in thinking some charity events ( paragliding in Paraguay, walking Great wall etc)

[HugoFirst]

are just peopel want to have a jollly and guilt everyone else into paying for it?
when they could jsut give their air fare and have done?

or is there more to these things ( lolling at mates H doing some kind of cross Kenya car hting)

I don't have a problem when people are apying for the activity/trip part themselves and all the sponsorship goes to the charity - I have a friend who did this. I do have a problem if the sponsorship pays for the trip with probably very little going to the actual charity. In these cases people are just asking you to pay for their holiday.

yanbu. i dislike the money made from it by private countries. it can be a bit "look at me and how great i am". give your plane money to the charity or actually do some dirty hands on volunteering work that doesn't happily coincide with you doing a bucket list item.

Totally agree maighdlin - a Dad at school is doing a charity skydive and he and his wife keep banging on about how great he is risking life for charity, when it's something he's always wanted to do and of the £350 sponsorship he has to raise £190 of it goes to the skydiving company rather than the charity that he is claiming to be raising funds for.

I wonder how his sponsors would feel knowing that their money that they were so generously giving was going to line the pockets of a company to pay for his skydive.

ooh my crazee wife is involved in a 24 hr knittathon knitting wigs out of spaghetti for pygmy goats

You just made me spit out my coke zero. Which is quite embarrassing as I'm in macdonalds (free wifi so peaceful MNing for me!)

YANBU anyway

It's very often IME a way of showing off - if you want to actually help a charity how about volunteering in the community to help people directly.

When people I know do these things I don't generally donate. The only one I donated to was an old school friend who spent some time with university going to Bhutan and designing/building wells (engineering degree) - she then did a 10k run to raise funds for that specific community.

it's a case-by-case basis with me. If the person is paying their entry etc, then fine as long as all of the money raised DOES go the charity. Allegedly only 25% of money raised in charity places for the London marathon, for example goes to the charity. A friend of mine took one of these places last yr and had a £2500 target (!) and didn't have the heart to tell him, ended up sponsoring him personally £50 as well as buying tickets/paying sitter for SEVERAL fundraising events. Cost me £150 all in of which only 25% went to a good cause! I'd rather have saved the money and donated to the same charity direct ...

EggyAllenPoe - are you related to Don or Alistair?! Or maybe there are other cyclists hot on their heels.....?

A friend of mine (Don) is currently cycling from lands End to John O'Groats with another friend to raise money for two charities (one local, one abroad). Obv they're happy for people to make donations to the charities but there's been no expectation or pressure to donate. They have paid/will pay for all their own expenses and have trained bloody hard.

I guess what they're doing is different to what gets up the OPs nose, but it would be a shame if all fundraisers end up being tarred with the same brush.

*Jaspants Sun 29-May-11 20:48:46
YANBU.

My friend went on and on about how hard he was training to trek in Peru, months of spare time spent mountain climbing as well as giving up two whole weeks of his time to do it.

He caught me at a bad time and was a bit fecked off when I suggested that charity begins at home and if he'd given up "months of his spare time and two weeks holiday" doing something less glamorous like clearing litter / working in a residential home / doing night shifts in a soup kitchen / something more worthy, then I would sponsor him for that. Oddly enough he didn't want to do that as Peru was the trip of a lifetime*

Round of applause!

I have big 'ishoos' with a DofE trip to Borneo next year ......why? just why? Get up town and work in Centrepoint for a week of two - and I'll even come with you!

Don't even go up the quasi-charity trip to St Lucia with the school - ostensibly to dig wells - it's a cricket team jolly - sorry! but! I sincerely doubt any over indulged Kent school boy can teach a West Indian anything about cricket - and has never seen a shovel in his life! Ditto the Sri Lankan mosquito net trip, or the Fiji rugby trip

I'd agree. I don't sponsor the "Pay for my holiday/sponsor me for something I want to do anyway" lot

Yes funny how these charity expeditions involve a far flung tropical location, rather than staying in a youth hostel in an inner city to go work at the night shelters for a week.

