£10k to charity

[Nosleepforthismum]

Hypothetical musings with DH about when we are rich in our dreams and what we’d give to charity each year. Let’s say we had 10k to give each year, would you give to a big, established charity or find one person locally to really help? What would you do?

Small local.

Too much from large corporations go to CEOs

Small local.
The special Needs School have a charity.
I'd give directly to them.
Every penny gets used.
No manager, no bonuses.

I'd give to lots to small, very local charities, some very specific national SEN charities and maybe one bigger charity.

A big charity can do more to help more people. Helping someone locally won’t really have the same long term impact.

Just look at advancements made by medical charities, they’re essentially beneficial to all.

Local smal, the big national ones nearly all have extremely well paid directors and higher ups and waste a lot of money on those begging tv ads. Smaller local charities use more for the money raised for actually doing whatever the scope of their charity is rather than paying directors.

I day dream about this kind of thing for when I win the lottery.

I wouldn't give it to a big charity, I'd give it to local charities and also I saw years ago some vetrans who wanted to go to France for the last time but couldn't afford it, I'd give it to things like that.
Or a kid who's raising money for an electric wheelchair. That sort of thing.

A bit like when Jason Manford used to do the Charity Ninja thing.

National charities are good for things like

• legal advice on specific issues
• Medical advice for specific issues
• lobbying for changes in the law
• scientific research

Smaller charities are best for

• Helping people with practical issues
• supporting vulnerable people
• small amounts making a big difference in people's lives
• all/almost all the money going directly to the thing you want to fund

There's a widespread myth that charities with overheads have less impact.

Nobody would ever believe this about a business

I like the approach which says, look at impact
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/blog/arent-the-best-charities-those-with-the-lowest-overhead-costs

Some forms of charity cost more to administer. You won't get food to starving children in Gaza as cheaply as to hungry kids in the UK. If you want the kids in Gaza fed at all, there will be serious overheads

If local means more to you, give where you want to, but small and local by themselves don't mean your money will go further or do better.

Yes, this is what DH would prefer to do I think. He wants to see the actual benefit of the money being given rather than it being absorbed by the huge charities where it won’t really feel like it’s had any impact.

Thank you, that’s an interesting read. I’ve sent to my DH who I’ve learnt is hugely sceptical of the big charities.

I would start by giving to any charity that has previously helped me. I recently got useful advice from Maternity Action on here, so maybe i’d start with them.

Then i’d do some research, i wouldn’t give blindly to most charities unless I knew what my 10k was going to be used for specifically.

I think it's fine to want to support local charities and see the effect of your donation directly. It's your money and your choice, and probably human nature.

I just hate the narrative that your money is wasted if used for admin / overheads / salaries.

Years ago, I used to help run a quite effective small local charity. We worked with children. People were very willing to donate things that the children could use directly - books, treats etc. To be honest, we didn't really need those donations to function. They were nice to haves, not necessary.

We ran very cheaply because we got free use of two premises, both with light, heating, security. Our costs went up when we were (rightly) required to screen and train all of our many volunteers for child protection purposes. Our main costs apart from that were stationery, phone bills, printing and postage. We kept those costs as low as possible. But there were huge invisible overheads there - premises and security being major ones, and without them we couldn't have functioned.

Women’s Aid

I’d do a mix of big and local charities, they all have their place.