BBC - Children In Need

[Heythrop84]

Half a lifetime ago I was in a now disbanded group whose main interest was old and/or customised cars and bikes. One year we decided to have an event to raise money for Children In Need. We succeeded in raising many £10,000s. However, when we asked for more detail of how the money was spent it all became "smoke and mirrors"! Whilst we ran a fund raising event every year for the next decade we gave the money more directly to local charities, the RNLI, etc. AIBU in being very suspicious? especially in light of the Captain Tom scandal our local BBC station pushed endlessly. I will not be donating but giving money through the year to more local charities.

If it’s half as dodgy as Comic Relief you’re right to give it a wide berth. I’m sorry all your fundraising for them was treated like that. What’s the RNLI like to deal with?

It’s good to be conscious of where you donate, and £10’s of thousands is amazing, well done.

That said, children in need raises millions of pounds and won’t have the resources to track the use of individual donations. It would be an administrative nightmare and cost them huge amounts of money. The reality is that your money will have most likely gone into a pool and (hopefully) used where it’s most needed.

I am very lacking in trust nowadays when it comes to the big charities. Oxfam workers raping women and children in Haiti was the final straw, but I was already uncomfortable about the amount of money spaffed up the wall on corporate crap, EDI training on eleventy billion gender identities, and overpaid CEOs.

I support very small, local charities and I support Lumos, because of the fact that JK Rowling covers all their admin costs herself so all the donation money actually goes directly to their projects.

Last year Children in Need raised £35 million. How do you expect them to say where 'your' money went? They can give you a list of everything that was spent but there's no way of saying yours went to this hospital or that project.

This.