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.

an awful lot of people working in the sector could earn a lot more working elsewhere, so you do have to pay enough to make it viable.

That one always gets trotted out when an embarrassing article appears in the broadsheets, and my response is ; well go and find those jobs that pay so much more. I mean, it would be crazy in the current economic climate not to, even irresponsible.

Personally, I gave up donating after I had the unfortunate experience of being persuaded to give my time and experience to a charity a few years ago. Never again.

I would accept help from a charity that i hadnt donated too. I have a limited income and couldnt donate to every single charity going.

I would be horrified if one of the charities I had donated to witheld support to people that hadnt donated themselves because they werent really aware of what support they offered.

Lots of people giving sensible advice about charities here. They need staff on decent wages and infrastructure in order to run and deliver their charitable aims.

I don't like some of the ways the large ones operate. But I don't have to give my money to them! They are not all the same and please don't write off the whole sector in the basis of one that makes the news.

Running a good charity costs money. Some charities work with some of the most vulnerable people I'm our society. To run those services, you need offices, training, paid staff who know what they're doing. Don't these peoold who receive the service deserve that?

As @PerfectlyPreservedQuagaarWarrior says, good governance costs money.

Many board members of charities are paid.

Totally untrue. The Charity Commission does not allow this.

You would think a doctor would have a decent level of critical thinking.

I worked as a nurse for a charity and could not have afforded a designer handbag nor a fancy car on my wage. I was actually married to a man with a high paying corporate career who bought me those things.

Who do you think organises the food bank donation bins, the advertising, ensures the accounts of the charity are accurate and provided on time to comply with legal requirements. Paid staff who do all of these tasks need to be able to buy food too.

I heard stories of extravagance and waste from a friend working at one of the huge international charities. Yes, people need paying properly , but when you have thousands of volunteers donating their time and skills for nothing, the sight of plush offices, subsidized food, people disappearing home early , and expensive rows of cars in company car parks, is inappropriate.

I think PP meant some people say "I would never donate to a big charity" but would be quick to use one if the situation arose! Not that you have to have donated to a particular charity to use it.

Yes , they are totally sincere and very dedicated. I used to live near the founder, and I always supported them

I think it is worth donating still but you need to chose the charity very, very carefully.

I have worked for charities for more than 20 years now and I have seen truly bad behaviour: over-paid CEO and directors, money wasted on receptions for Trustees, bullying of staff leading to the charity having to pay compensation to them to avoid employment tribunals; lack of safeguarding in projects supporting vulnerable people for both staff and service users; bad fundraising practices; dodgy use of grant money (money being diverted from projects to pay for office costs).

The issue is almost always that the top management (CEO, Trustees and directors) are useless while the people working lower down and on the frontline are really committed to the work they do.

I just left a well-known animal charity after less than a month in the job because I was appalled with the way the department I was in was led and the amount of pointless ''meetings' and money wasted. Until then I was planning to even leave them money in my will. They won't be getting a penny now...

I would advise supporting smaller organisations that run tangible community projects like soup kitchen, food bank, homeless shelter or a small animal hospital/shelter rather than the big charities that focus on campaigning and lobbying and are in bed with various big corporate company donors.

A good way to work out if a charity is worth supporting is to volunteer for a bit and you can work out if the work they claim to do is really worth supporting.

You can tell a lot by how charities treat their volunteers!

The bigger the charity the more they have paid chugger and wasteful box tickers. Smaller charities may have less over sight on issues that are important though.

Food banks desperately need support. Its hard to spend a tin of beans on salaries. Not everyone accessing food banks needs it but the scattergun of hits works better.

Any donations given, the closer they are to end benefitaries the better it is. You have better oversight yourself over what you are risking your money on. So a charity which is a farm that caters for disabled kids is a better option than a big charity which gives vague descriptions of 'life opportunities for disabled kids'.

But i do cavat that by saying some charities do need proper safeguarding oversight - that should be done at a professional level.... And thats worth spending money on...

I seem to have seen so many charities / not for profits which I have supported since I was a small girl become involved in ( to me) very dodgy political and social campaigning which is way outside their stated remit. The National Trust, Barnado’s , the Red Cross , many museums and educational charities seem to have fallen under the spell of the Stonewall brigade or neo-Marxist theories of social change.

Having worked professionally beside several big fundraising events, I was astonished at how little many of them raised once the expenses ( and the publicity machine) had been paid.

I send my contributions to organisations who are trying to keep women safe and indeed in existence as a recognisable set of human beings now.

There are good and bad, and it's a shame that the bad ones and horror stories impact the ones who are actually doing good.
I've worked for a number of charities as a volunteer, mostly to gain experience etc. They've all been small, local ones and it's extremely tough to get funding. "Big funds" that you can apply to never cover staffing costs or building costs etc, meaning that money has to come from the day to day donations people provide. You've also got to spend money to get money - investing in people who can fill out the extremely long and tedious fundraising forms, investing in room hire etc so you can put on a fundraising event etc etc.

You can tell a lot by how charities treat their volunteers!

