How much would you give to charity....

[OrgasmingNeighbour]

... if you had £70K per year spare?

I have worked in the charitable sector for years and I would find it incredibly difficult to give large sums of money to them. There is so much waste and mismanagement, it is sickening. I'd probably find very specific things to donate to instead, for example, recently people in my village have fundraised for a child to travel to America for cancer treatment and a young woman to have treatment for MS. I would also look to see if there were other people in my life who could benefit, my friend is desperately in need of a slightly bigger home, so if I had that kind of money "spare", I would contribute to that.

Have a look at the effective altruism movement

https://www.effectivealtruism.org/

£70k spare I'd probably give £30k. Last time I gave a much smaller amount I contacted the school nearer me with a higher number of free school meals pupils and asked them what they could do with donations towards, and they were very grateful.

Tbh I would find small local charities where even £500/£1000 could make a big difference or gift say £2k to local primary school to be spent on books for their library or say £5k for musical
Instruments - whatever floats yr boat .

I say this as I was Executor for an elderly relative a few years back - they left £200k each to 8 different charities - all pretty large well known ones with a specific request on one and trying to find out how they might spend it is bloomin hard - to be frank they may just have spent it refurbing the legacy teans office !

I worked for a well known charity for a few years, and I’m also quite sceptical about how much good they do with the money they get. I am fortunate enough to have a decent amount of “spare” money so I pay for student accommodation for my nephews and I also donate large amounts anonymously to a local foodbank from time to time, and to good causes on justgiving etc.

I was going to say that but did not as in much detail, so thanks
i have tried to warn all re check what the bosses are paid and what percentage actually goes to a chairty

Thank you so much, this is all so useful and there are some fantastic suggestions here which I'll follow up on.

I hear you loud and clear and absolutely won't be donating to large, national charities. I'll have a look at some local organisations who could really stand to benefit.

We donate principally to charities we also volunteer with and that our children have volunteered with - a homeless shelter/housing charity and a food bank (the central one). If you volunteer, you get a sense of how effective the charity is and how much it matches your own values. I don't have a problem with the head of a charity being paid a decent wage. Dd works for a non-profit charity now and does really useful work for them. She still needs a wage. you can't run a big charity on volunteer labour alone.

BUT, even those you mention - please do your research as you dont want your money abused for perks and worse. Good luck

Sorry, what is a "decent wage"?

I don't think there's anything wrong with charities paying a proper wage for the work required. My concern is more the kind of work they do and the impact it has or in some cases the harm it does.

10% of all income.

A somewhat competitive one so you get a director or CEO who is very good at her job.

Greyat, I agree. There are charities I would not donate to for that reason.

I work for a small charity and people like you donating 5/10k a year makes a massive difference as it allows us flexibility and fills in the gaps between other larger grants. And there is absolutely no refurbing or unnecessary management costs here!
Definitely research local charities and look up their accounts on the charities commission website. You can see what they have coming in and where it is spent.

100k - 200k or 300k?

What does rule of thumb mean here, is it what financial advisors/accountants suggest?

I can't see a single parent with two kids on 30k giving £250/month to charity.

Or a couple on £30k each with two kids giving £500/month between them.

Do people really give that high a percentage of their income? Obviously no-one talks about it so we'd never really know for sure...

There are over 168,000 charities on the Charity Commission register. Of those, 82% have an income of below £100,000. 91% of charities are volunteer-run and of those charities which do have paid staff, the average CEO salary is £52,000 per year.
From www.businessleader.co.uk/ceo-salaries-under-scrutiny-amidst-economic-challenges/

It's a line that always, always gets used on any threads about charities but saying don't give money because (some) charities waste (some) of what they're given doesn't really make sense to me. Logically you either think it's a good thing to give money to the needy or to make the world better or not. If you think it is good to give, surely giving no money at all means much less money makes its way to the needy/much less good gets done than even if the charity wastes the vast majority of its resources. Say you give £1 to a hugely wasteful charity that staffs 90% of its resources on fancy offices and inflated staff salaries (and I don't think anyone is claiming that even those much maligned 'big national charities' spend that much on overheads), 10p of your pound is still doing good. Whereas if you keep the £1 and spend it on a chocolate bar then 0p gets spent on the poor. Now if you just think it's more important that you get a chocolate bar than to do good that's completely fine (I spend more money on myself than I give to charity too) but be honest with yourself that thats what's happening.

Also I think there is a counter point to the 'local is best' argument, tiny local charities can both waste a huge amount of what they're given because they simply don't have the scale or expertise to achieve much and also can be terrible culprits for exploiting staff working for tiny wages and expecting way too much of volunteers. In the worst cases outright fraud and embezzlement can happen simply because there's little oversight and accountability. And there are some large charities that do really excellent work. Givewell.com are the industry leaders in evaluating the effectiveness of charities and the majority of their recommendations for top charities are medium-large ones. But if you're planning a substantial donation I'd do your own research OP, there's plenty of accessible information out there, you don't need to go on 'gut feel' or the opinions of random MNetters (including myself in that!) at all.

I'm glad a PP mentioned effective altruism which is a really interesting and evidence driven movement. I'd add to that to look up https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ - to answer your original question 10% of your income is usually recommended as a benchmark point for charitable giving.

There isn't one figure for the leader of every charity. The CEO of the charity we support runs a budget of 97 million dollars every year. She oversees a complex organisation that runs emergency shelters, permanent housing, work experience schemes and addiction support. Someone of the calibre to run that organisation could be running another for profit organisation for a great deal of money.

I know her and know she is motivated more by the mission than the money and certainly isn't paid what an equivalent CEO in this city would be paid but she should surely be paid a salary that isn't derisory compared to her peers.

Thank you - but as you said a "decent" amount i had to ask

The ceo you mention, what does he/she earn?

A guy name Rishi Sunak over-sees hundreds of billions every year and his pay is about 160/170 a year?

From 2021 - see below but please do not forget we are now in the year 2024, so just add a few percentage points to those

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/31/exclusive-270-charities-paying-bosses-prime-minister/

None.

It's mean but I'd just upgrade my holidays and give a couple of hundred a month to charity.

DH has just reminded me that we do give to charity, there's an organisation called United with hope and we sponsor a child through school.

If you get a chance I would recommend checking them out. It's a tiny charity and they do amazing work in India.

I’d give some money to Give Directly - they give people in the poorest situations $1000 and apparently it’s transformational and calls into question all other types of foreign aid programmes (except for disaster type relief). It would be nice donating several thousand knowing that you’d given however many families in the poorest nations a proper leg up.

Yeah. Right