a few thousand pounds behind the bar

[necromumda]

We have a local charity driven organization which serves the public and for which volunteers give their time to help. They are constantly raising money for the organization. I just found out that their end of year do involved having a few thousand pounds behind the car for the volunteers. The next day, back again with raising funds via bucket collections.
AIBU to feel this is taking the piss or am I being mean?

@nacreous thats what I was thinking, probably being mean as the situation is unique in that these people risk their lives and give their time

necromanda Yes - it seems different from almost any other situation with volunteers because they are risking their lives as well as giving their time, and because the requirements (to be available by pager) are so disruptive to daily life!

Not defensive, no. I am straight out explaining why you are wrong to post misinformation about organisations that do good based on nothing but a piece of random information. I am also plainly saying you are mean, unreasonable and shit stirring. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps you don’t understand what a positive contribution to society is.

Probably needs more information and context to make a judgement. In my experience it is not normal for charities to behave in this 'corporate' way. However even volunteers need recognition and reward in some format if they are to remain committed.

This isn't a very nice thread OP.

All charities are subject to enormous scrutiny in their accounts and I'd say it's pretty much impossible that the RNLI has spent funders' money on a big piss up. However:

1. Many charitable organisations, including the National Lottery as a good example, willingly give grants towards volunteers' expenses including food and drink (albeit not alcohol). So some of the costs at this event could have come from public funds perfectly reasonably and entirely accounted for.
2. You don't know where this money came from, and most likely neither does the RNLI volunteer who told you about it. Last week I was at a fabulous Christmas dinner for the very small charity I work for. We had a lovely 3 course meal and a few bottles of wine between us. Our Trustees paid for every penny out of their own pockets for us. We work really hard and don't get much back, because it is a charity we choose to work for. Our Christmas treat every year is looked forward to by all of us and we are really grateful to our Trustees for funding it ever year. But the tone of your OP would suggest that we don't deserve it?

There’s no way that will come from general funds. The community group I help run applied for and got funds specifically for a volunteers night out so they’ve probably done that.

You're being mean. Very mean.

RNLI volunteers are actual life savers, every single one of them. The social media and schools education programmes save lives. The beaches with RNLI lifeguards make it safer to go in the water.

It's a massive commitment to be in a station crew or support team.

People whose lives have bee save don't by the RNLI raise and give enormous sums. Sometimes they give money specifically to fund a kneesup for the actual people who give up their time and risk their lives, often for decades. And maybe they invite the families who are without their loved ones because they are in the crew on a callout in shocking weather.

Look up the Penlee lifeboat, listen to the final radio calls. And don't diss the RNLI on hearsay on a massive forum

So very very unreasonable. Astonishingly.

Why do people love to bash charities? Is it to make them feel less guilty for not volunteering or giving money?

I did something idiotic and had to be rescued bythe RNLI. I would not begrudge any of the volunteer crew a few Christmas drinks, they thoroughly deserve it for all they do.

And to the person who mentioned Oxfam. I volunteer in one of their offices. We had a modest Christmas lunch and everyone drank water. They pay travel and lunch expenses but only up to a certain limit, you have to provide receipts and you are paid the exact amount. It's a small amount which essentially saves the charity thousands as if they didn't have all the volunteers they would need to pay quite a few people. I certainly couldn't contribute my time without getting my travel paid.

OP do you have any idea how many volunteers out there who are entitled to claim travel expenses for example who don't bother and just give their time for free, funding their own travel to and from their place of "work".

I run a charity and this could be perfectly legitimate, especially in the case of the RNLI whose volunteers do such essential work. The funding could have been donated specifically as a thank you to volunteers and I'm sure that nothing untoward is happening. As for buckets the next day, more funding to keep an essential service going, this time a designated fund where donations go directly to provide a life-saving service. You are welcome to ask anyone raising funds for a charity where your donation goes and then decide whether or not you give.

A lot of people don’t always realise that charity funding is sometimes ring fenced. If you get funding for volunteer training or a volunteer day out you can’t use it for anything other than that.

And unless people involved in the charity are specifically involved in the funding applications and grants they might not know that funding has been found for something specific.

A major charity like the RNLI isn’t going to risk the bad publicity of doing anything other than using specific funds for that. Especially with alcohol as many grants prohibit that.

Why do people love to bash charities? Is it to make them feel less guilty for not volunteering or giving money?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but no, the charities I vocally disagree with, I have cause to do so.

For example, as upthread, Macmillan. Marie Curie on the other hand, I happily donate money to, fundraise for and volunteer for.

A few ex forces charities are not doing what they should be doing, Combat Stress being one of the bigger ones. However I also donate to, and give time to one of the smaller ones which does do what it’s supposed to. Who Dares Cares.

I was going to start a thread about a local charity!

They hold one huge event every year which is attended by thousands of people. If you look up the actual charity they aren’t registered anywhere. Webpage is a dead link. No Facebook page. No social media at all. There is literally nothing about what they do or who they are. They must take in tens of thousands every year from this event and then it’s a dead end.

