Ditch your charity credit cards discussion

MSE_Martin

This discussion relates to the Ditch your charity credit cards article.

Click reply to ask a question.

Mr_Nick_3

The RSPCA Mastercard is an alright card, although after the initial £15 it gives to the RSPCA for me signing up, mot much more would be donated cause I don't use it enough to make it worthwhile. I only really wanted the card cause it had a dog on it. (see the GOOD LOOKING CARDS thread)

realaledrinker

Martin,

there is a fundamental flaw in your logic in that whereas charity cards  automatically reward charities every time you spend, the cardholder has to actively  make the effort to donate money received from cashback etc.  Chances are the cashback is given as a credit to the account & just gets netted off the next statement amount.

The article is mean spirited, if you dont mind me saying so.

I bank with the Co-op and find their service and ethical stance  to be excellent & don't mid saying so on this website.  They have today announced that their credit card customers have voted the Bhopal  Medical Appeal as the chief 2004 beneficiary of their Customers Who Care Campaign, which has donated over £2.5m to charities since it's inception.  This is at  no cost to credit card holders, nor new customers who can take advantage of 0% for six month offers.


http://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?cid=1088150724400&pagename=CoopBank%2FPage%2FtplPageStandard&c=Page

MSE_Martin

I'm sorry i fundamentally disagree with you. The mean spirit is the credit card companies who utilise charities to market their cards, but then pay pitiful amounts to them and sell debt on the back of goodwill of charities.

And whilst it does take work and i spell that out in the article

This method does take more discipline than a charity card, but discipline pays substantially.

It would only take one in six people who switched from charity cards to the best cashback cards to do the method propely for all charities to be better off. For one in two to do it properly and charities would earn three times as much.

I stand wholeheartedly by what I said. The tax advantage is substantal too.

Of course if people launched cards that gave 1 or 2% to the charity i'd welcome this with open arms and change my recommendation immediately, but - there's fat chance of it happening!

As for the co-op, its ethical stance is a good one, yet that's a different argument. The amount it gives to charity is actually negligible compared to the cashback amounts - its an entirely seperate amount.

It would take only 15,000 people using the cashback technique to raise £2.5m for charity. If everyone with charity credit cards used the technique it would be a substative potential boost to charity income.

martin

MarkyMarkD

I absolutely wholeheartedly agree with Martin.

These cards are a scam by the card operators on the public and on the charities.

As Martin said, if they paid as much cash to the charities, as a cashback card does to the individual, they would be great. Although even then, because of tax relief, it would be better for the individual to receive the cashback and gift it NET of tax and the charity would get the tax back.

As they pay derisory amounts instead, they are just getting the charities to market cheaply for them or abusing the charities' names to get themselves customers.

MarkyMarkD

No.

Makes no difference to their tax position if they pay it to a customer (which reduces their taxable profits) or pay it to a charity (which reduces their taxable profits).