To ask how much you give to charity?

[Wibblewobble100]

A TAAT - sorry! Reading the go fund me thread and wondering if I'm really stingy. I give about £200 a year to charity.... £10 month to oxfam, occasional sponsorship / just giving (maybe once every 2-3 months), and if there's a big DEC campaign eg Ebola, Haiti. Other than that it's the occasional coppers in a collection box. I don't generally give to beggars, buy the big issue, give to people collecting in the street or door to door, and I've never received a go fund me request but wouldn't give unless I knew someone really well and was convinced it was 100% genuine. I avoid all telethons (children in need, comic relief etc )like the plague. Am I stingy, how much do you give?

I don't give anything...If I did have any spare cash (which I don't)...I'd rather stick it in a savings account for my dc.

Just the standard £2 a month to cancer research, Macmillan, combat stress, mind, women's aid, water aid, barnardos, UNICEF. We spread it thin and hedge our bets
Plus £5 if we ever watch comic relief etc. And 3 hours a week volunteering.
We do it for the smug sense of satisfaction

I give £30 a month to the charity I'm a trustee of, it's through Give As You Earn though so it actually only costs me about £19 as it comes out of my salary before tax. That £360 is enough to pay for two children to come to one of our events, and as we are run entirely by volunteers I know that every penny I give goes towards supporting our families.

I donate to charity shops a few items each month that resell for about £10 in total.

I can't afford to donate money and am also a bit sceptical about where the donations go. I never, ever give my personal details to charities.

Wibble I and most of my colleagues have a deep belief in the aims of the charity we work for. This is certainly the view of many of the front line staff. I guess the finance or fundraising staff may be more about matching skill sets but even then there is genuine passion for the charitable aims.

It's not a religious belief by the way. This passion is one of the things I love about where I work. I feel v lucky to be there and it's a bit of a dream come true for me and I know many colleagues feel the same.

It is a bit demoralising when charities get so much criticism. However we are grateful for our supporters and acutely aware we couldn't do what we do without their generosity.

For those worried about how the money is spent, you can view the charities annual accounts on the charity commission website. Each charity we give to spends less than 20% on admin and costs. For each £1 we give they get £1.20 due to gift aid, 96p+ of which actually goes towards helping people.

We sponsor a child through plan, who work on improving the area the child lives in a well as paying them through school etc. We have DDs to a few other charities and buy a few items each week for the food Bank. In total probably about £50 a month. We have a decent household income but are saving for a house deposit, so I'm looking into donating time as well.

Very little in cash - small change in collecting boxes mainly
I gift items though, plenty to charity shops, and regift gifts for things like tombolas, also bake sales
My main contribution is time
I work full time for a charity
Promote other charities in my spare time
Give time on national steering groups, local forums and campaigns
I am also an unpaid director for a community interest company
The areas covered range from welfare reform, cancer, older people, dementia, adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse and advocacy

Oops, they get £1.25 due to gift aid, so £1+ goes towards the projects we support.

I started at the charity I work for as a volunteer. A paid job came up and I went for it. In a job role I hadn't done before, but I wanted to work there. It isn't what I would want to do necessarily in terms of day to day activities, but I am passionate about the charity and believe in what we do. We make a difference every day and that is so important to me. And I the people I work with are great. But I could be earning a lot more elsewhere.

It concerns me that many people have unrealistic ideas of what charities should spend their money on
Administration is needed if a charity is to be properly run, audited and monitored
I claim necessary expenses, as do all staff, volunteers are reimbursed for out of pocket expenses
We have to pay for DBS checks, liability insurance, office rent and utilities including phones and Internet
Training and appropriate supervision cost money
We don't spend money on fundraising, however attending events and awareness raising add up
Constantly ensuring that as a charity you are doing things properly, reviewing your policies and procedures, monitoring and evaluation, consulting service users, referrers and the general public who may become either of the former in the future, research, keeping up with new rules and regulations all take time and effort

Re administration costs I would urge you to consider how you might run an effective business/organisation without admin staff, accountants/finance staff or a chief exec. Even fundraisers are considered 'administration costs'.

Also consider how paying staff minimally together with these other overhead savings might affect staff productivity (which is effectively delivering the charities work) and morale.

