The Dogs Trust......

Bueller

I agree with Lisyloo, there are tons of charities to choose from, so just make sure you do your research before you give away your hard earned pennies!

Personally I donate to some of the 'larger' charities, and I am well aware of how much they spend on different activities, but often because they are larger they can keep their administration costs down because of economies of scale. Whilst the work of some of the smaller organisations is admirable, not all of them are actually charities (including some of those mentioned above going by their websites), and I don't feel comfortable giving my money to an organisation who aren't a charity.

I think the important thing is to do your homework and choose a charity that you feel comfortable with.

hethmar

You will find that some rescue groups arent registered as charities because of the red tape/cost involved. I know that our group looked into this some time back because we wanted to be able to get tax back on our donations and also apply for grants - but you had to have a "turnover" and of course if you are a group of unpaid volunteers giving your time and energy for nothing and also using your money to prepare and transport the dogs and not actually receiving a penny from rescues for the dogs (which is right and fine as they have the expense of keeping dogs sometimes for months) then its a Catch 22 situation. I believe we had to say we had £5k coming in every year.

Just because a group has charitable status doesnt actually mean they are trustworthy and those without arent. It probably just means they dont make any money so cant fulfil/afford the requirements.

Im always shocked how these big charities often have prestige addresses! Why do they need premises in the most expensive parts of the country?

Ive never checked on Hillside or Many Tears because they are so wonderful and well known that I dont have any doubts about their intentions and trustworthiness - more than I can say about some of the big rescues who I have looked into. Hillside in particular actively campaigns constantly and work undercover to expose horrific farming practices and recently puppy farming. They are a group often involved in the tv exposes.

fantasia322

leveller2911 wrote: »

We have sponsored a dog with TDT for nearly 18 months now and following the BBC Newsnight investigation into Charities employing professional fundraisers I e-mailed TDT to find out if they employ PFR.
I received an answerphone message from TDT saying thaey do employ PFR ers , blah,blah,blah then saying how PFR companies how they are worth it...blah ,blah, blah ..

Many of these PFR companies employ door to door sellers and whenever they succeed in getting people to take up direct debit contributing to the Charity the company charges the Charity from between £80-175 per time for the privilege.If this is so with the Dogs Trust(not answered in message) then all of our direct debit money for the last 18 months hasn't in fact gone to help the Charity but to line the pockets of the Professional Fundraisers.

I can't seem to get the Dogs Trust to clarify this so I'm looking for advice and also peoples thoughts ...We are pretty fed up with finding this out and its put us off contributing to other Charities....

Do we stop the direct debits now that the money is more than likely going to actually do some good or do we bite the bullet and carry on.........thoughts anyone?

Dogs Trust

"Pell & Bales' first fundraising campaign for us has provided essential income for our mission for dogs in the UK – and much more. We now have a better understanding of who our higher-value supporters are and what they want from us as an organisation, and we have a new take on what our fundraising strategies could involve. We look forward to working with Pell & Bales again for more of their commitment, enthusiasm and intelligent insight."
Adrian Burder
Marketing Director
quote from Pell&Bales client portfolio
web address is
http://www.pellandbales.co.uk/?xhtml=pb/xhtml/clientlist/clientlist.html&xsl=clientlist.xsl

Pell&Bales is one of the largest telephone fund raising agencies in the UK, sister company is Supporter Insight both of which are part of the Panther Group, am really surprised that Dogs Trust didnt give you this info when youu contacted them. However the info is quite clearly displayed on Pell&Bales clint page. Along with several other LARGE charities.
http://www.pellandbales.co.uk/?xhtml=pb/xhtml/clientlist/clientlist.html&xsl=clientlist.xsl

which explains why they do what they do (they just dont tell you its a multi billion pound business

Haarlem

hethmar wrote: »

You will find that some rescue groups arent registered as charities because of the red tape/cost involved. I know that our group looked into this some time back because we wanted to be able to get tax back on our donations and also apply for grants - but you had to have a "turnover" and of course if you are a group of unpaid volunteers giving your time and energy for nothing and also using your money to prepare and transport the dogs and not actually receiving a penny from rescues for the dogs (which is right and fine as they have the expense of keeping dogs sometimes for months) then its a Catch 22 situation. I believe we had to say we had £5k coming in every year.

Just because a group has charitable status doesnt actually mean they are trustworthy and those without arent. It probably just means they dont make any money so cant fulfil/afford the requirements.

Ive never checked on Hillside or Many Tears because they are so wonderful and well known that I dont have any doubts about their intentions and trustworthiness - more than I can say about some of the big rescues who I have looked into.

Just a couple of points from your post:_

1. You don't have to be a charity to take advantage of the tax back via Gift Aid.
2. Some organisations giving grants will take into account "gifts in kind" (in your case volunteers time and expenses) establishing a value in £s, and matching this with actual cash.

You really should establish a financial structure for your organisation. Its really worth the effort especially in the present financial climate of the country.

leveller2911

Dogs_Trust wrote: »

Hello everyone,

My name is Laurier and I work for Dogs Trust. I thought I would respond to some of the questions raised in this thread.

