to ask if smiletrain, wateraid and sightsavers are good charities?

[Nimbostratus100]

ASked on the charity thread, but no answer

Are these good charities? Anyone here worked for them or benefitted from them?

Also interested in Childline, NSPCC and Samaritans. ANd feel free to add your own

Thank you

Bumping for you, as I'd be interested to know too.

Wateraid used to be good when it was founded - was run by volunteers who had day jobs working for water companies in the UK. They gave up their holidays to go to to other countries to help get projects done & fund raised the rest of the time. A lot of the funds raised came from water company employees too as you could donate via your salary.

I don’t know the current situation as it now seems to be run by full time charity sector workers, so no different to other aid agencies.

A lot of the big charities spend more money running themselves than they do on charitable causes.

What do you want to achieve with your gift? That's the place to start.

Once you know what you want to achieve with your gift you can decide on the charity.

Big charities are successful at fundraising. By charity law they have to have an eye on successful fundraising. As charities get bigger there is more regulation, more professionalism required so some costs go up.

If you want your gift to go far then you might want to consider a grass roots charity - normally much smaller.

Alternatively you might want to find a bigger charity that has all operational costs covered by a gift or donation in kind. Charity:Water operate like that. That creates an uneven playing field for charities though.

I've done some independent philanthropy advice hence my asking what you want to achieve.

I now prefer grass roots charities (sometimes they may even be a constituted group, not registered) for my own charitable donations.

When I worked in the water industry Wateraid would send people (one of my colleagues went with employees from other water companies) to a 3rd world country to help dig a borehole, install a basic pump and taps. They would also collect basic school and sports supplies for the local schools. I've also helped fundraising at a local and regional level. Wessex Water used to (I don't know if they still do) send volunteer staff to man the Wateraid stand at the Glastonbury Festival, as its on their patch.

There's a small charity called Second Sight which mainly works in North India and has field surgeries restoring sight in remote communities. They deliberately keep their work very focused and have been extremely effective.

When choosing to donate to charity, I check how much of a donation goes to achieving their objectives rather than on admin. Also check how much their senior staff are paid. Some CEOs earn a 6 figure salary, so your donation goes towards paying that rather than the end recipients.

I prefer to donate to MSF, Medicine Sans Frontiers.

they are independent and therefore can go where and when they are needed, they don’t have political affiliations or restrictions.

here’s a link to the breakdown of their spend…

https://msf.org.uk/how-we-spend-your-money

Checking how much goes on admin is so reductive.

We think about charity all wrong! (There's a great Ted talk about this)

It should be all about the impact.

A charity that spends 8% on "admin" but has very little impact isn't as good as a charity that spends 20% on "admin" but has amazing impact

And in any event the "admin" figure is not a set/established set of rules. Every charity records it differently and as such it's not a good benchmark for comparison.

Exactly this.

https://www.ted.com/talks/danpallottaathewayywethinkkaboutcharityyisdeadd_wrong

I agree with this. I work for a charity. We spend quite a lot on admin and central costs but it means that the organisation functions (relatively) well and delivering projects is pretty smooth. It's much for effective than paying nothing for admin and then having to work in chaos (which was the situation before)

Also staff deserve to be paid for their work and at some semblance of a going rate! Otherwise we just return to the days of only those who are independently wealthy being able to "work" for charity which is such a Victorian, patriarchal concept!

It doesn't lead to diversity that's for sure.

Large charities are often as complex as companies. They need the right staff, at the right wage.

In terms of salaries I'd like to see charities bring in a "multiple" measure where the top earner is limited as to how many multiples of the lowest earner salary they can receive. This would ensure that staff across the board were properly remunerated

I'm pleased that after a false start, this thread is heading in a good direction. Not paying staff well and seeing them have to job-hop every two years to get a pay rise is how to build an awful charity. Volunteer-run charities can be hugely wasteful, particularly at scale and internationally, well managed volunteers can be great, but the manager needs to be good and that costs. Any charity that says it has overheads under 15% is suspicious, there are no companies run like that. If you are running a multi-million pound charity you won't get an adequate CEO for £30k, you need to pay them accordingly and they will add way more value than they cost.

And I've heard nothing negative about any of the three in the thread title and work in charities in similar fields.

My only complaint about WaterAid is they send a lot of soliciting papers, trying to get me to support this or that petition.

Thank you, some interesting things to look into. It's hard to specify what I want to achieve beyond in the broadest term, my money being used effectively to help people who need it.

I donate £1 per week, on a standing order, to a tiny charity set up by the actor Julie Hesmondhaigh, (Hayley from Corrie), 500 Acts of Kindness. Initially they wanted to recruit 500 donors so they could give away £500 each week. Now they usually donate £1000 pw. Examples of recipients, suggested by social workers, school teachers, donor's etc are - £350 to a single mum whose washer had died and she needed a new one - a family of DV who had been allocated a house but had no money for carpets - a Ukrainian refugee who needed help to set up a small business - a newly released prisoner who had his belongings stolen. No-one gets more than £500, most less. I get a weekly email telling me how the money has been spent. They have a twitter account if you want to see how the money is spent. Then I do two big shops a year - £100 each time - to my local food bank, tinned meat, fish, rice pudding, dried milk, whatever's on their current list. I never donate to the big charities, due to their huge salaries & expenses. I was also disgusted at the Oxfam workers abroad sexually assaulting and coercing the local women.

@Nimbostratus100 the charity that JKR set up is able to spend everything donated on their aim, as all costs are covered by a trust.

There's the St Giles trust as well, which has a good reputation.

I give to very local charities that are fairly recently founded. They are still motivated by their original founders. We do one that works with women in sex work. Basic comfort addressed, and then signposting to agencies that can help them when they are ready to leave sec work.

Giving directly works well to resolve some problems but not others, and doesn’t resolve the systemic issues that cause the problems. You can give food to a food bank and someone will eat, but it takes national charities to look at the whole issue of poverty and advocate for change.

And….. I am so, so sick of people attacking charities with ‘high’ admin costs. I’ve worked for charities with poor HR, no staff training budget, terrible IT… charities where staff are too hard pressed getting through the impossible workload of the day to spend time planning etc etc. It’s not effective. It’s miserable.

OP I've worked in no less than 7 different charities - some household names (I usually stay away from charity threads but fully agree with everything said upthread about valuing impact over 'admin'). IMHO there is none better than WaterAid for effectiveness, impact, innovation, culture, and deep understanding of international development. You say you don't know quite what you want to achieve so I suggest you pop onto their website, it's pretty vast, you can look at recent impact reports. The thing about water, sanitation and hygiene is that it improves so many other things - health, education, rights for women and girls, the affects of climate change etc

Originally it was indeed set up by the UK water companies, but nowadays the work overseas is done by the people of those countries and indeed, often the very communities themselves.

I support School in a Bag - a small charity that does remarkable work sending bags of stationary etc. to children in many different countries where they are in desperate need of education. Few staff and a lot of volunteers. Excellent work.

that is great to hear, thank you very much. This is my first choice of charity I think, but it is hard to know if you have been taken in by spin, or if it really is doing as much as it sounds like it is.

In the past Ive lived in parts of the world without drinking water or toilets, and I feel really passionately about these things - I appreciate them every day!

Thank you for your insider point of view, very helpful indeed

Water Aid is one of the most beneficial charities. Provision of clean water is fundamental to all, but particularly women and girls.

Whereas when I give to charity I always check they pay their staff properly and have good systems in place to ensure their work is well targeted, audited and quality assured. Any charity that doesn't charge for such "admin" is almost inevitably shit.