Do you ever feel some big charities don't actually do anything?

[Cinderellaspumpkin]

Do you ever feel some big name charities don't actually do much more , when scratching under the surface, than signposting, ( often to other organisations that signpost), and "raise awareness," of the cause.

What I don't think people realise about Macmillan is that they don't employ the nurses they train. They only provide training. The amount of money they raise appears to be disproportionate to the actual service they provide. They don't run hospices or provide actual nursing services. Donate to Marie Curie or a local hospice instead.

I have had direct experience with Macmillan both professionally and personally and found them to be useless.

When my dad was terminally ill in hopsital (not with cancer) we were visited and supported by a McMillan funded palliative care nurse

Unless it was an entirely new post in it's first 2 years, that nurse was fully paid for by the hospital.

Nice business model Macmillan have come up with that most people think they are paying for all the staff when they absolutely are not.

Trussel trust don't feed people. They're a franchise operation. They teach people how to manage difficult to access food banks. Local churches and charities do 10 times what they do without their millions.

Macmillan train nurses then the NHS pays them but they still wear the Macmillan uniform. Good for helping fill in benefit forms, not much else.

Thanks theeyeballinthesky. That's useful to know

I have no idea who was paying him. I was very grateful that he was there.

Likewise!

I’ve worked for lots of charities and the ones which ‘save’ money on admin are both inefficient and miserable places to work. Charities need good HR, IT, finance, comms etc. Not to mention fundraising.

It’s horrible working in a place where you have to pick up extra roles because there is no budget for a dedicated staff member, or to get no investment in staff training, or decent systems.

I can’t speak for all of them, since I don’t know, but a dd worked for many years for a major charity and it’d be nonsense to say they didn’t do anything. Dd and others were there on the ground, after sundry natural disasters in several different parts of the world - doing their best to help by providing food /water/shelter etc., in often very trying and difficult conditions.

As for donors’ money being wasted (it’s not ‘donators’) I know that the one dd worked for stated on its website how much of the money was spent on necessary admin - around 10% IIRC.

People often like to think or assume - with no evidence - that hardly any of the money goes to the actual cause. IMO this may often be because it absolves them from feeling they ought to donate.

Again, this wholly depends on the charity.

i think there are some organisations, like in the health sector, whose work should be done by the state, yes. I think things like hospice care and cancer therapies and resources for children with disabilities are sufficiently beneficial for everyone in a society that they should be funded by taxes collected from everyone, and not individual donations or discretionary grants.

Then there are some charities that I don't think should be taxpayer funded at all, as in shouldn't get the favourable tax treatments that charities get. Private schools are the obvious ones.

There's another category of charity which I can see why they are tax-advantaged, but I wouldn't particularly want my money going there as I have different priorities. Animal shelters for example. I like animals but I'd rather my tax money and my charitable donations went to people as I think they're more important. But some people legitimately love animals more than people and I don't begrudge them donating to animal charities. So it's appropriate for some charitable spending to be discretionary like this.

Another point is that many charities exist partly to scrutinise and at times criticise government policy, and campaign for change. If they were taxpayer funded that role would be compromised.

As to whether services that charities provide would be more efficient if they were directly publicly funded - no idea. People criticise the NHS and local government for spending money inefficiently just as much as they criticise big charities for doing it.

Well now I understand the Mind franchise model, and I agree that local groups will be better placed to deliver practical services but I was a bit taken aback that the local Minds are financially independent - I guess I assumed that all the national level fundraising would actually support the practical level who wouldn't have to waste their time fundraising (because they're actually doing the real work!)

If you donate money to your hospice, a lot will be spent on 'admin' - because they need HR, Occ Health, secretaries, a Quality Improvement department, grounds and maintenance...

Everyone always wants to donate to a nurse, or for a piece of equipment (we had so many In Memoriam benches we banned them) but the reality is that to run an organization effectively you need everything a business needs.

I think it’s not always possible to say unless you know the inner workings of each one. I used to work at CRUK and they funded labs across the country and even some in Europe/US, funded some phd students, development trials for new drugs. Also things like roadshows to raise awareness of certain cancers and highlight symptoms to the public. It’s obviously not a lightning quick process but fascinating to see all of the great work being done. There was also a team of nurses who managed a hotline/inbox for patients or anyone who had questions. It’s hard to envisage a single ‘cure’ as there are 200+ types of cancer with their own nuances and everyone responds to treatment differently. It’s more likely that personalised approaches with a range of treatment options will be the answer, rather than a single pill or magic cure.

