To no longer donate to charities

[Foronenightonly01]

Issues akin to those being reported in the papers of ‘One Young World’ mean that when you give money now, more often than not it seems to go into the pockets of profiteers. I do still help out locally giving my time that I can spare to projects in my area and I’ll give extra in scenarios where I know exactly to whom my cash is going. I’m so saddened that people are being conned to lining the pockets of wealthy greedy pretend do-gooders - more than anything else recently this has made me realise how f@cked our Country is. So bloody sad.

Charity accounts are public, you can very easy check and donate to ones you are comfortable with (of which many have excellent ratios of costs vs money used for charitable objectives).

Who pays for the computer and other admin related stuff? Who pays for the building? Are fundraising activities being run without costs?

this has made me realise how f@cked our Country is. So bloody sad.

Yes OP, it is fucked by our government currently. Hence the need for so many charities to pick up the pieces.

We have really good local charities who we donate to. A food bank, a children's charity and a church who works with the homeless. We aren't churchy, but I'd rather donate to them than Oxfam or whatever.

It's hard to know who to donate to overseas though if you want to. I used to donate regularly to medecins sans frontier as I'd heard they were pretty good, but not sure

The food banks being charities...

I usually only give food to the foodbank and cats charity. They need more motivation to keep costs down, cats charity is only now starting to offer an email newsletter, until now they have been posting out a paper one as a large letter every quarter, in 2022! It's a small proportion of their costs but would have added up over the years.

I work for a charity and unfortunately due to the nature of our work we can’t use volunteers. Therefore a portion of our fundraising goes on salaries, rent, computer costs etc. Without the support of our funders we wouldn’t be able to do the work we do in our local community. As others have said you can check on the charities commission website to see where the money you donate goes but I wouldn’t write a charity off because they have over heads that need paying.

I think if you want to donate you do due diligence. Also link with something you are interested in.

I've donated hair to the little princess trust and usually I send Xmas presents to my local women's refuge.

I have Amazon smile set up to support them as well.

There are good organisations and bad organisations like anything else in life. To conclude you won’t give to any as a result of reading some bad press about one or two, does, as a pp said, sound like an excuse.

Charities are in effect businesses.
They provide a service, free to the enduser.
As a business they need to be viable and they need staff, space and equipment to run this effectively.

I think paying key staff a competitive salary will ensure that the charity is run well and gets the right people for the job.

This.

YABU. Do your due diligence. Look at their financial reporting. It's all in the public domain. There are actual laws about transparency regarding registered charities. Don't take things at face value.
Me and my sister are dolloping a couple of significant sums into the coffers of two medical research charities after our parents died. We picked over the accounts and everything seemed very reasonable. The money will fund specific research into the two diseases that killed our parents, and a piece of equipment which will help diagnose one condition.
And this process can be gone through on any scale of gifting.

Some charities are badly run.
Some businesses are badly run.
Some public sector organisations are badly run.

Where does that leave you?

Are you going to detach from society, live 'off grid' and take full responsibility for your own destiny? Make decisions on a case-by-case basis about who you help and who you go to war with?

Given that the public sector is the only one you're currently obliged to support, through your taxes, wouldn't your scrutiny be best directed there?

And if there are charitable aims that you feel strongly about and believe are important enough that you'd like others to support them too, you could ask why charities are needed at all - why government isn't meeting those needs.

But it costs money to run a food bank and manage volunteers. It costs money to run a cats home - building, management of volunteers and staff, equipment etc.

I work for a charity that reports a high % of funds going to end users.

I'm about to report them to the charity commission for gross failures of Safeguarding (as bad as the mermaids stuff).

Those unspent pounds on core costs and cheap CEO are reflected in dire standards throughout. They don't have a fucking clue, and because they don't have a clue, their success data is all bunk.

I wouldn't donate to a small charity.

I think that a lot of people forget that they or their loved ones will benefit from the work done by some of the really big charities. For example dementia research costs £££ and a lot of the groundbreaking research is performed in the charity sector, do we really not want to give to these as the government won’t be stepping in.

