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.

Not helpful.

It's a site which doesn't believe that money should be spent on anything other than "the cause". Their home page - complete with apostrophe errors - goes on about "unjustifiable salaries" .

Clearly have an axe to grind.

I just looked at that. First charity - very established, well known - not listed. Second charity - CEO salary data was 8 years old.

And they grade charities on their own definition. Cancer Research is rated "poor" because they don't spend every penny on researching cancer - they don't have a salary for the CEO. Smaller charities with a handful of employees and lots of unpaid volunteers are "good".

Load of old nonsense. But will be leapt on as justification for not donating/supporting charity by people who had no intention of donating or supporting charity in the first place.

Charity checker has around 1000 charities on it. There are aprox 168,000 charities in the UK. Charity commission is where to go to look things up

So familiar…

I've worked for a few charities, currently working for one for older people. I will admit we do a lot of signposting. People expect us to have in depth knowledge about everything but it's just not possible. The local arm of our charity have no funds coming in, we are running at a deficit and staffing has been cut, morale is low and we have like 2 advisors to cover the whole county. Many queries on our helpline are complex, we never know what we are picking the phone up to, we get suicidal people, older people being financially abused by their kids, safeguarding issues as well as all the usual benefits queries and people facing being chucked out of their home. A lot of people are totally incapable of sorting anything out themselves, even filling in a simple form or making a phone call to DWP. A huge number of people have severe anxiety and depression, won't leave their homes, can't deal with the simplest thing. We are overwhelmed with no funding coming in, so we do have to signpost to other places like CAB or a law centre or shelter. I used to work for a certain large cancer charity and was appalled by the way they treated staff and the absolute wastage of charitable money. When I went for the interview for the job, they brought down around 10 senior managers to interview 6 potential candidates, only 3 of us were hired. It was held in a top hotel, massive buffet for these managers. They paid big car allowances for people wfh home and sometimes we would only need to travel once a week.

I've worked for a range of small to medium charities over the years and all of them have basically carried out work that's contracted out from the state eg run homeless hostels or refuges, supported domestic abuse survivors etc. The main issue which wastes money is the commissioning cycles that essentially mean every 2 years another charity could be running that project which means they can't plan long term, and are always starting up or winding down a project. Plus an obsession with pilot projects which never allow enough time for a project to get off the ground.

Most of the places Ive worked don't fundraise much or effectively as they don't have the money to pay a fundraiser. Fundraising that does happen tends to go to make people's lives a bit better eg presents for children living in refuges, or food for people who need it.

There are loads of charities like this in the uk, although they're never going to get the recognition of the big charities

Thing is, if you want to give to charity, think about why you are donating and what you want the outcome to be. Then choose the best charity to achieve that.

Its incredibly frustrating for those of us who work in the sector to have to justify crap like what car the CEO is driving. Unless the car is provided by the charity as a perk it really is none of our business… they could be independently wealthy. I just want them to provide good leadership.

I work for Age UK and offer practical help day in day out. Helping older people fill out form for Attendance allowance, PIP, doing benefit checks, helping them access thousands of pounds of money each year in benefits, grants, supplying food parcels. I recently helped someone get 5k of backpay from Universal credit by identifying where their claim had been wrongly paid for 18 months . Our staffing has been cut and we get very little funding so yes when we get overwhelmed we do have to signpost to CAB. But to say we offer no practical help is totally inaccurate. We are absolutely overwhelmed but trying our best !

I am Chair for a small local charity which offers parent support.
We run after school clubs for children and teenagers plus an art group and have coffee mornings plus an ESOL group.

All our funding comes from organisations and we are totally non-profit making.

We have been able to off supermarket vouchers over the winter from county council funding. It doesn't change the world but it makes life a tiny bit better for each person we have contact with.

I do support some big charities but sometimes feel they no longer have their feet on the ground.

So true @southlondoner02 i sit in meetings talking about 5 year plans with the NHS & I have keep reminding them that their 12 month funding cycles for the voluntary sector means it’s impossible for us to plan for 5 years. I don’t know if I’ll have a job next year let alone in 5 years. Interestingly they never apply this to private providers who get NHS contracts - they get multi year contracts.

They want you to believe they provide Nursing care to people at the end of their lives but they don't. They sponser people in a new role in the NHS ofr maybe 12-18 months then the NHS takes over funding of that post, but they want you to think they pay those Nurses salaries to keep the money rolling in. They are NHS funded staff but just with macmillan on their badge. It's a hugely deceitful way of working. They also fund partnerships with organizations like CAB yet pay their staff through CAB hugely less than their own staff for doing the same advice roles. Awful charity, although I've no doubt the actual staff on the frontline are doing a great job.

It's just a massive con that they use to keep the money rolling in !

That's true. They are an excellent example of the problem.

I also spent a lot of time working in the third sector and agree with what @demhalluk says.

I own an engineering/construction business now and genuinely feel like we make more of a positive impact on the world than some of the charities I have worked for or alongside.

To balance this I would say that there are an awful lot of charities doing great work. As a very general rule, I find that community-based organisations with local staff tend to have the best £/impact ratios.

More fun than the bores you sometimes meet at parties who like to spout loads of opinions with no backing. I'd much rather talk to someone who knows what they're talking about!

A family friend, who unfortunately had terminal cancer, had wonderful help from Macmillan at the end of his life. That was about 15 years ago, so of course things could have changed.

And you sound shallow and ignorant. Research is key in effective giving.

I suggest that your years of experience = expert knowledge

Everything @89redballoons said, imo.

I run a small charity (a food bank). I think we do well by the metric the OP set out - we "do something" measurable, again and again (we distribute around a tonne of food a week to named recipients). And we have a lot of (happy, afaik! They keep coming back) volunteers and few staff, which keeps our costs low.

But our systems are pretty basic, and there's a lot of duplication across the sector/area. And frankly I'd rather adequate gov't provision of money/benefits/food, than chronic food bank use. Because that's another (avoidable) layer of cost and bureaucracy.

On balance we do more good than harm, but I dislike the overall fat in the system.

Knowing what I know now, my charity donations would always be to a charity I know/understand, where I have seen the impact and where the need is clear.

Macmillan to loads!

My experiences of Macmillan include

-financial advice and help to apply for benefits

-grant to pay for travel to hospital and towards winter heating costs

-emergency medical advice

-general chat support line

-online information and advice

There is lots more available to me too, that I have not needed as yet, but might in the future

In my experience, charities helping homeless people cooperative with each other and work together hugely -but they all have different specialisms, and areas of expertise. I dont really see the benefit of lumping them altogether and adding another layer of admin on top.

why not name them? Its not much help to us if we dont know who this is?

Yes but none of those are actually expensive given how many millions Macmillan raises:

-financial advice and help to apply for benefits.

Can be done by any benefits advisor or even the social prescriber at your GP

-grant to pay for travel to hospital and towards winter heating costs

They will do this once, means tested, up to £350. It's an incredibly cheap thing for the charity to do. Most people won't qualify.

-emergency medical advice

Should come from your hospital Acute Oncology Team, who Macmillan don't pay for

-general chat support line

Can be done by minimal staff WFH

-online information and advice

There used to be an amazing charity that did all the cancer info but they didn't have the name recognition of Macmillan. Macmillan basically took them over including all their information processes. For anything related to chemo, Cancer Research's info is usually better.

which charities?