TSC - yes I do voluntary work for a local charity.

YANBU this whole holiday sponsorship is a crock.There are plenty places in U.K. to walk,run,jump or whatever,if you want give the airfare and accomodation cost to a charity aqnd go without the trip then all good and well but do not ask me to sponsor your dream of walking the great wall of china etc

I do, TSC :) 3 different charities ATM. Enjoying it so much that I've got a PT job instead of FT and I can still fit it all in.

I am doing one of these charity events - walking 25 miles along Hadrian's Wall in September. However I am self funding- I am paying all the costs myself and ALL the money I raise will go my chosen charity.
I think this is a fairer way of doing things and ensuring the charity gets as much money as possible.
Expecting sponsorship to pay my fees to enter doesn't sit right with me.

"Allegedly only 25% of money raised in charity places for the London marathon, for example goes to the charity."

expatagain Do you have any serious evidence (ie not Daily Mail et al) of this being true? If so, that's outrageous. (otherwise you are just spreading tittle tattle).

Kansas your approach is the way that it should be, unfortunately those that want people to fund their expensive lifetime ambition put people off from sponsoring altogether.

I can't substantiate the figure that expat quoted but to give you an idea Scope will refund all your costs (entry fee, flight and accomodation for the NY marathon) if you raise £1k; BHF will refund up to £350.

Take into account the cost of administration and shipping all their workers out there on a jolly to cheer the runners on and thats a hefty whack not actually being spent on the core aims of a charity.

not interested in spreading tittle tattle and completely support fundraisers doing a challenge for a good cause that gets the money (done races for charity myself but made sure i knew where the £ went).

Charity places in the London marathon are a rip-off, imho both for the individual fundraiser who typically has to raise upwards of £1750 and for the charity who (in most cases at least for the smaller ones) pays nearly that sum . This was all revealed in a Cutting Edge documentary on channel 4 a couple of yrs ago (google for refs to it, Flora and now Virgin obviously dispute the allegations). AFAIK other big marathons are not nearly as greedy and charity places can be got for around a few £100.

This article seems to back up what expat has been saying.

YANBU

I looked into doing a trek in Africa but then I realised that half .... HALF of the money I raise is to pay for expenses for the trip. Not much goes to the charity then. So I didn't go through with it as it is in effect financing a free holiday for the participant.

So many of my colleagues do things like this and I'm sick of it when half of the money that is donated is for their trip costs.

If they want to raise money for the charity they should fund the travel expenses themsleves of do an event which donates 100% of the proceeds to cahrity.

I think these trips are less popular than they used to be. I'd rather give money to the charity than subsidise someone's dream holiday.

YANBU.
I ran a half marathon recently, it was a big deal for me and required commitment to make sure I was fit enough to take part. I paid my own entrance fee and then raised money for a charity that is important to me and doesn't receive any government funds.. I still felt embarassed asking for sponsorship though as running it was primarily for me to prove I could do it and having a good reason to get fit.
I don't know how people have the bare faced cheek to ask for sponsorship for these trips abroad, thankfully no one has ever asked me.

I walked the Inca Trail. I paid for it myself, wouldn't dream of asking friends/family/colleagues to fork out for it (because that's effectively what you're doing).

TSC: I've frequently volunteered for local places and plan to spend at least half of my time travelling/backpacking (4/5 years planned) volunteering and organising the placements off of my own back, which is why I'm personally very peeved by it.

It doesn't take that much effort to do so once you work out how to do it (and that doesn't take long) or if you use sites like helpex and workaway to organise your placements (when looking for volunteering as opposed to the expeditions). Though obviously some things cannot be organised like this and have to be done in person, but speaking to other backpackers on forums like lonelyplanet means that you get good reccomendations of places that need help in many different ways.

In regards to the more 'expedition' style holidays, they're also relatively easy to organise off your own back as there are always locals happy to guide you or a group of you. I know that you can do it outside of a large organisation with the bigger ones (kilamanjaro, great wall, macchu picchu, coast-to-coasts, etc) but for many it's just simpler to have someone do the admin for them.