To find it really annoying when charities/causes have a minimum donation

[JazzAnnNonMouse]

Just tried to donate to world food programme - minimum donation £5. Similar amounts for other charities too.

Of course to many that isn't much at all but I try and give to varying charities and that's quite a bit for me.

Unfortunately at the moment that's just too much out of my budget so I won't be able to donate this time.

Surely a few pounds is better than nothing? I appreciate though there must be administration costs but they surely can't be all that much?

It's made me feel inadequate and that I've failed at trying to help.

I've just donated £1 to WFP. Did you go to the "Other Amount" option?

Yes -it said 'your amount must be between £5-£9999'

YABU. If they're asking for a minimum of £5 it's because they have to factor in the admin. If it's too much for your budget it doesn't make you a failure.

It does though

Id really like to help but can't

YANBU. How much "admin" time is there, when someone makes an automatic online payment and enters their own details onto the site?

Why not send them an e-mail saying you'd like to donate but at this moment in time you can't meet their minimum donation. And say that it has stopped you donating and ask why this is their policy. I agree that it's probably something to do with admin costs. But that's only a guess.

If you make an online payment then the online payment provider will take a fixed amount and/or percentage of the transaction.

If you dont donate enough to cover this then you may actually cost them money.

If you want to donate a small amount go to charity shop or put it in a can.

I highly doubt the online payment provider will be charging anything near £5. The most I've heard of is £1.80 per payment, so really the minimum donation should be £3 to make it worthwhile.

I think a lot of the time it's a way of making people donate more but I do feel that it's a rather dubious technique. I feel similar when I get phonecalls from charities saying they need me to increase my payments to £10 a month... apparently £60 a year isn't enough.

I would love to donate more but past experience has shown that once I've donated, I'm on their database and then get regular newsletters, pens, bookmarks, coasters etc that before too long far outweighs the value of the donation I sent them. I dread to think about the number of phonecalls if I'd given them my phone number too.

So usually these days my charity donations are in the form of sponsoring friends to do stuff as I don't then get on a database somewhere!

That's a good point about all the shitr/ presents some charities send to guilt you to donate more... Often I'm sure the item plus postage would come to more than my donation.

Slightly different but I was a bit miffed a couple of weeks ago. We were shopping and saw a poppy appeal stall. The boys wanted a wrist band each, I wanted to get them a poppy pin as despite taking money in every day for a poppy at school it rarely makes it home and I wanted them to wear one plus ds2 wanted a cross with a poppy on it and I wanted a car sticker. Total of said items was £7.50, no problem, all in a good cause so I pull out the £20 note I had just got out of the cash machine, in readiness to pay for poppy items and then parking at the hospital later that day, to be told by the people they do not give change, so they would need the full £20 in donation. As I couldn't afford that amount I scrambled around an found £3 for 3 items and put the rest back. It seemed silly they were willing to miss out on a further £4.50 by not giving change. Infact, they didn't miss out as a few days later I popped in the poppy shop in our town and purchased the other items, and got change.