Do you regularly give to charity?

[Dailywalk]

And if so, which charity(s) do you support?

When I had my dd I gave a small amount regularly to a children’s charity. I have kind of got out of the habit of it and feel I probably should?

Trussel trust monthly
I used to also support cancer Research but they kept pestering me for more but phone, email p, letter so now they don’t get any

Just to let everyone know if you feel pestered by charities please contact them and tell them your contact preferences.

Bigger charities can do this in a very granular fashion.

Don't stop your donation (there speaks the fundraiser) stop the contact! (There speaks the individual)

You can let them know you don't want to receive direct mail, you don't want to be called, you don't want to be emailed asking to uplift your donation.

Tell them you are interested in generic updates and thank you mail, but not being part of their donor development segments.

I donate £10 a month each to two local hospices who care for my parents in their last weeks, enabling me to have a break and spend time with them. I have also just set up a DD to donate to an epilepsy research charity as a sibling died of a seizure a few months back. I’ll pay into those for the rest of my life, and they are also in my will sharing a 5% split of my estate.

I have a direct debit set up to Irish Cancer Society and one to Dogs Trust. We also buy food / toys / blankets and deliver them to the rescue we got our dog from, a few times a year.

@Artdecolover

Acts435

Every penny you donate goes to the person who needs it.

You can choose local people in need

Thank you for mentioning this. I’ve just donated. It’s a great idea.

Unicef and Red Cross, monthly direct debits. Then I give to any charity that people are raising money for that I know. Sometimes I give to disaster funds as well. I dont tell anyone irl as it sounds so smug.

Just to add you can set up AmazonSmile on your Amazon account & choose a charity to support; then each time you purchase qualifying items from them they make a donation

Yes this is very easy to do, you just log into AmazonSmile instead of regular Amazon every time you buy something which in my case is far too often.

Used to but they kept pestering me to increase my payments - so I cancelled them instead!

I give to Wikipedia and the local food bank

It's only £3 each. On thinking about it I should give more.

@SciFiScream

Just to let everyone know if you feel pestered by charities please contact them and tell them your contact preferences.

Bigger charities can do this in a very granular fashion.

Don't stop your donation (there speaks the fundraiser) stop the contact! (There speaks the individual)

You can let them know you don't want to receive direct mail, you don't want to be called, you don't want to be emailed asking to uplift your donation.

Tell them you are interested in generic updates and thank you mail, but not being part of their donor development segments.

This is good advice.

I stopped my direct debit to Amnesty International (not technically a charity I think?) because I got so pissed off with being harangued on the street by annoying bouncy insistent "chuggers" - you can't opt out of them!

Street fundraisers were fantastically successful for the causes they represented and when they first started it was amazing. Unfortunately everyone started doing the same. (Not the causes I worked for, we could never afford it).

I think they have become a victim of their own success.

I just say to them

"I work in fundraising and have chosen to make my gifts another way" that generally means they stop.

So if you are ever stopped just say "I've chosen my charities and make donations. I'm not interested"

Street fundraisers were fantastically successful for the causes they represented and when they first started it was amazing. Unfortunately everyone started doing the same. (Not the causes I worked for, we could never afford it).

I think they have become a victim of their own success.

I just say to them

"I work in fundraising and have chosen to make my gifts another way" that generally means they stop.

So if you are ever stopped just say "I've chosen my charities and make donations. I'm not interested"

Have DD set up to doctors without borders, mencap and more recently afghan aid. Also do a street collection each month for local foodbank.

If there is a charity whose work you care about the single most effective way you can help them is to set up a standing order or direct debit. That means they know what their income will be and can budget, and you don't need to think about remembering when prompted.

^This. Every couple of years or so I sit down with my DH and we decide which charities we want to give to then we set up direct debits from our joint account for all of them. We always have some international charities and some that work in the UK.

The Charity Awards website is a great starting point for finding new charities. They have lists of winners, and you know with those that they’ve been thoroughly checked out and they’re really effective at what they do.