Totally agree with this.

It would be lovely if all the charities could be run by willing volunteers wouldn't it? But that in itself would be immoral wouldn't it? People ought to be paid to do a job, and I don't see why charities should be an exception to that. Personally it's the ones who rely heavily on volunteers that I am suspicious of (National Trust is a good example).

IN the field of medical research too, should we rely on government to fund that? In an ideal world, yes. But I can tell you that advances would slow considerably if we waited for that to happen.

There was a big scandal locally when a nationally based charity based here was found to be dishing out contracts to its founder's on. The scam was found out because someone reported to the Charities Commission. There are tight regulations, and if you care to look at finances you can sift quite effectively.

Well, people don't go and find those better paid jobs in the private sector because they are motivated to work for the particular cause of the charity that employs them. But they still need to pay their bills and put food on the table.

The charity sector would collapse without paid staff. Even volunteers need coordination. The taxpayer would then have to pick up an awful lot of what the sector does, particularly around helping the most vulnerable in our society. And the chances are, it would cost significantly more for the state to deliver this work than it currently costs the charity sector.

Don't give to charity if you don't want to - it isn't compulsory. And if you do give to charity, then by all means do your homework to select those that are actually doing a good job. Don't make blanket statements about charities that simply aren't true, though, and don't try to put others off donating. You don't need to make excuses for not giving.

There are some excellent charities , I donate money for school uniforms, and free breakfasts,

i know that one clearly states all donation goes to charity , because the founders take care of admin costs.But I would never begrudge the others for taking a percentage to cover their costs,
when it comes to buying bulk items charities get special rates , so perhaps the money we donate covers both expenses and charitable items.

then there charities that are so ambiguous and not clear with what they actually do but are endorsed by celebs, I stay away from these usually .

I've worked for many charities. From your post I know two things for certain:

You cannot have read many charity financial reports
You don't know how charity governance and regulation works - if "most of their money goes to running the charity" then the Charity Commission would shut them down. This has got much more strict in recent years.

Many charities now are outsourced providers of NHS services who also audit them for governance. Things like hospices, palliative care, nursing homes, in-home nursing services and specialist care for heart disease, dementia etc. The government is gradually reducing their funding, so they have to fund more of it from their own funds. Charity salaries are about half of those you would get in the public sector, so most staff are doing things for a very small wage, plus they usually volunteer as well. the trustees are all volunteers, apart from the CEO. They are NOT paid.

If you don't believe me, I am more than happy to provide you with links and references.

My tip- go for a UK based charity. Go for one that provides outsourced medical care. Then read their published annual report. Go for those who show with a pie chart how much money goes to the front line. There will be one.

The ignorance here is astounding.

In any sector of society there are bad apples, don't tarnish all with the same brush. I have worked in the non profit sector for over 20 years and earn little more than minimum wage, I'm the sole paid employee at my current work with many volunteers. We have dozens of people coming toys weekly for help because of this government. From next month we start a soup kitchen, yes in 21st century Britain it's needed due to the sheer ignorance of our electorate voting for these clowns.

Before you recite ukip/gb news rhetoric, think - aren't they bias too? My truth comes not from the media but actual reality

I mean, it would be crazy in the current economic climate not to, even irresponsible.

You think it's irresponsible not to take a job that would pay you more @Jackienory? That's a pretty batshit take. Does it apply to everyone, or just charity sector workers?

@countrygirl99

I know exactly the position you are in, it's tricky. I can't afford to work for free so I'm paid, I actually looked after lots of other orgs during the pandemic too where their sole staff were furloughed (doing the furlough pay admin)

I am talking from experience, and not a very pleasant one either. And a lot of these people you talk about wouldn't pass the first interview in the private sector. let alone the NHS. I know, I've seen it first hand.

You've also got to spend money to get money - investing in people who can fill out the extremely long and tedious fundraising forms, investing in room hire etc so you can put on a fundraising event etc etc.

Yep! Once you go beyond the very basic awards for all type stuff, that's a specialism in itself. I don't say that's a good thing, but it's how things are.

There are loads of small charities run my committed people on moderate salaries doing excellent work, below the radar. The big ones with the highest public profile are often the worst in terms of high admin and fundraising costs. But I do not believe the big ones are representative of most charities even if they get most of the money.

One I’ve supported recently is Centre for Women’s Justice. www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk

My only affiliation with them is as a donor. I learned about them on mumsnet and made a reasonably chunky donation that was unofficially in memory of Sarah Everard, whom I did not ever meet but who lived in my neighbourhood, and whose abduction, rape and murder by a serving police officer whom I shall not name left me both sad and also furious.

CWJ total income in 2020/21 was a little over £420k. Given what they do, most of their costs are staff costs, but the staff are doing the organisation’s core work, and I think the salaries are modest given the legal qualifications many of them have and need in order to do it: they had staff costs of £256k with 7-8 full time staff, and the highest pay to any one person was £60k. I think that total wage budget is an absolute bargain for the benefit of having this team working on this set of issues.

www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/our-people