To think that minimum targets for charity events are sometimes just too high?

[surreygirl1987]

Maybe I am being totally unreasonable - I'm not sure.

I just enquired about a charity event that looks really interesting. It's a lake swim. Entry fee is £40 - fair enough. But the minimum fundraising amount is £400! I know I wouldn't be able to raise that from my family and friends, especially at thr moment when money is tight. So what happens then - I presume I'd end up having to pay the difference myself?

I'd love to do it, and could pay upto around £100 myself- and would be happy to do so - but my family, friends and I would never be able to afford £400. AIBU to think that this is just too much? I get that the purpose of the event is to raise money but it seems unaffordable for most, surely?

Yes charities have got more and more greedy IMO, but then look at the salaries they pay their CEO's - all the money has to come from somewhere. I lost interest in most charities when they became big business. Now I donate a lot to our local charity shop that is run by local people for local events and I do loans through lendwithcare to help people to help themselves out of poverty.

*Also chugging, I would never donate to anything that thinks chugging is an acceptable practice. Charities workers don't care if they are taking advantage of or exploiting vulnerable people, I have no time for it.

My point still stands. The £40 will cover the cost of the event (and salaries of organising, marketing staff, heating offices etc etc etc). Maybe a bit lessthan the £40 but not by much.
So the charity would get £140 with a £40 cost. A 29% operating cost.
Whereas £440 income for a £40 cost is 9%. Seems much better.

These events can be quite a shit way for a charity to raise money as they cost a huge amount to put on.

They need you to raise 400 because otherwise after all their costs they make barely any actual free cash for the organisation.

If you really want to support a charity, don't abseil off a skyscraper, or climb kilimanjaro for them. Just donate the money!

I had a feeling the entry cost for charities is often higher.

So.if a public place is £40 that's not what a charity will.pay.

Then the charity often supports with fundraising material and sometimes a goody bag of things like charity branded sport wear for the event.

Then they need to make sure the places they've been allowed to buy are raising as much as possible (they can't just have as many entries as they want either).

If you don't want to meet their criteria, apply to enter as a public person and pay £40 and see how much you can raise as you won't have any limit on that.

If you don't want to meet their criteria, apply to enter as a public person and pay £40 and see how much you can raise as you won't have any limit on that.

Not really sure what you mean? There's only one option of entering.

I'd enquire what happens if you don't hit the minimum target OP. Different places have different meanings - some places it means "if you don't hit this, you pay the difference", for others "your target (i.e. the number on your fundraising profile) must be this number or higher but if you don't hit it then it doesn't matter". This might all be stress over nothing

Good point. I definitely saw another charity swim somewhere last year that said they required £250 raising as a minimum and that the participant made up the shortfall if they couldn't raise it, so I assumed they were all like that. You're right though, possibly worth checking. Although I'd feel a bit guilty entering if I knew I would make anywhere near the target - there's no way I could ask my family and friends for more than a few quid each and that wouldn't make £400!

Too much? For whom? The aim of the event is to raise money for the charity not for you to have a jolly.
They are absolutely right to reserve the places for those who can raise the £

You're probably right to be honest. My primary reason for entering would be because I really want to swim that particular lake!

I agree with you in this principle; but didn't OP say here that the participants have to pay £40 entry fee rather than that it costs the charity £40 for them to take part?

Yep. The £40 is the entry fee, so it's £440 they're asking for from each participant in total. I have no idea what the admin cost is for the charity, admittedly, but I have done lots of lake swims before quite cheaply (with the assumption that the businesses running them made some sort of profit!) so I doubt it's astronomical.

My gripe is how charities have slowly taken over previously open sporting events to the point where participation now requires fundraising. Just taking part for the personal fulfilment is met with judgement. I have run plenty of marathons and the first question I am asked when people find this out is 'who are you running for?'

My husband did the marathon for a scoliosis charity and the min was 2K!! He raised about 8 I think. It did motivate him to get fundraising tho

My gripe is how charities have slowly taken over previously open sporting events to the point where participation now requires fundraising.

I suppose this is my gripe as well really. I just want to swim across the lake but the only way I seem to be able to do it is by paying £440 to a charity.