Sands
Medicines Sans Frontiers
A Women’s refuge and a smaller charity that directly supports local women in financial difficulty

We have also “adopted” several zoo animals and give to the food bank.

The DCs schools are big on charitable giving so there are regular (termly rather than monthly) donations through them.

I donate monthly by direct debit to the dog rescue that I adopted my dog from a few years. They do amazing work.

Just doing the sums now and I've realised that the amount we donate a month is less than 0.3% of our take home pay....that's really terrible, we could definitely give more back. Its something I'm going to look at.

I don’t donate money as such a small amount goes to those who need it. I take clothes and household things to women’s refugee or homeless centres.

@Hazelnut5

If there is a charity whose work you care about the single most effective way you can help them is to set up a standing order or direct debit. That means they know what their income will be and can budget, and you don't need to think about remembering when prompted.

^This. Every couple of years or so I sit down with my DH and we decide which charities we want to give to then we set up direct debits from our joint account for all of them. We always have some international charities and some that work in the UK.

The Charity Awards website is a great starting point for finding new charities. They have lists of winners, and you know with those that they’ve been thoroughly checked out and they’re really effective at what they do.

Yes, absolutely this. Just 300 donors at £10 a month would be transformative for my charity and allow us to last beyond the 4 years I can currently foresee.

@SciFiScream

Street fundraisers were fantastically successful for the causes they represented and when they first started it was amazing. Unfortunately everyone started doing the same. (Not the causes I worked for, we could never afford it).

I think they have become a victim of their own success.

I just say to them

"I work in fundraising and have chosen to make my gifts another way" that generally means they stop.

So if you are ever stopped just say "I've chosen my charities and make donations. I'm not interested"

I never have any problem smiling and keeping right on walking. But I do object to the mixture of hard-sell and guilt tripping that I see them imposing on polite uncomfortable-looking people who made the mistake of stopping. So I do what I can to redress the balance by specifically withdrawing direct debits from organisations that use that tactic (only one, because I'm already tight-fisted ) and making a mental note not to donate to the others!

We’ve adopted zoo animals and DH has an adopted donkey in a donkey sanctuary somewhere in West Cork (random because we’ve no links with Cork!)

I donate a lot on Kiva and I pay 2 scholarships yearly for young girls to be educated in Kenya.

I agree about the value of setting up DDs for charitable giving.

I also think it's a good principle to give something from your money at the start of the month and see it as being like a DD for your electricity bill or whatever, rather than just a whim or something that's left over. It can become a habit - a good one.

We give to several charities and look to give around 10% of gross income. When you think about it, that amounts to several thousand per year. It is something we have always done...starting when our incomes were low in our 20s and continuing as our incomes have risen. We chose to cut back in other areas if times were tight, rather than not to give. I think it's a mindset and the exact percentage is less important than being in a mindset if giving and not just thinking of what you have as your own.

Personally, I only give to charities that deal with people rather than animals, but that's a personal choice.

I don't like the street chuggers who try to sign you up, but it clearly works or they wouldn't be doing it. I also don't really like the door to door collectors. Recently, one looked really shocked when I said i didn't want to give £2 for a local children's charity, and then said something like 'are you sure you don't want to help local children'. I pointed out quite politely but firmly that such a comment wasn't appropriate - that trying to guilt-trip people is wrong and rude and they don't know anybody's personal circumstances or even what they might already be giving to charity. I wasn't rude at all about it, but I thought it was an important point to make, plus that collector was doing a disservice to all collectors....people simply won't open the door if they behave like that.

But, don't let the things that annoy you like the bombarding emails or pushy collectors stop you finding a way to give that works for you. Most of us are so fortunate, even when we feel unfortunate and giving something makes a difference and also gives us a sense of it not being all about us.

Monthly

Decent amount to local food bank
Great ormond street
Children's disability charity

It's very important to me particularly the local food bank

Yea, just small ones though. I have standing orders set up to the local cat rescue where we got our girls, WWF and I pay for a package for womens aid each month that they give to women and children on their first night there including things like toothbrushes deodorant etc. it's not a huge amount and I wish I could do more.