But we’d still get angry letters from people saying we weren’t doing enough, sitting on the cash and refusing to find a cure because the money would stop. Which was ridiculous for many reasons, the main being that any cure discovered would be sought across the world. You’d make billions. Any fundraising totals would pale in comparison. But people love to confidently be wrong.

Agree, @Darker . I volunteer in a large charity which has a chain of shops. Our till is ancient, the touchscreen doesn't work properly any more, we get the blue screen of death on it at least once a shift, the credit card machine regularly stops "talking" to the till and has broken beyond all repair twice since Christmas meaning we can't take card payments. We are getting a new system - was supposed to be April, now pushed back until "at least October". Because the charity knows that if it was in the press that they were spending £500 or £1000 per store for new IT/till systems they would have all the usual comments about wasting money and how many starving people could have been fed with the money.

Can't win.

Palliative care is not a particularly difficult area of nursing. Any half decent nurse who works in this area will already be doing what the Macmillan nurse advises. It changes little and doesn't require expert knowledge. We sometimes used to have to tolerate the Macmillan nurse visiting our care home to 'advise' on care and we'd already be doing what she advised because the nurses had years of experience between us. It's just not that difficult in practical terms. I also had the Gold Standard training in palliative care.

Macmillan will help people access benefits, but you don't need to be a qualified nurse to do that.

No issue with admin, it's a vital function
The large charity I worked for - with shops - had a bi monthly SMT off site meeting. Catering per person was £80. The venue hire was expensive. They all took cabs. Friends of SMT came in as coaches. It was all listed as staff training. £12k a year and that's just a drop in the bucket with the money spent, that's just one thing I can say without being outing.

And Claire's office in Fleabag was nothing compared to the SMT offices!

It takes about 1 minute to find out what MacMillan do. It's on their website under "About Us" They support people w cancer in all sorts of ways and also push for policy changes.

I'm not sure why anybody would think they should employ nurses - wouldn't that be a waste of money and stupid duplication when the nhs had so many?

There are doers and takers in the sector, I used to be very anti talkers, but they can work for years to influence government policy and then when they break through the money they leverage is way beyond the doers. I see a lot of bad small charities, doing their best but not very good, I also see some that are great innovators. There is waste, but frankly not a great a deal, certainly compared to the public sector and no hospitality budgets like the top of the private sector. They are a vital part of the fabric of our society.

stbrandonsboat I think what you do is amazing.

Palliative care is not a particularly difficult area of nursing

Well thanks for writing off my entire career.

If it's so easy, why is it done so badly most of the time?

I'm glad you were good at it but actually we don't want to go into a good care home either as most of what is done there is at the very basic end of palliative care and it's wasting the team's time to see those patients.

I worked in the sector and you are not wrong. Worse than 'not doing much' some are invested in maintaining the situation of those receiving aid so as not to upset their business model. The Worst Date ever is a brilliant book that clearly lays out the problems. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Worst-Date-Ever-Jane-Bussmann/dp/0330457659

Some charities are lobbying organisations and research funders rather than service providers.

This^
People often expect to get a service from a charity but they don't all work like that. Some are really there to keep their particular area on the Gov agenda

I feel we would get on well at parties :-)

I don’t know about Mind but I volunteer for a charity with a similar model and the services and support provided by the national charity are invaluable - they cover expensive stuff like training and policies, branding, reliable IT and support etc etc, meaning that the local branches can better focus on service delivery and can deliver a consistent service.

WWF.

It's a lobby group.

Funds raised merely fund themselves.

There are far more deserving charities that actually do some work on the ground.

I think it boils down to, as someone said above, checking a charities accounts. A friend of mine has done this and I piggy back on what she found. She even visited their offices.
But that's because, once she supported it, she did it wholeheartedly. Like her, I've identified 2 charities that I support, and I give them a monthly donation by standing order. That means that the charity knows the money is coming in, and that I don't have to think about it, or worry about not giving to other charities.