to think that if you donate money to stop people drowning, you shouldn't have an issue if aome of that money is used to stop people drowning in poorer countries

[chomalungma]

Yes - the RNLI

They have been spending 3% of their income on supporting projects in poor countries to help prevent people drowning - even though it has had to lay some staff off.

They give a project to buy burkinis so women in Zanzibar can learn water safety skils.

They help support a creche because children are often left unsupervised as their parents have to work and many children drown each day. The creche project has helped reduce drowning deaths by 82%.

I can see that some people would be annoyed that a tiny percentage of their donations is going towards supporting poorer people in foreign countries and reducing their chances of drowning at a time when the RNLI lay off staff.

But it's a good thing to teach people water safety even if they are not in this country, isn't it?

Perhaps we should actually look at what the RNLI have to say?

rnli.org/what-we-do/international/the-global-drowning-problem

rnli.org/what-we-do/international/where-were-working/bangladesh

I think it's the fact they are now an anti drowning charity when previously it was to pay for lifeboats in the UK. There is a difference between the two.

But they're still providing lifeboats in the UK! The media may have highlighted the international projects in conjunction with redundancies of office staff, but that is the media implying that the RNLI doesn't prioritise the lifeboats.

Last year they spent £130 million on Lifeboats. Saving an average of 23 people a day.
20million on lifeguards.
10million on education
3 million abroad

Lifeboats are still the main focus.

Good link JamieVardy . It's the Seasafe organisation in Cox's Bazaar that we work with.

DH is a volunteer with the rnli. To be unhappy with the rnli working out with the UK and ROI is not racist. Racist is to object to them rescuing people of a specific race in the waters they are normally operating in. If I give to Scottish society for prevention of cruelty to children instead of the royal society of prevent of cruelty to children am I racist? Or vice versa.

I presume those outraged that the RNLI spend 2% of their income overseas, are equally exercised by The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, Oxfam, spending 99.9% of their funds outside Oxfordshire?

To be unhappy with the rnli working out with the UK and ROI is not racist

What non-racist justification is there for being upset that 3% of a charity's budget is spent on preventing people in other counties from drowning? Genuinely, how is there a non-racist way to be upset by that?

It's not remotely racist to point out that their fundraising efforts are misleading as to their aims and objectives - or that their funding for international efforts has not been raised in a very transparent way.

Don't you think you bear some responsibility for researching the charities you donate to? This information was not hidden. If it really matters to you, why didn't you put in the very tiny amount of effort that would have been required to ascertain where their funds go?

I used to work as a charity fundraiser for a sexual health charity. I would often pitch my fundraising efforts at the specific audience I was talking to (so when addressing students I would talk about our free contraception programmes and the prevalence of certain diseases among 18-25yos, and when addressing a company's LGBT event I talked about the programmes we ran which were tailored to LGBT people). Is that lacking in transparency? Was I leading them astray by not listing every single programme we funded? Or is it reasonable to assume that adults who care deeply about only donating to very specific causes will do a basic level of research about a charity before donating?

It's ridiculous to claim you've been led astray by a charity when the truth is you couldn't be bothered to put in even a tiny amount of effort to find out what you are donating to.

What non-racist justification is there for being upset that 3% of a charity's budget is spent on preventing people in other counties from drowning?

What’s particularly racist about wanting your donations to help your community? I just can’t stand this sense of paternalism wrt foreign countries. International aid can have some pretty counterintuitive results as ppl parachuted in from abroad don’t have the tools and knowledge to make a huge difference. They may even make things worse, and there’s often a contentious relationship between the foreign charity and local partners. I haven’t even got into the wastefulness of some of these groups.

It’s not fashionable to help your local community, I get it. But you can at least understand the nuances better and see the results (or lack thereof) of the org’s efforts and decide to donate on those factors.

This is also why we heavily advise people to donate to local animal charities and not to PETA/RSPCA where there is simply less accountability and less impact on your local (animal) community. Does it mean we are racist towards foreign animals?

Maybe it’s all much ado about nothing, but I am just so irritated by people screaming “racism” when it’s more nuanced than that and is an ongoing issue with many charities.

I actually think better of the RNLI for knowing this. It's harder to think of more valuable work than saving children from drowning.

It's interesting, because a couple of years ago I went off the RNLI after reading this article, which shows how the RNLI to some extent undermines the work of independent lifeboat rescue teams. (If you're like me you probably didn't realise that such a thing as independent lifeboat rescue teams exist.)

www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/19/the-local-lifeboat-teams-hanging-by-a-thread

A lot of learning gets shared both ways.
This.

