To start questioning donating to some of the bigger charities.

[ButtonMoon88]

I think MN may have turned me into a cynic. Basically I have always donated, and even volunteered for Macmillan, and my brother, Cancer Research UK. However I read on here that the money raised basically went on advertising because the majority of staff for both charities were funded by NHS. Is this true? Also someone on a thread earlier was talking about RSPCA and how they unnecessarily put animals to sleep. I find this so shocking!! I'm training to run a half marathon next year and was Hoping to donate to Macmillan but I am seriously doubting my charity choice. As I said I find this devastating because I had lossed someone to Cancer and really felt better about doing something for Macmillan, it felt like my loss was worthwhile if I could do good...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2470019-Are-the-RSPCA-any-good

I have worked in the not for profit sector for two decades. I have worked with and for some excellent organisations and some pretty shabby ones. Size and the pay packet of the CEO are not differentiating factors. Once you have decided what cause us close to your heart, do your homework before picking a charity to donate to.
Things to consider

1. Does the charity have clear and specific aims and goals? Are they in line with what you want?(E.g. We want to cure cancer is pretty vague, we want to cure cancer by understanding how cancer is caused and how to prevent it, much more specific. Look to see if they have a published strategy.
2. What impact has the charity already had? Can they provide evidence of this?
3. is the charity sitting on huge reserves? If so why? Think in terms of if they spend £1m p.a. but have £10m in the bank, that is a 10 year reserve. I would question anything more than 3.
4. Do they have robust processes for deciding how to spend donations? Look at Kids company. They did some good work no doubt, but seemed to have very lax processes, which makes it much more likely that money will not be spent wisely.
5. is executive pay in line with the size of the organisation? If CEO is on £200K, and the charity spends £2m p.a this is about 10% of spend, but if the charity spends £200m p.a. tHis level of pay might be more in line with the level of responsibility.

If you are a regular donor, it really pays to do your homework if you are going to part with you hard earned cash.

Donate to who you want somebody on another thread who volunteered or worked for a local centre of a big charity said it was better to donate direct than signing up iyswim. So maybe donate to a hospice or local

"I wanted to know if I donated another family will benefit like I did."

Absolutely right. And the answer is they will. If the specific nurse you benefited from is now funded by the NHS, then your donation won't go towards paying her salary. But it will go towards funding additional training and support she gets from Macmillan. It will go towards funding a new nurse for a community who don't currently benefit from one. It will go towards funding benefits advisers who help cancer patients access financial help they desperately need. It will fund cancer information centres and all the myriad other things Macmillan do.

Excellent advice from Bellende about researching before donating and what sort of things to look out for. I tend to donate to Leukaemia Research (or rather Bloodwise as they now seem to be called), which as with most people, is for very personal reasons.

I don't think small, local charities are necessarily any more deserving of support or use funds more efficiently than big, national charities. This other current thread illustrates the kind of problems you can have with small charities: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/thirty_days_only/2474659-Bit-conflicted-about-a-charity-I-volunteer-for

The finances and management of large charities come under a lot of scrutiny, and they are under constant pressure to use funds efficiently, which can mean employing people at market or near-market rates to do certain jobs.

I work for a disability charity local to home and we use all donated money to support disabled people. It does not even go on staff wages as all that comes from grants. Local is the way to go and so many like us are struggling at the moment

But that's not a sustainable approach dolly. The funding for the grants has to be available - likely from other charities or the government. Are you proposing that the government fund all admin costs for all charities. Given the cuts in public spending it's a risky approach anyway.

Charities have costs. They can't simply rely on volunteers. The front line staff often need to be highly trained (think Macmillan nurses, Barnados counsellors) and the back office staff need to raise sufficient funds to pay for those front line people.

You can't expect those back office staff to work for free. They have lives to pay for and they aren't going to dedicate 40 hours a week to fundraising for example without being paid. And rent is a given. If you employ 500 people you need somewhere for them to sit. You also need HR teams to manage those employees and finance teams to ensure the charity doesn't run out of money - see Kids Company!

And actually there are too am r charities competing with one another. There will likely be further sector consolidation as with Cancer Research / Age UK.

I think donating to charity (whichever one it may be) should be a personal choice.

I give monetary donations to cancer /leukaemia research. I am aware that this probably pays someone's salary but I like to think that it's someone working hard in a lab.

Our local hospice (which is marvellous and is run by some amazing people) gets the bulk of all charity donations in our area.
At work we do not raise money for them. We volunteer our time and help redecorate/garden etc.

We have recently signed up to volunteer our time at lunchtimes during the week to walk dogs/fluff cats at the local animal shelter. This helps both parties. Animals get fussed and walked (and maybe rehomed) and we get out of the office.

Some large charities are fantastic. Others, not so much. Same goes with small charities. I work for one and we could not do what we do without the generosity of the local community. If anyone came and asked us we'd be happy to explain where the money went and if we have big donations will respect the wishes of the donor as to what the money is spent on.

I think yanbu local is best.

There needs to be a real overhaul about charity status in general to redefine what it is. There are companies that are charities for tax purposes largely and its wrong.

Tobysmum, which ones are they then?

They aren't ones that you'd donate to so it isn't terribly relevant to this thread I just think the whole thing needs an overhaul is my point. Its the sector I work in, I don't want to get into it on mn tbh.

check out the Salvation Army= smallest % taken for salaries etc huge amount of help given to so many who desperately need it. Compare with other charities- none of them come anywhere close.

armami I used to donate to the Salvation Army on that basis, but when I wanted them to stop sending letters to my deceased Father in law I had a terrible job to get rid of them. In the end they started sending letters to the 'current occupier' of the house, so I stopped supporting them.
I recently volunteered (short term) for a charity I have always held in high regard. Even they seemed reluctant to remove people from their mailing list. I opened numerous letters from people complaining that they had had too many requests for money and asking why their requests to be removed from the mailing list had been ignored. I also opened some 'One Show' letters (this is a pro forma letter available from The One Show website for people who are having trouble being removed from mailing lists).
I still respect the charity. They have done a lot of good work in their field. I hope that the current issues regarding fundraising will give them cause to rethink some of their methods.
I think some local charities can be a bit chaotic (I volunteered for one such), but others are brilliant.

i'm glad Salvation Army sends me their letters as they remind me to give.

I donated £5 to the NSPCC for about 12 years by direct debit - so I reckon I donated over £700 over the years. I eventually decided to cancel the DD as I was sick of being pestered to increase my donation. After cancelling I was really disappointed and rather annoyed that I didn't even get a letter or email to express their thanks for my £700 donation - such a small gesture would have been much appreciated. I donate to a smaller charity now.

If you want to see what happens when charities don't have appropriate administration (inc governance), qualified and capable people in charge (and paid accordingly) and adequate reserves, just look at what happened at Kids Company.

armami yes, but sending letters to a dead person when their widow is still alive can be distressing. That was the issue.

mailing and call centres usually do that work. Not sure how to get them to act.

I work for a small local charity who also has projects which are funded by other bigger charities like Macmillan
Look at charity commission website, annual report and finances, but don't assume that it is always a bad thing if staff costs are a large percentage of their spend
Whilst many have volunteers, staff are also needed, when volunteers are not available, staff are needed to supervise and train volunteers, do admin and all the not so popular tasks that it is hard to find volunteers to do
Yes we do need to pay for rent travel expenses telephone bookkeeping audit etc, one of my biggest expenses is insurance, but I can't legally operate without it