To be thinking twice about donating money to flood victims in Pakistan?

[Nancy66]

One of the most corrupt countries in the world - is there, realistically, any chance at all the money will get to the victims?

Infuriates me that 8 months after the Haiti earthquake most of the residents are still living in squalor and chaos, while tens of millions sits in bank accounts.

YANBU.

I think (hope) that if you donate it to one of the aid agencies that will work directly with victims then it should get to where it needs to be.

But why hasn't it worked in Haiti?

Same charities involved.

YANBU to research any charity before you donate. You are under no obligation to give.

YANBU

Donating to these causes does nothing but salve a guilty consicence at living a western decadent lifestyle.

The money never gets to the victims.

Even if some international donors aren't honouring their pledges - there is still about £300million available. But nothing is being done. The Red Cross have only spent about 20% of the money donated. Why?

I'm not talking about the whole country being rebuilt here - piles of rubble haven't even been cleared.

People are still dying of starvation.

Can't shake the belief that (tragically) giving money to any corrupt country is always pointless.

It's not tosh.

I know an American journalist that has been in Haiti in the past week - he said if you didn't know you'd think the earthquake was a week ago, not seven months.

I'd give to the charities I trust: shelterbox is a big fave right now
because it is so child friendly (boys did something for them post haiti and would now if it were term time)

They don't give cash but survival equipment

The thing I have found about large charities is that they exist to exist - iyswim

So they raise money to fund themselves, keep paying the salaries, keep running the offices, and if they've got a bit spare, they might do a little something. But their primary function is to keep themselves running and the largest amount of money by far goes on that.

They may have started off with the idea of helping, but that soon changes.

Perhaps I am just cynical, maybe I am suspicious, but it seems to me that the very well paid directors and managers of these charities are doing very well indeed out of it all.

I stopped donating to the NSPCC when I saw how they spent their money.

doesn't stop them sending me:

pens, notebooks and stickers every month though.

MSF always worthwhile. I knew people who worked for them, and their aid does get through.

I donate to Save the Children because every time their advert comes on the screen my 9mo old DD crawls over to the TV and coos and the babies and pats the screen and it breaks my heart.

They have a breakdown of how their money is spent as well so it seems to be a good one.

I donate to the NSPCC as well as I believe ChildLine is a very important resource. The thing with the pen thing in direct mails as that they will have an incredibly low cost price (as they buy them in such bulk and they're minimum quality), but honestly do dramatically increase the amount of people who open the letter rather than just chuck it in the bin so they are a good investment in that regard.

Yes I wish the Red Cross would stop sending me nasty notelets and pre-printed addressed labels which they then want me to donate money for. And the others who send me the flat pens and the calendars. And I particularly wish charities wouldn't use chuggers.
But then I suppose it must all work otherwise they wouldn't do it? Hope so anyway.

I think the whole area of charities and their funds is an incredibly murky one.

I know of one high profile children's charity that has so much money it doesn't know what to do with it - so it does nothing. It just sits there - and yet they still campaign for more funds.

My friend of mine is on the ground in Haiti. A lot of work is being done, so not sure that it's fair to say that people are living in squalor and chaos. He doesn't work for an agency. A lot of work still needs to be done, but real progress is being made.

Another friend who works in charities only gives to UNICEF as she is of the belief that it gets through.

I believe that there are rules now about how much charities are allowed to hold in reserve - one well-known kids' charity had to get rid of piles of cash a few yrs back.

Thing is, if you don't donate, what are you going to do?

Yep the rules are pretty tight

I used to work for a pretty amazing charity though (and a big one MAcmillan) and yes we had to raise to pay for existence obviously but that was on top of the things we raised forr: so an appeal was for however many nurses plus the costs of the appeal to create it.

Pretty fair I thought becuase really, if we'd have handed it over to the volunteers it wouldn;t have happened- the non sppeal stuff, volunteers / wills / big events was used in the grants scheme, support lines etc.

As a converse at homestart we didn't have dedicated fundraising staff (at least in my scheme, don't know about others) and oh dear- scheme ran out of money and closed.

Not in field any mroe so I promise not covering own arse LOL_ in fact I could name two charities I wouldn;t touch with a bargepole. None linked to this appeal though.

TBH I find DEC is a good resource as I think they are pretty reliable. UK charrity commission comes down on people not meeting extensive rules like the proverbial barrel of- a volunteer for somewhere I worked once accidentally put up a poster with a charuity reg on and we had serious repercussions.

But I would always say yes, when you give look at a charity, check them with charity commission and look for specific aims and %.

Do you have some links, Riven?