Justgiving: profit in disguise

davetrousers · 11 December 2014 at 12:13PM

Virgin money do not charge.

I absolutely will not donate to a charity via justgiving out of principle. If I wish to donate to the charity I will do it directly.

I feel people use justgiving as they do no research into their options. And this make the bosses of justgiving very rich.

SailorSam · 11 December 2014 at 12:47PM

Thanks vikki for that link, and for the Virgin one dave.
I've been trying to get around to writing my Will and i'm reluctant to leave anything to a Charity were much of it will be creamed off in commissions to fund raisers.

oldtoolie · 12 December 2014 at 1:52PM

Here is what Virgin Giving says about their charges:

"We only charge what we need to cover our operating costs.

Just one £100 + VAT set-up charge, and 2% of donations. That’s it.

We don’t charge an ongoing fee to be on our site and there are no monthly or annual fees. Plus we don’t charge to collect Gift Aid.

So more money goes where it's needed - directly to your charity."
====================

Virgin Giving is still a good deal for charities even with the charges. The last charity I worked for subscribed to Just Giving and Virgin Giving. The rational was to make it as easy as possible to donors, offering them whatever mechanism they wanted to use.

redpete · 13 December 2014 at 11:59PM

Keep_it_safe wrote: »

(In our innocence we thought we were helping a local charity.)

You were, to the tune of 93.5% of your total donation.

Our thanks to everyone for your explanations and views.

So why ignore the advice that smaller charities like the one you chose find it more effective to pay someone else to administer their donations than employ additional staff to do the same job themselves (and if they did they would no doubt be criticised for not using 100% of the donations for direct charitable purposes.).

As you gather we are past middle age, non-techie, and well out of touch with today's billionaire charity "industry" and its fundraising methods.

Whilst I agree that £150k sounds a rather good salary it hardly means that the Simon Community is part of any "billionaire charity industry".

We have decided to use Bmycharity for future donations, avoiding the rakeoff by third parties.

Their is a small (1.6%) transaction fee passed on by them; and as they are part of and "supported by Help for Heroes" then other costs will come out of donations to Help for Heroes rather than from the money you pay to other charities. They might well be more efficient than other donation administers but don't believe that their services are totally free - someone pays the salaries and other costs.

Otherwise we are sending old-fashioned cheques to charities based in our local area rather than national organisations many of which spend 25% of our donations on raising even more funds ... but then as I said, we're old-fashioned.

It would be worth asking how much it costs them to process the cheque, pay it into their bank account and submit a Gift Aid claim..

kazzah · 19 January 2015 at 12:07AM

davetrousers wrote: »

Virgin money do not charge.

I absolutely will not donate to a charity via justgiving out of principle. If I wish to donate to the charity I will do it directly.

I feel people use justgiving as they do no research into their options. And this make the bosses of justgiving very rich.

sorry Dave- but they DO charge - they charge LESS than justgiving however they DO charge

I am the chairman of a very small charity for a rare condition and i can tell you that the £18 per month we pay justgiving is one of the BEST investments we make - in the 9 years since we have been with them supporters of our charity have raised a staggering £147,000 - yes we pay per month - BUT it is VERY convenient FOR OUR SUPPORTERS...... they can set up a justgiving page and their friends can sponsor them via the page- the supporter doesn't have to chase people for sponsor money, doesn't have to bother sending us a cheque or paying cash into the bank, doesn't need to get sponsor forms signed- it is VERY easy
the money gets paid directly into our charity bank account and the Justgiving team sort all the giftaid information out for us
as a small charity working ENTIRELY with volunteers this gives us an excellent streamlined facility which is well known and respected in the charitable sector - and we would definitely be lost without it

Crinklewood · 19 January 2015 at 12:14AM

Hi,
I am in the process of organising a Charity Summer Ball. This set off as a major family celebration for my Mum's 90th Birthday but somehow it multiplied big time and I've ended up putting on a big charity event!
As a family (and because of close family ties) the event is to raise funds for
The Special Care Baby Unit at Scarborough General Hospital (my daughter is a specialist neo natal nurse/ward sister there) and they are short of funds to replace old worn out equipment and short of specialist trained nurses.
The Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit at Hull Royal Infirmary (my daughter did part of her training there and it is also the centre where very small / ill tiny patients are sometimes sent from Scarborough SCBU)
MacMillan Cancer Support - I am a Cancer Sufferer, my Mum is/was and my late Dad had Lung Cancer - without MacMillan I would not be there.
The charity Ball has been set up under a Trust Fund to benefit the 3 charities equally.
Someone suggested I create a Just Giving Account so contacted them and explained the Ball framework and the fact all 3 charitable causes will get an equal share of what the Ball raises along with an equal share of any other funds raised.
However Just Giving do not allow you to have "an umbrella account" but you have to have a seperate page for each charity so people can donate to their preferred charity.
As a result the 3 charities the ball is for would not receive an equal share of my family's efforts - so I am not going down Just Giving Road.
Although I have to say having read the previous posts on this thread I am pleased I haven't created a Just Giving account for each charity - they would lose out. So thank you to whoever started this thread

Hedgehog99 · 19 January 2015 at 12:20AM

I'm not keen on Just Giving and their ilk either, but, I suppose, the end result is similar - if you give via a donation site, they do some of the admin and take some of your donation; if you give direct to a charity, they do some admin which is usually paid for out of donations.

Overall, as long as the fees are clearly stated, it's up to the donor.

Those mailings you get through the post with address stickers or greetings cards or a pen... even though the materials are paid for by sponsors, if I was the sponsor, Id want my thousands of pounds to go on the charity's work, not on getting small donations out of guilt-tripped grannies' pensions.

Now, I really dislike chuggers...

Justgiving: profit in disguise

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