If a charity has organised an event that has not taken place before then they can set whatever entry requirements they want. Plenty of 10km and half marathon events near me have slowly morphed into charity only participation. There is pretty much zero chance of running London marathon on the ballot and then you get bombarded by every charity wanting you to raise thousands. They even lean on you to donate your entry fee if you are unsuccessful on the ballot. I ended up running the Paris marathon several times as you can just enter online and get a place without being the hassle of fundraising.

DH and I did a 26 mile walk in aid of the local hospice my mum passed away in. We only just made the minimum donation. An acquaintance did a charity event for a cause they are tangentially involved in and smashed the target several times over. They have always been popular, I am not and have never been.

I'd love to do the walk again, but I know I would never raise the funds a second time round and I can't afford to make up the difference. I'm going to see if I can do it as a marshall however.

So the charity would get £140 with a £40 cost. A 29% operating cost.
Whereas £440 income for a £40 cost is 9%. Seems much better.

That seems a strange way of looking at it to me. I would say that the participant pays the £40 cost (via the charity) and then the charity gets all of the money raised, be it £100, £400 or £50,000 - so 100% of whatever that ends up being. If it were a business, I'd much rather sell items that cost me £50 to buy for £75 rather than sell items that cost me £1 for £1.05 - all that matters is the bottom line, regardless of the initial outlay.

The charity surely hasn't paid anything from their own money - they've just handled and passed on the entrant's fee.

I suppose you might look at it that the charity could have had the £40 as well, if it hadn't cost that per person for the event to happen; but that's why they find fun events for supporters to do in the first place, to encourage people to take part and raise funds for them. Very few people wanting to do the swim would have just handed over £40 to a charity (that may not even have been on their radar without seeing the publicity for the event) and not done the swim at all.

A charity could organise a local 'dredge out the canal sewage with a teaspoon challenge', which would cost them nothing at all to put on, but I can't see them getting many eager participants!

Do you live somewhere near the lake already Op, or is it far away?

I'm wondering if there is an open water swimmming group near the location who might swim there regularly and you could ask to join them on one of their swims?

Is there anything stopping you just swimming it? I.e. not as part of the event?

They have always been popular

Genuinely popular, though, or just persistent/demanding? However much people may like you, if we're honest about it, very few of us will be thrilled when somebody waves/sends a 'sponsor me' form/email. Normally, it's met with a sigh and thinking 'how much is this going to cost me, then?'.

Those who were keen to give that amount to charity will have already given it without the prompt of a sponsored event - and even they will almost certainly have given it to a different charity that they prefer more than the one that the person seeking sponsorship has chosen. Or, more likely, the one that happens to be running the event that they want to do; again, being honest, most participants see the charity as being incidental to their chosen activity and not the other way around.

Anybody who doubts that: simultaneously organise a sponsored bungee-jump in New Zealand in aid of Jacob Rees-Mogg's winter heating bills and a sponsored fungal toenail-clipping in Runcorn in aid of orphaned children and see which one attracts the interest of more 'supporters'.

The charity surely hasn't paid anything from their own money - they've just handled and passed on the entrant's fee

Surely the charity has to fork out for the security, safety, lifeguards, liaising with the council etc -all of that costs. Who would they pass the fee on to?

People doing these events are often just doing something they want and expecting others to fund it "for charity". Go for a swim in a lake!

Surely the charity has to fork out for the security, safety, lifeguards, liaising with the council etc -all of that costs. Who would they pass the fee on to?

Well, the people who provide all of that and/or their own employees who arrange it. Essentially, it costs them £40pp all-in to organise/facilitate it and each person pays them £40.

YABU, they set minimums to cover any costs associated with running the event and to make it a worthwhile return in terms of time.

£400 is very low, many marathons require £3k

With things like the London Marathon it costs around £500 per bonded charity place, so that's why they set high targets as £500 of what you raise is to cover the cost of the place.

Most London marathon charity places want people to raise 2500-3k . I always think that the fundraising side is probably as much if not more effort and time consuming than the actual training.

£400 is very low, many marathons require £3k

This isn't a marathon.