I keep meaning to look a bit deeper and then I forget

Event is a fireworks night which thousands of people go to. Tickets around 10 quid each. But no mention of what the charity does or how they spend the money. It’s bizarre

I come from a Naval/sea-faring family and the RNLI is a charity extremely close to my heart.

It receives NO government funding whatsoever and the hard, dangerous work undertaken by its volunteer crews is entirely self-funded. A cousin of mine is a volunteer coxswain, on top of their everyday job.

Personally, I would pay for a pint for any of them out of my own pocket and don't grudge a do for crew members at all.

I really hope the OP is beginning to realise how nasty and petty they sound in this thread...

@fuckyousanta if they’re not registered anywhere then they’re just a community group. There’s little regulation for that if they don’t need to be registered anywhere (no kids etc)

If it’s fireworks though they might not make any profit as they are extortionate!

This is a petty (and possibly slanderous) post. People need to realise the begrudging spend on volunteers or staff is counter productive. Admin costs are generally kept to a certain percentage of funds and in the case of volunteer rescue crew, a party to say thank you is entirely appropriate. Even as a student volunteer, there was an annual party night to say thank to people who clocked up a certain number of hours of service (I hit 500 but can’t remeber the threshold). I don’t know the costs but I attended a meal, had a lovely time and felt valued for the hard work I had put in over the course of the year.

I often think if there was a healthier attitude to spending money on volunteers/public sector workers then hard working nhs staff (as an example) could have a cup of tea for free without fear of criticism and everyone would be far happier.

I no longer donate to a charity I was involved with since a part-time member of staff, on a not part-time salary, was employed by them to over see the fundraising of a group of women who had managed very well, and had been very successful. The women in question has skills, experience, several were successful businesswomen and some of their partners ran multi-national businesses and donated their time for free. It became corporate with layers of paid staff but with the volunteers doing all the work. The charity were gifted a building in a very prestigious part of London which mysteriously was sold at way below market value a few years later.

That definitely makes a difference. If the “volunteers” you’re talking about are actual lifeboat crew rather than random tin rattlers then who the hell would begrudge them an end of year pissup? Feel free to do a survey of all the donors to say “would you be offended if some of your 50p went to a proper thank you to the crew rather than 100% being spent on boat maintenance” and I think I can safely guess what the answer would be.

I absolutely would be happy that some of my donations go towards a drink for the heroes that volunteer with RNLI. However, I suspect that what will have happened is that a benefactor has made a specific donation, or a small group have done a specific, separate fundraising effort just for this purpose.
One of the things I volunteer with has a 'Volunteers Thank you Day' - the volunteers themselves said they didn't really ant the money they were raising spent on putting on refreshments for themselves (it was tea and cake) and it was made very clear that no money raised for the Charity would ever be used for such a purpose and the refreshments were provided by a company that wanted to recognise the hard work that is given by so many people to raise the hundreds of thousands raised each year. My money will be on this being the same sort of thing.

What pisses me off is when I give one off donations (and some that were on a regular direct debit but since cancelled) to some charities, they continue to send me raffle tickets/coasters/shite. What a waste of good donated money.

It does irritate me when people complain about things like charities advertising. Yes the ads clearly cost a lot of money. But do people really not get that the reason for the ads is that through paying £x for an ad, £xxx is raised for the charity, therefore benefiting thousands of service users? Do people think charities pay for ads just for the fun of it?

Same with pens in envelopes. It’s really annoying when charities send appeals through the post and include pens or whatever. But they do it for a reason! Statistics show that campaigns which include a pen raise more money than those which don’t. Annoying but true.

I used to work for Macmillan a long time ago. I remember a local volunteer group making a complaint that the Area Fundraising Manager had a company car. It was a very basic functional model but they felt that because it was a charity, the individual should pay for their own car and petrol to do their job (which involved a huge amount of travelling). Overlooking that if the charity expected that, they would be completely unable to recruit professional fundraisers, thereby causing the charity’s income to nosedive.

OP I am sure the function in question for volunteers was funded within legal parameters and that donors would not begrudge the volunteer crew members having a ‘do’.

@vegancow the Random stuff in the mail is to do with vat. I can’t remember the ins and outs but it refuces the cost of their mailing and makes people feel they must donate because they’ve got something for nothing
There are charities who I don’t particularly like or who I’ve had less than stellar interactions with. But it irks me on mumsnet that posters base their views on an entire charities work on one thing. Like anything else, they’re run by people. Things go wrong.

Could just be there small change leftover from a restricted grant and the donor didn’t want it back so told them to spend it.

We did that for about 5 years. The money behind the bar came from my pocket and the pockets of businesses who wanted to to thank the volunteers for their time and effort.

The businesses all donated non money support. The charity couldn't have existed without them or the volunteers.

Nobody ever complained to us about wasting charity money, many understood why we wanted to show the volunteers how much we valued their expertise and time.

Maybe that's what your charity us doing also!