Charity Christmas cards: check the small print

[flashingnose]

Story \link{http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4467610.stm\here) - am shocked at how miserly some of the High street retailers are being. Worth checking what percentage is going to the charity if you're going to the effort of buying charity Christmas cards.

Oh dear here

We're probably going to buy regular cards and make a proper donation seperately.

Yes, that's a good idea.

This is very common. The answer is not to buy cards that say a small donation is going but buy direct from the charity (mail order or shop) or those special charity card shops which spring up before Christmas.

Sometimes shops do have cards on sale where all profits go to the charity (The Pier always sells UNICEF cards for example). But check.

Or make a donation as cupcakes says - sometines the cards are not to your taste.

Or contact the charity you want to support and buy your cards from them? You can often buy them over their website (my organisation does this).

But the cards direct from the charity. We've already been sent a handful of christmas catalogues and I'll get round to ordering them soon - usually pick up a few smaller pressies from the same place.

Always use charity cards.

Even when you buy direct, the tax situation makes them a very inefficient way of donating money.

They can't claim back the gift aid, which is (as I recall) 23% and also there is VAT, so that's 40% for a start.

If you like the cards, certainly you're not doing any harm, but otherwise you'd do more good from the same take out of your pocket by direct donations.

I do however love the Oxfam idea of "buying a goat" for an Xmas gift.
You give them money, and some defined good thing happens, and the person you would have bought a tie or socks for gets told that they now own a goat in some terribply poor place.

I think that could be extended to cards.
You pay the charity £X and they send a pretty Xmas email to your friend saying that the money is being used to fight cancer, or fixing the sight of children.

There's a brilliant organisation which sells all sorts of charity christmas cards each year from temporary shops from the end of October, I think, in major towns and cities. They're usually set up in churches, libraries or halls and manned/womanned by volunteers. The main thing is that each charity gets at least 81p in the pound of all sales!! Beat that!!

More info here

every year I buy all our cards from the National Eczema Society and Unicef, plus make a donation which they can also claim tax back on. Please check out their websites as they do lovely things!

donnei - I always do that when I buy from unicef.