Training in different cultures where different resources are available is always a learning experience for trainers as well as trainees

Those asking why bring in people from thousands of miles away - perhaps because they have experience and are happy to share? Presumably these same people asked why the UK cave divers went out to Thailand to help?

Some seriously despicable, insular comments on this thread.

What’s particularly racist about wanting your donations to help your community?

Are you suggesting that your community's wellbeing is compromised because 3% of the RNLI's budget goes to other countries? I might understand your point if you could point to evidence that lifeboats in this county are underfunded because donations are being spent abroad, but that clearly isn't the case. When there is enough to go around, why does it upset you that some of it is going to places which happen to not be geographically proximate to where you live?

I just can’t stand this sense of paternalism wrt foreign countries. International aid can have some pretty counterintuitive results as ppl parachuted in from abroad don’t have the tools and knowledge to make a huge difference. They may even make things worse, and there’s often a contentious relationship between the foreign charity and local partners. I haven’t even got into the wastefulness of some of these groups.

These are fair points in some respects, but not really of the RNLI - as has already been explained, it is local projects in other countries receiving funds, not people being parachuted in from abroad. And if you can point to areas of wastefulness in the RNLI (their accounts are public) then please do, but as a general and unfounded observation it's not particularly helpful.

It’s not fashionable to help your local community, I get it. But you can at least understand the nuances better and see the results (or lack thereof) of the org’s efforts and decide to donate on those factors.

Do you think it's fair to suggest that spending 97% of a budget on UK projects is 'not helping'?

This is also why we heavily advise people to donate to local animal charities and not to PETA/RSPCA where there is simply less accountability and less impact on your local (animal) community. Does it mean we are racist towards foreign animals?

It's not quite the same, is it? An equivalent would be me telling people that they have been misled by the RSPCA and should no longer donate to them because some of the money they raise is spent on neutering stray dogs in Sri Lanka, or educating Egyptian donkey owners on how to look after their animals. You're suggesting it's reasonable to criticise a charity for undertaking work abroad even though information about that work is publicly available. I don't personally think that's justified.

Maybe it’s all much ado about nothing, but I am just so irritated by people screaming “racism” when it’s more nuanced than that and is an ongoing issue with many charities.

What's an ongoing issue? What specifically is the problem? Do you think it's fundamentally an issue for charities to use donations to further their mission statement in counties other than those in which they are registered, even when they are transparent about the fact that they are doing so? You say it's nuanced, but you haven't actually articulated the problem.

A really petty attitude. And what frustrates me further is when people who never donate to a charity in the first place have tantrums about it helping foreigners or refugees, etc., as though they were being forced to pay for it. I have seen people fume about charitable organizations helping refugees, 'when there are poor people in our own country'. Well, guess what, you're not obliged to donate to a refugee charity, and are quite welcome to donate to a charity for British homeless people or to a foodbank (but often the same people will then say that local poverty is all due to 'bad choices' and that the poor people are undeserving!) Similarly no one HAS to donate to the RNLI, though I just did so in response to all the pettiness.

I am not claiming to have been "led astray" FGS.

You specifically said that their fundraising efforts were misleading and that their fundraising efforts for international causes has not been done in a transparent way. However, I'm glad you're now acknowledging you weren't misled by the charity.

It's not about the fact that they spend money overseas, it's just the disingenuous way that the fundraisers claim to be retaining lifeboats and volunteers as a kind of essential emergency service not funded by taxpayers while spiffing cash on other things (that may be equally important, but are not done in a transparent way).

What are you suggesting is opaque, here? Lifeboats and volunteers are an essential emergency service. They aren't funded by taxpayers. These things are true, why is it disingenuous to say them?

Do you think 3% of a budget is really spaffing cash, or is that a bit of a hyperbole?

Do you think the RNLI is failing in its responsibilities because of the 3% of funds that are not spent in the UK?

I live within 100 yards of a lifeboat station and have attended numerous events hosted there, put money in buckets and give via DD - and I had no idea.

But you could very easily have found out the information by spending just a few minutes researching. The fact that you never have suggests that it's actually not that important to you that 100% of the RNLI's budget is spent in the UK. It's therefore a bit unfair for you to claim to be so annoyed about it now.

It's not at all surprising that the RNLI would talk to your village about their UK efforts when you live so close to the sea. All charities tailor their message to the audience they are addressing at that time. It's your responsibility as a donor to research where your money is going if you have very strong feelings about it not being used abroad.

I could have done my homework, as you say - but I would still be making the same point. It is disingenuous.

So you have been told no lies and admit that you could easily have found out the information for yourself. You admit you weren't led astray. So which part, exactly, is disingenuous?

When there is enough to go around, why does it upset you that some of it is going to places which happen to not be geographically proximate to where you live?

