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.

Which charity boards are paid. I'd love to know so I can report them.

What do you think charities do?

They have staff to deliver services.
When you employ staff, you need HR people and finance people.
You need finance when you are dealing with invoices, grants, bills
You need an IT system to ensure that the services can be delivered effectively.
So you need an IT team
There is a lot of data that needs to be reported on, analysed to ensure that the services are delivered effectively. So you need a a data team
There are buildings involved - an office, shops - these need to be looked after - so a faciltities team is needed.
There are vehicles involved - staff vehicles, vehicles for delivering services, collecting donations - so they need a vehicle team
You need donations - so you need a fundraising and marketing team
There are communications - so a communications team

Running a charity needs admin - to ensure that the charity can deliver its services. Some charities need more admin depending on their size and some needs a lot less.

Some waste money on admin. Some use their resources very well, to ensure that they can deliver their services effectively.

Yeah I've heard good things about them. They're also a good example of a charity where the often favoured tactics of send physical items or volunteer aren't going to be helpful, unless you have very specific skills.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves well said

It bugs me too. I give time where I can and when I do donate it's to small local charities who, frankly, have a lot to lose in local reputation if it comes out that any of them are profiting from it. I'm setting up a not for profit and it's been eye opening as to how they are set up to allow people to take advantage of them.

Just in relation to the many saying they only donate to small local charities eg animal rescues.

There are some incredible local rescue charities run brilliantly.

However I know of many occasions where bigger charities have had to 'rescue' animals from some smaller rescues, because of the poor standards of care and lack of compliance with legal standards. So I would be checking how they are being run before donating, to ensure you're not actually funding poor animal welfare.

The organisation I work for are highly skilled in what we do, and we will always have a paper trail proving we are complying with welfare and legal standards. When donors support the organisation they can be assured that the animals will be taken care of properly.

I applied for a job recently at a charity which distributed grants to organisations. So you donate to them, they then distribute the money to researchers carrying out scientific research.

I had to admit to being surprised by the pay on offer and the range of staff involved. I did look at the annual report and there were some very generous salaries. They certainly got plenty of money in, but what seemed to me a high percentage went on the charity itself, instead of being distributed to the scientists who needed the grant.

Nuffield Trust is not a charity! It’s a foundation, completely different set up.

Foundations are set up by weather individuals (often a long time ago) and the original money invested to keep the foundation running. When the money has been invested since the early 20th century it adds up!

More recently set up ones are things like The Gates Foundation. Not sure Bill Gates is asking for donations…

Sorry I should say foundations do take “donations” but it’s usually on a large basis - and more rich person donor gives over an amount than someone sending £5 a month.

Just to put the record straight...

As a volunteer I get 0 remuneration and 0 incentives in monetary terms. The reward I get is helping people. I also don't need supervision. The support I get is either from other volunteers who themselves get no financial remuneration or from paid staff who are doing their salaried work which isn't a dedicated volunteer support role.

Not really because most of the charities complained about are rich ones (look at the previous poster talking about 5* hotels, first class travel etc which is something ive also experienced -poor charities wouldnt be able to afford this in the first place) so absolutely have the money to spend it on good governance but have either chosen not to or their idea of good governance/spending priorities differs greatly from those who they depend on for revenue.

The point you need some revenue to go to towards things like office space, staff etc is completely valid. However "office space" as an example can be anywhere. I don't see why so many of the big charities need their hqs in london for example, let alone in extortionate brand new offices right in the centre.

My cuurent job has an office in canary wharf - it cost more than our other 7 regional offices (including 1 in outer london) put together. Can't really see any justification for charities that do this.

OMG I stand corrected.
www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/chart/how-we-re-funded

I thought they were a foundation. Sorry!

On average, between 30-40% of all charitable donations are swallowed up by admin and other costs. Check it out.

The point is, your one bad experience reflects just that...one bad experience. It doesn't mean that the whole sector is like that, and actually, many of us know full well that it is not.

Why do you think people work for charities on a lower wage than they could get in the private sector?

There are reasons why people stay in jobs that are relatively poorly paid compared to what they could get elsewhere with the same skills - teachers, doctors, nurses, for example.

I'm a nurse !.

The point is though - are those admin costs justified.

In many cases, yes they are - and at what point does the admin cost become part of the service delivery?

A charity worker works with an individual who is homeless, They get him a bed in a hostel. They record the details on a tablet which is linked to a database. The data is extracted into a report so fundraisers can use that data to get more funding.

Which part of that is admin and which part of that is delivering the service? How would you differentiate the costs and assign the costings in an annual report?

Great. So you understand the reasons why nurses, doctors etc want to work in the NHS instead of a well paid job in a private hospital instead of front line NHS

The same as why there are charity workers who use their skills delivering front line services instead of working in a job such as marketing for a hotel company. For example

You've quite clearly demonstrated that yourself :

cakeorwine

They have staff to deliver services.
When you employ staff, you need HR people and finance people.
You need finance when you are dealing with invoices, grants, bills
You need an IT system to ensure that the services can be delivered effectively.
So you need an IT team
There is a lot of data that needs to be reported on, analysed to ensure that the services are delivered effectively. So you need a a data team
There are buildings involved - an office, shops - these need to be looked after - so a faciltities team is needed.
There are vehicles involved - staff vehicles, vehicles for delivering services, collecting donations - so they need a vehicle team
You need donations - so you need a fundraising and marketing team
There are communications - so a communications team

So it's really hard for the finance team to allocate costs when it comes to the 'admin' bit in the annual report.

Same for the NHS. It could not function without admin.

Professional fundraising raises so much more than independent organisations.

money small organisation runs a fun run and raises a few thousand. Brilliant and all appreciated by the charity. Nothing wrong with that.

Professional fundraising team puts on a country wide campaign like Race for Life for an out lay of say £1m and brings in £30m

id say a 29:I return on investment cost ratio would be pretty good going for any business. Something like cancer needs big money to make progress in its research . You aren’t going to get that without investment I’m afraid.

It would be extremely unusual for a charity to have volunteers that literally don't cost the organisation anything.

Volunteers don't get a salary, of course, and many won't claim expenses. If they are going to be useful, though, the vast majority will need some degree of coordination and training, and it would seem irresponsible in many roles not to have supervision in place as well - dangerous, actually, if the volunteers are working directly with vulnerable people. Then of course there is the business of recruiting and selecting volunteers, vetting them properly etc.

For organisations that manage volunteering programmes properly, there will almost always be a cost. That isn't to say that volunteers don't add huge value - they do - but it isn't usually wise to regard it as a completely "free" resource..

I work ( on minimum wage ) for a small local hospice that needs every £1 we can get to continue to provide my small town with end of life and respite care . In my experience the smaller more local charities will always be the most effective to donate to .

And I would add, paid staff supporting volunteers, whether they are in dedicated volunteer coordination roles or not, still cost money. The time that they spend supporting you is time that they don't spend on other things. So volunteers are not free.

The NHS isn't a charity. It's a Nationwide Universal Health Care Service, paid for out of direct taxation.