Leveller2911, thanks for bringing up the question about fundraisers and fundraising. All fundraising activity has a cost, whether that be placing an advert in a paper, on TV, or even using volunteers, but fundraising is a necessary investment in the future of the organisation. At Dogs Trust all fundraising is closely monitored to ensure it is a cost effective use of our funds. For every £1.00 spent on face-to-face fundraising we currently raise nearly £4.00. Face-to-face fundraising is the single biggest source of new supporters for Dogs Trust and without the money raised in this way, we would not be able to continue our work and care for over 16,000 dogs each year. I hope this helps answer your question. You are more than welcome to call the Sponsor a Dog team on 020 7837 0006 (they handle face to face fundraising) Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm if you have any questions that are not answered; we will be more than happy to help. Also, please feel free to contact me on with any questions.


Hi Laurier thanks for posting a reply.Can you just clarify the point about donations(monthly direct debits).Do the Dogs Trust pay The PFR companies for each and every person they get to sign up with a monthly direct debit? and if so exactly how much for each subscriber to they pay?..

Can you also please say why you have 7 employees earning over £70k a year and of those 2 earn over £100,000 per year.Also added to this are pension contributions? What positions do these people have within the trust?

Why isn't the Trust "Open" and honest about the PFR companies, all the answer I have had have been very vague .Given the "Sharp" practice used by Pall & Bales (exposed by the newspapers) with telephone marketing , why is the Trust condoning this by still employing the company?.

DVardysShadow

leveller2911 wrote: »

Dogs_Trust wrote: »

Hello everyone,

My name is Laurier and I work for Dogs Trust. I thought I would respond to some of the questions raised in this thread.

Leveller2911, thanks for bringing up the question about fundraisers and fundraising. All fundraising activity has a cost, whether that be placing an advert in a paper, on TV, or even using volunteers, but fundraising is a necessary investment in the future of the organisation. At Dogs Trust all fundraising is closely monitored to ensure it is a cost effective use of our funds. For every £1.00 spent on face-to-face fundraising we currently raise nearly £4.00. Face-to-face fundraising is the single biggest source of new supporters for Dogs Trust and without the money raised in this way, we would not be able to continue our work and care for over 16,000 dogs each year. I hope this helps answer your question. You are more than welcome to call the Sponsor a Dog team on 020 7837 0006 (they handle face to face fundraising) Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm if you have any questions that are not answered; we will be more than happy to help. Also, please feel free to contact me on with any questions.

Hi Laurier thanks for posting a reply.Can you just clarify the point about donations(monthly direct debits).Do the Dogs Trust pay The PFR companies for each and every person they get to sign up with a monthly direct debit? and if so exactly how much for each subscriber to they pay?..

Actually, I think you have your answer. Evasiveness and corporate bland speak.

leveller2911

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Actually, I think you have your answer. Evasiveness and corporate bland speak.

Was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt but I'm increasingly Charities are just businesses.Maybe I should have just popped down the local cash n carry and bought a few pallets of dogmeat for them...


The bigger picture here is a sad one as many people like myself will not bother in the future with Charities...

fantasia322

Leveller just to let you know I have no vested interest in Pell & Bales for any other such organisations. I actually walked out of my job last week, the job was telephone charity fundraiser for another organisation. Disillusioned and let down, totally broken in spirit because of what I was doing for a living and because I am well aware of how long it takes the charity to get its money back, foolish perhaps because of the current climate, but I will find something else, it just wont be doing that :mad:

Savvy_Sue

I'm not defending Dogs Trust or any other charity, however I would like to point out that charity trustees have a legal duty to act in the best interests of the charity. And sometimes, as a charity gets bigger, relying on volunteers is NOT in the best interests of the charity. And it is essential that there is a Reserves policy, and that reserves are built up. It is irresponsible to carry on hand to mouth.

Because if you are paying people, you have to do that regularly, not just when you have the funds available. So to make sure the funds ARE available, you increasingly need to use fundraisers. DH's charity has relied on volunteer fundraisers until now, and I can tell you that paying the staff has sometimes only been done after careful calculation and cashflow analysis. They've just appointed their first paid fundraiser, one day a week: I don't know how they've lasted this long. They've operated out of a building which is far too small for years, and now they're in the process of converting a pub and moving to that: massive costs (relative to their size) involved, and money needs to be raised in a very short space of time.

I work for a charity which used to be slightly larger than his, and is now significantly larger. When I joined there was someone paid to do fundraising as part of their job, spending 1 day a week on it. Now we have 3+ people for fundraising and profile raising purposes: we don't phone people to ask them to donate, and we don't phone to ask them to increase their giving, but we do need new supporters - business or personal - to enable us to carry on with our work, particularly if we want to expand what we're doing.

We couldn't do what we do without volunteers, but also we NEED paid staff to do what we do. If we pay less than the market rate, we won't get the best staff, and we need the best!

Our highest paid staff are on a lot less than 70K, as is DH, but they are definitely worth more!

almond

hi
so i would like to know i have been giving £8+ a month for past few years to dogs trust how much is going to the dogs? hope the answer is all of it