if that's important to you. Whilst 'unrestricted funds' are the lifeblood of any charity as they pay for core services, staff etc, you can ask to restrict to a specific goal. We'd tend to only do this for gifts of a few thousand upwards as it's actually a bit of a pain to do logistically with finance systems etc.
I wouldn't write off big or small charities - and remember there is no set convention for financial reporting of the penny in the pound (costs vs spent on charitable services) so everyone calculates differently. I wish this was more understood.
What kind of causes are you thinking of as this makes a huge difference. Also what kind of ongoing contact/recognition/project updates would you like as that would impact your choice as well.
Either way it's a lovely thing to do - thank you :)

Local charities and small charities often perform different jobs to larger national charities and are not really equivalent.

Have a look at your local community foundation. They will use a donation to give grants to small local organisations, and depending on the size of your donation you may be able to specify how/where you would like the money to be used.

Have a look at Mummy's Star - the most amazing charity, small and unique in focus. Founded by a great guy who lost his wife to cancer shortly after the birth of their second child

The additional 25% gift aided amount would disappear into the same black hole as the original donation in a larger charity with big PR and advertising and salary bills. You may be doing more good by donating smaller amounts to local charities, or as a PP said, buy and donate a specific piece of equipment.

Yes fantastic small charity, have sent you a PM.

Thank you all so much
Will make a coffee and do some research

Think about unrestricted funds for small charities. I set up a very small charity to run communication skills groups for blind and partially sighted people. It was easy to get funding for new equipment eg tablets and computers (and the donating organisations or companies could get a lot of publicity out of this) but what we really needed was money to pay rent on the church halls to run the groups, and to pay volunteers fuel expenses for going to collect people and transport them to the groups - very very important for mainly elderly people who wouldn't have been able to come otherwise. So money for admin type expenses is often crucial for small charities.

I've worked in charity administration for years and am the trustee of 3 other charities.

A larger charity will have a more professional major gifts programme, a dedicated fundraiser will court you etc whereas a smaller charity will usually have just one person, part time or a volunteer but both will be grateful. Unless you direct your money towards a project, money goes into the pot and will be spent on whatever is required as per the charity's constitution.

Sometimes it's possible to sponsor a specific post eg a counsellor or play therapist but I can assure you that whilst specific donations are gratefully received, allowing us to use the money where needed is much preferred- we all have overheads that need paying and they just aren't as interesting. I did get a very thoughtful legacy 2 years back of £10k to be used only for utilities, amazing (I had spoken to him 2 years prior about the needs of the organisation, he obviously listened!)

@museumsandgalleries666

The additional 25% gift aided amount would disappear into the same black hole as the original donation in a larger charity with big PR and advertising and salary bills. You may be doing more good by donating smaller amounts to local charities, or as a PP said, buy and donate a specific piece of equipment.

Yes this is what I was going to post.

Even very small charities will almost certainly be able to manage Gift Aid recovery for a large donation - it’s not a particularly difficult process.

Having worked for a very large and a very small NGO, both of which I believe spend cash well, but on behalf of the charity sector as a whole I'd like to make a plea to ignore the idea that money is only well spent if it's being spent on physical things and 'frontline services'. It depends to an extent on what the focus area is but in, say, wildlife conservation, funding the salary of effective policy and campaign staff who work to change the behaviour of the corporate sector and to drive changes in legislation will have a greater impact compared to buying some birdboxes or funding warden salaries or whatever. Not that those things aren't also important, but this idea that charity funds are being wasted when they are spent on the salaries of 'backroom' staff is really problematic and frankly, a gift to the vested interests that would prefer charities don't succeed in their goals (obviously this might apply less to charities providing frontline health services and similar, though whether that should even be a thing is a whole other thread...) Many charities exist to promote change in one way or another, change happens because people make it happen, and those people need to earn a living. The number of people who seem to think that charity staff should all be volunteers really makes me despair.

buy and donate a specific piece of equipment

Equipment is easy to fundraise for. Insurance and storage for it is not.

I'm sure it's not what you meant, but your post reads a bit as "if you work for a charity, how can I donate in such a way that my donation won't pay your salary"

@Whatawaytogo I've PMd you. This is my area of work and very happy to advise if helpful 😊

Refuges or support for families in need like the brighter beginnings charity

St Christopher's hospice in September London - they cover 5 London boroughs.

I'd always recommend your local air ambulance. It astounds me that the only reason they operate is through charitable donations. I can't believe we don't fund it.

It's completely non discriminatory, essential and we'd all be worse off if it didn't exist.

I'd look at the area you're living in and try to find out what the local issues are, eg. MH, homelessness, poverty, drugs, etc. and find a local charity and see what help/support they need to tackle the above and donate accordingly.

Hospices are what I am familiar with.

Please, please don't come wanting to buy 'a thing' - unrestricted funds are the best donations.

A lot of donors do want to donate for a piece of equipment, or the garden, or a bench - now sometimes we really do want this, replacing all the mattresses is really expensive. There are only so many children's play areas you can have.

But most often what we need is to pay the nurses, HR people, IT departments, Maintenance guys salaries. Mend the roof. Replace the boiler.

Nobody ever donated to a hospice to fund the IT department! But we all need computers, do remote working, pay £££ annually for our IT system, come under cyber attack - stuff that happens in any largish business.

If it is a large donation fund raising will have a person to speak to you directly about it and involve you in the organisation (if you want).

@MindyStClaire

I'm sure it's not what you meant, but your post reads a bit as "if you work for a charity, how can I donate in such a way that my donation won't pay your salary"

I work in the voluntary sector. People often seem to think that paying people is wrong, and paying a reasonable amount for experienced, skilled people who will bear huge responsibilities is downright evil.

Relying on volunteers to perform essential management roles (apart from trustees) or looking for people to 'give back' by working cheaply for a charity in their declining years or as a hobby job is nearly always a disaster.

If you look at the charity job websites you can see that badly paid roles don't get filled or become vacant again in a year or two.