Hi I run a small local charity supporting refugees. We have over 100 volunteers, no offices, and six modestly paid members of staff. The volunteers are amazing, but because they combine the work with other things or perhaps are older/ not in perfect health they can come and go a bit - so we need the sustainability of some paid staff. It’s also not fair for anyone to work full time as a volunteer whilst being responsible for managing all the other volunteers, plus safeguarding, risk assessment etc. Also we need some specific skills available full time - Ukrainian and Arabic speakers for example. And there are some basic infrastructure costs that need to be paid - dbs checks, website hosting, safeguarding training etc.

Don’t stop donating if you are able to - look into it properly, and find a good charity you believe in that you think is run well.

I dont mind paying for the cost of running a charity within my donation as staff, buildings etc do cost money to run
.

But i find it hard to see what the bigger charities actually do. Some of them just seem to signpost you in circles if you contact them for support.

Ive started sticking to small local things like the hospice.

YABU. Do your research, and you will find many, many charities who will make excellent use of donations.

I work in management for a charity and if I thought for a minute that donors' money was being frittered away, I'd be out of there like a shot!

Our staff genuinely love what they do and are committed to 'the cause'. Every week in team meetings, we share stories of thanks that have come in from beneficiaries and we're very aware that every decision we make may well have been funded by someone's fiver. We take that responsibility seriously.

Yes, we have a building and staff costs and we have to spend money to raise money as well as on marketing but we haggle a lot! The managing director earns a fair salary but she has the weight of the whole charity on her shoulders. She earns every penny, not to mention all the weekends she gives up and the late nights burning the midnight oil.

Some charities may not run like this, in which case they need to be reported to the Charity Commission. But just glancing at someone's annual report and saying 'oh, they own a building, they don't need my money' is a very restricted way of looking at it.

When we receive messages like this, we invite people to come and meet us on an open day. They get to see the intention and passion behind the numbers on a report. 9 times out of 10, their perspective completely changes.

You know the money doesn't go where you'd want it to at that charity, that is quite different to all charities. Much like saying, I was friends with a girl called Maria at 8 but she was mean so now I never talk to anyone called Maria.

I know a doctor who used to do cancer research and he HATED the big name charities. Always said their representatives would rock up with designer handbags and very nice cars while he did battle for every penny.

(I don't necessarily share his view btw, but he still won't donate to them)

Imagine if all the charities suddenly stopped working. From small charities ensuring kids have beds to sleep on, others supporting new mums with PND, to the air ambulance, women’s aid, etc. Our country would be ruined.

All charities with and income of over £10k a year have to publish their accounts on the Charity Commission website. Anyone can look them up.

I have no doubt that some charities squander money but you can’t really compare a huge national charity with a small local one that’s mainly volunteer led.

However, there’s more than one way to donate to a charity. Money is one, but volunteering is another. And other ways such as donating goods or event space. Just choose your charities carefully, check their accounts first.

Yes there are running costs but the amount of money wasted is unbelievable.
My SIL works for a very large charity. She had an extremely good salary with then initially and was made ‘redundant’ (for thousands in redundancy pay) only to be hired back a few months later ‘freelance’ doing the same job on a higher rate of pay!
She has now been working ‘freelance’ with them for 7 years.
Very odd.

YANBU to do what you believe is right with your own money.

For example, i never put food in the food bank supermarket boxes because I believe that big supermarkets ultimately reduce prosperity and jobs in local areas, making food banks more necessary, and the food I've bought from them only increases their profits. I still shop there though! I give money directly to a food bank charity.

Likewise I donate tothe Linda Norgrove foundation which I saw discussed here once, because it feels like direct giving to the women of Afghanistan.

But who knows whether either of those decisions is a good one? I might do better to just spend more at the big supermarket. Perhaps I should just always avoid the self checkouts, so that the supermarket has to provide more checkout jobs. I don't, because I dislike hearing said employees having a moan about their working hours.

Modern life is complicated. We just do the best we can.