I sponsor a child in Cambodia and also donate to wateraid monthly. So it's about £30 a month in total which is about 5% of my earned wages.

It's not loads, but I'm on a low income.

Cross-post Jace! You expressed it much more eloquently than me!

It's tight enough paying the bills here, especially now OH has been made redundant and is recovering from surgery.

In less lean times we used to do monthly donations to Red Cross, I also served with them for several years as an emergency event first aider, so I gave my time.

These days it's a couple of poppies a year and three odd bit of change in my purse in the Cancer Research collection tubs.

The charity I work for has a couple of paid staff but we are paid by trustees. Any money that comes in goes on running costs...fuel, insurance etc. But we don't ask for financial donations even though we desperately need them, we ask for physical donations. But as with anything else, you have to spend money to make money.

£10 a month.

I sponsor family/friends too for events and give for Red Nosw Day etc.

So probably £200-250 a year?

We have less than £20k a year income though.

When I start to work when children are older hopefully I'll be able to give more.

I give £10 a month to British Legion..I also work for a charity so I give a hell of a lot of blood, sweat and tears to the not for profit sector!

I've stopped donating to big charities - they kept sending me crap I didn't want and asked constantly for more.

I give to a couple of small local charities, donate to disaster appeals, sponsorship via friends doing runs etc. If I don't have to give any personal details to a charity I'm likely to give more.

I also volunteer in the community - and fundraiser for the school. So a donation of sorts, of my time.

I hope people didn't think that I meant I don't think much should be spent on admin, I understand that there are many necessary costs. At the minute the charities we support happen to have around 18-20% cost, but we've given to charities with higher costs in the past and I'm sure we will do again. I do like to look up the reports though (partly because my FIL likes to tell us that giving to a charity is a waste of time as most of the money goes on admin, and gets annoyed when I can say "actually the charities we give to spend x, y & z% on admin) and I would be suspicious of a big, well established charity who had 50%+ admin costs.

10% of my pre-tax cash income.

Choosing causes carefully is massively more important than the amount one gives though. Amongst health charities for example (where it is easier to compare outcomes) the most effective charities are 100s of times more effective per pound spent than average charities. So a ten pound donation can do as much as much good as thousands.

This is an excellent book on the ideas of effective altruism (Doing Good Better by Will MacAskill):

www.amazon.co.uk/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Difference/dp/1783350490/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

For many years I struggled to give any money to charity despite my best intentions, because of my lack of confidence in my ability to choosing the right charities, and scepticism about the charity 'industry'. This book is one of the things that helped me clarify my thoughts.

I volunteer time for a not for profit, the equivalent of £1000 a month, and give about £10 a month. We are skint at the mo so need to spend more time earning.

BadLad "I'm very rude to chuggers etc"
That's appalling, why say it like you're proud of it? If you don't want to give just say "no thanks" and walk on.

We sponsor a child and give amounts here and there for emergency appeals.
I also ask the kids if they'd like to donate some money. They get gifts of cash from generous extended family and I'd like them to learn to give to those less fortunate. They give about £5 a year.
I also give old clothes, toys and books to charity and contribute to food bank collections.

As a couple we give around £100 per month on direct debits, mixture of local, national, and international causes, around 4 special payments per year (£20-50 each,)

12 hours per week volunteering,(foodbank) 1 x per month 6 hrs,(Church fundraising events)

14 hrs per 4 weeks unpaid overtime in a social care role, specific event every 4 weeks, (must be mad!!)

special event of £150 ish donation and 8 hrs work once a year (fundraiser event )

aiming for giving 10% of income, but personal selfishness getting in the way need to identify a cause to support to make it up to the 10%

I really like Kiva, which enables micro loans, in $25 increments. After reading Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save (a very challenging read), I moved most of my donations to Kiva. I do donate money for admin costs, but the bulk of the money is used for loans, and as I've been lending since 2006, some of the $25 sums have been used towards up to 8-10 separate loans (they just get 'recycled'). You can also withdraw the money once it's been repaid, if you prefer. Kiva has the highest rating from charity navigator (a US based ranking system) for accountability, transparency and accounting too. I don't work for them - I'm just a long term supporter.