I’m speaking in a general sense in that a national NGO isn’t going to be all that effective overseas. What RNLI does is immaterial to me personally; I actually don’t donate to it. But let’s not accuse ppl of racism if they don’t want their donations to go overseas where there is less oversight and less knowledge on the ground. They donate presumably because they want to support their community,

I’m speaking in a general sense in that a national NGO isn’t going to be all that effective overseas.

Genuinely, what do you think is the benefit of you adding these vague posts about hypothetical NGOs to this thread? We're specifically talking about the RNLI and the work they do. What's the point of saying 'unspecified other organisations might not be doing a good job of helping people overseas'. It's just irrelevant, vague, unsubstantiated malingering.

What RNLI does is immaterial to me personally; I actually don’t donate to it.

You shock me.

But let’s not accuse ppl of racism if they don’t want their donations to go overseas where there is less oversight and less knowledge on the ground. They donate presumably because they want to support their community,

If it's important to people that they only donate to charities which operate in their local communities, they are perfectly entitled to do that. I'm certainly not stopping them. But it is their individual responsibility to research the causes to which they donate.

What is not fair is donating to a cause you haven't researched, and then complaining that it doesn't do exactly what you expected it to. You can't blame a charity for the incorrect assumptions you made about it.

What RNLI does is immaterial to me personally; I actually don’t donate to it.

Do you not.

Funny thing, I do, and this fracas has left me bemused. I can't see why anyone who presumably holds the RNLI in the same esteem I do would stop donating. If I found out that 45% of funds went abroad, maybe I'd be a bit startled, but not 2%!

The arguments presented here are ridiculous.

No charity is actually entitled to people's money. People can withdraw their voluntary contributions anytime they like for whatever reason they like, whether those reasons are perceived as petty or not. And they do not have to justify their decision to anyone else, or be vilified for doing so. The fact they give at all is a privilege.

Do those going on about how racist it is think charities that only concentrate on funding for a specific culture or sub-community in the UK are racist too?

There is actually nothing morally wrong for wanting to support a charity with a strictly local focus where the entirety of funding will be distributed locally (in this case nationally). Or even dare I say it, being against foreign aid. It's not my view, but there are arguments for the idea that overseas charity is back door colonialism, whitewashing, white saviourism (again not my view) a form of non-christian ministry or humanistic evangelism, western conscience cleansing, voluntourism, cynical career boosting, is subject to being wasted by corruption, helps regimes stay in place, backdoor bribery, a tool to accommodate political ambitions, etc etc etc. See for e.g. the discussions around China's foreign aid in Africa and how it has secured votes in the UN.

Certainly one could argue that there are plenty of children in the UK whose parents cannot afford swimming lessons and 3 miliion could certainly help them. There's an argument that some poor people in the UK due to poverty cannot even afford the clothing in shops like Oxfam who concentrate on helping others abroad. It's a nuanced subject.

But I appreciate simply calling everyone racist doesn't require as much thinking and is a far easier path to feeling morally superior.

And saying go to the website is a total cop out. It's called the Royal NATIONAL Lifeboat Institution so to imply one is supposed to hear it but then question if national really means national in the absence of any representatives telling you otherwise is nonsense. People make assumptions and the charity clearly hope for exactly that.

CatherineOfAragonsPrayerBook very good post.

Glasshouse I don't have enough time on my hands to respond to your lengthy posts, happily for me.

My favourite MN cop out

But the words I used were "a bit misled" which is somewhat less outraged than your response implies. I have already said that I would still have donated and will still donate.

You said 'their fundraising efforts are misleading as to their aims and objectives', 'their funding for international efforts has not been raised in a very transparent way' and 'I do find it somewhat dishonest'. If you're going to make these kinds of accusations - which I consider to be serious, given how scrupulous charities have to be about their fundraising - then I think you need to be able to back them up, and you haven't.

Whether it suits your obvious agenda or not

I genuinely have no idea what you think my agenda is, happy for you to clarify.

there is a difference between "we are running an emergency service on a shoestring with only your donations preventing sailors in peril from drowning" and "we've got spare cash so let's go and do something worthwhile somewhere else".

And it's true that it's only donations from the public that allow them to run - I truly can't see how you can claim to be a bit misled in one breath, and then illustrate this with examples of true things you've been told?

I also just don't get your point. Do you expect charities to turn up and say 'we've actually raised enough this year to find the lifeboats so no need to give us any more, thanks'.

All charities raise as much money as they possibly can, even when they've raised enough money to fund the services they have already committed to providing.

The RNLI haven't lied to you. The information you seek is easily accessible. You seem to want to blame the charity for incorrect assumptions you made about it. How is any of that remotely reasonable?