Friends not sponsoring dh

[Primmyhill]

Ok, I know times are hard and there are loads of people asking for sponsorship etc but I’m just a bit hacked off. In the past I’ve sponsored friends kids for things like walking around the playground at lunch time, sponsored silence etc, you get my drift but there’s been loads over the last few years and I always give £10-20. My husband is doing a huge challenge in April and the sponsorship has been live for months and I’ve sent the link out twice and not one of them has sponsored him. None of them are badly off - they just can’t be bothered I reckon and I’m pretty annoyed. AIBU? Would you do? I’ll know better next time when darling Henry wants money for pushing his teddy around the local f’ing playing field.

The only thing that is annoying I think really is that you sponsored their little darlings to do random shite. They should reciprocate.
On the other hand, and I say this as someone who has run dozens of marathons, if you’re just funding someone’s hobby then fuck em. Sorry

Maybe it’s not a charity they support.

Personally I’d give money to someone’s kid doing a bake sale for the local hospice but not to someone’s husband sky diving for the National Trust.

Depends what it is and who it’s for
I hate sponsoring people to do skydive or abseil etc which they really want to do, knowing some of the money goes towards paying for it.
Similarly, I hate it when people DM me a link to the sponsorship page even though it’s on social media etc. I find it really annoying so won’t sponsor

What’s he doing and what’s the charity?

If I sponsored everyone I know who is doing a 10K or a Marathon or the 3 Peaks or a skydive or whatever, I’d never have a pot to piss in. I already give quite a bit to charity by direct debit every month. I’m not going to sponsor everyone and their spouse to do stuff they enjoy doing, sorry.

Yanbu to stop sponsoring peoples kids

Yabu to expect people to sponsor your dh.

Generally people ask for sponsorship as its something they want to do...fair play to them if they do raise money for charity whilst doing it, but people shouldn't feel obliged to give.

Urgh yet another person wanting me to pay so they can have a go at the London marathon or whatever

I will happily donate to charity, its incredibly inefficient how much of the funding money for such challenges pays for the participant taking part in the challenge.

I think people are more generous with kids' events

So is this one of the situations where someone wants to do something they've always fancied doing, and want lots of other people to stump up money to justify it? I find it very irritating.

Oh God, another 'look at me doing something for chari-dee' activities. It's boring. You've put your friends in a difficult situation where they probably feel awkward and now you're berating them for not sponsoring him. Why can't he just crack on with it without the fanfare and leave that to the children who need support as encouragement?

I've done a 5k swim before. It was a big deal for me, but it was also something I wanted to do. So I didn't realise sponsorship.

If I had signed up for a marathon (which anyone who knows me knows would be my last favourite thing in the world) then I might hope people would sponsor me. Because I'd genuinely be making a sacrifice, rather than doing something for myself that is sort of vaguely implied to be a sacrifice.

It’s April so plenty of time yet.

personally I’d knock sponsoring on the head if they opted not to

This sums it up for me.

I am bombarded with requests for sponsorship of (usually middle class middle age) blokes to go do something they love doing. I just think ‘pay for it your bloody self’ to be honest.

Nah, I wouldn't donate either. I have seen people try to raise money for their sponsored sky dive, when the first £200 is paying for the actual skydive to begin with. Like a PP said, you are paying for them to fulfil their bucket list.
I would rather sponsor someone who is doing something they would really find challenging that is free... such as giving up chocolate or something like that (or for some people, actually shutting the fuck up for 24 hours as a sponsored silence).

Depends on what it is. Most of adult things I've been asked for sponsorship for basically pays for the adult to climb a mountain or something with the balance going to a charity. The minimum the participants need to raise is more than the cost of them doing the thing.

So no, I'm not paying for someone to go on a bucket list trip with a small amount going to charity.

I'm bloody sick of requests for sponsoring stuff, at work, family, friends on FB...I just don't do it anymore

The sponsorship money goes to a charity - not to the person’s current account

And a massive chunk of that goes to paying the challenge costs. Eg for london marathon, for older charities who have golden bond places it might only be £100 a place but some newer charities are charged nearly £2k a runner.

I don't like sponsoring adults. Kids fine. But expecting folk to give £10 or£20 is a bot entitled. I'd rather choose my own charity.,

I hate it when people pressure others to sponsor them/ others. It’s ok to ask once, but to continually ask when you didn’t get a response the first time is just rude. If they wanted to sponsor your DH then they would have done so by now. And how do you know they are well off? They could have money issues you don’t know anything about. It reminds me of when my in-laws came to stay. My mil who is my DH’s stepmum mentioned that one of her nephews which neither of us had ever met, was doing something in Africa. We’d just moved house and I’d had a baby a few months earlier and was on maternity leave pretty much living off savings. We didn’t want to sponsor him because a) we’d never met him and b) money was tight. So we didn’t say yes the first time she asked. But she went on and on about it the whole time they were with us and we ended up paying even though we didn’t want to.

Asking for sponsorship is something I stopped doing once I left school. Since then I have mostly only given sponsorship money for children. I've occasionally sponsored an adult if the cause is something I care about. But I won't just do it on demand. It's like demanding money with menaces - people should choose which charities they give to, not feel obliged because someone is a friend. I'd be embarrassed to even ask on my own behalf.

I hate sponsored events. Even for my own children I can't bear to ask outside the immediate family for anyone to sponsor them for something trivial.
I will support friends occasionally if it's a worthy cause and has personal relevance (e.g. friend raising money for the hospice that looked after her Dad before he died) but even this I draw a line at if they do the same event annually (again as they enjoy the event so it's not a challenge).

Is it London Marathon?

Is it the first time he has done this sort of challenge? People often sponsor just before the event or just after so if they haven't yet, it doesn't mean they won't.

I will sponsor someone close to me if it is a charity I support. I will always sponsor children, that is very different imo to sponsoring an adult to walk up kilimajaro.

It really depends what it is. We don’t contribute to someone skydiving for a charity, where the first £2,000 raised goes to the skydiving company (made up example) and it’s basically just funding someone who wants to do a skydive. We are also careful about the charities involved and will check their financials, some are just money making fronts with huge dividends/admin and marketing costs and very little reaching the ones who need it. There are a couple of them local to us that are just clever moneymaking scams.

Much better to choose a genuine charity and give of your time/money whatever you can.

I did a cross Channel swim a few years back as part of a relay team. It costs thousands to pay for the pilot boat and support crew. We didn’t ask for sponsorship because it was a bucket list thing for us. Plus the very high chance we wouldn’t complete it which would be embarrassing if we’d asked people for sponsorship. (Although we did manage it 😁)

If it's something like jumping out of an aeroplane, walking the wall of China or climbing Snowdon, then I wouldn't sponsor him either.
I'd sponsor him if he was going to play the piano for 3 days non stop or something like that.