Stopping donating to charities...advice please

bristol_pilot

alant1000 wrote: »

I am actually a bit gutted they get paid, i am sure some have told me they do it for free.

That's because they get typically £35 commission for signing you up ! :rotfl:

alant1000

bristol_pilot wrote: »

That's because they get typically £35 commission for signing you up ! :rotfl:

i can't speak.... i am speechless.. i just dont know what to say :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Willman_Rodders

if you want to see facts and figures on charities have a look at ...

http://www.charityfacts.org/index.html

and a link from that site to ...

http://www.guidestar.org.uk/

from which you can search for and then read up on the charities of interest to you, and see their income v expenditure. (just click on the financial button).

It makes interesting reading.

Voyager2002

Responding to the original post: why don't you approach the two charities and ask them what they have to say about the issues that bother you?

All charities, indeed all activities, have admin costs. It is a matter of judgement whether these costs are reasonable or excessive, but do remember that difficult and innovative work probably involves more and expensive admin than run-of-the-mill stuff. Anyway, they have to publish their accounts and should be able to answer detailed questions about what they spend, and why.

As for the NSPCC, you disagree with their policy. Again, it would be worth asking them why they have that policy. There may be some kind of democratic mechanism for changing their policy if you think that the reasons they give for it don't stand up. Personally I think it is excellent that you are thinking about what the charity stands for and how those goals can best be achieved: charities should welcome people who provide critical support rather than just money.

melancholly

the people standing in the street may have applied for a job as a 'graduate internship', which is how i ended up selling christmas cards!! it may be £7 ph but it is a lot less than temping in a big city. i'm not trying to condone the practice btw, but the people applying will be being paid less than they would be in other jobs, and are generally doing it to get some kind of 'charity work experience' to get into the sector. so they do probably genuinely care about the cause! i think it's a sad fact that they have to pay people to do it, because there aren't enough volunteers (or at least they wouldn't get so many people so regularly anyway - i couldn't have worked for a charity for free for 3 months, but the pay cut i took to do it was substantial!!)

both big and small charities have their place and their roles to play. i'm happy to support MSF even though it's a large international company with big overheads, but with any extra money, i support my local hospice because i've seen first hand the difference they make. you can also support charities in other ways - if i want to send flowers, i'll use www.charityflowers.co.uk where you can pick which charity to support; i always buy charity christmas cards - from the charity directly if possible as some cards that claim to be for charity are hardly generous (scary article here). there are many ways you can show support!

mountainofdebt

I must admit I have the lovely task of organising a charity night next year and get to choose which charity the proceeds are going to.

I've decided to pick one that doesn't have 'fluffy animal' appeal and is run totally by volunteers for this very reason....I don't want any money I help raisejust going into a black hole where you never know what its been spent on plus the fact I think my small cotribution will make more of a difference to this charity than a large one.

missile

You could consider the sally army. None of your money will be squandered on paying fat cat salary for administration or advertising budgets.

Savvy_Sue

Every charity SHOULD have some administration expenses - at the very least related to book-keeping and inspection of accounts! I guess many small charities start with ALL volunteers, and those volunteers being willing to cover the expenses of printing, postage, phone calls etc. But in time that's not necessarily the best way to run an organisation.

But if you only use volunteers, then your volunteers must be dependent on an income coming from elsewhere. Suppose your key volunteer is able to give lots of time, because his wife earns a fat cat salary so he doesn't have to go out to work. But her company restructers, she loses her job, and your key volunteer suddenly finds himself needing to go back to work, leaving you without his skills. Do you have a plan in place for that? Or do you fold?

And yes, I'm administrator for a small but growing charity. Since I joined, we have doubled our staff size, but our admin hours haven't doubled. Yet they need to. Someone has to keep the accounts in order, write the thank you letters, stock the stationery cupboard, frighten the computers into behaving, phone the photocopier engineer ...

We have volunteers too, couldn't do the work without them, including a couple who help out in the office. But because they can choose when - and whether! - they work, that doesn't always lead to an efficient way of working. I'll plan my leave around when we should have a quiet time, but I don't expect them to do so.

MarkyMarkD

I'm the chairman of a charity.

Those who think it's good for charities to have no admin expenses, and to spend all their money on "the good cause" are being a bit unrealistic.

Charities which achieve that objective are not necessarily making the best use of their money in any case.

Let me give you an example.

If I go out and spend money on behalf of my charity, say £1,000, but bear that cost myself, it saves the charity £1,000. And it makes the charity look completely efficient because the charity hasn't borne any cost. So if the charity receives £10,000 in income, and gives away £10,000, it can say its expense ratio is 0%.

But far better is that I personally give £1,000 to my charity, and claim the £1,000 for the expenses I've incurred. That way, the charity recovers tax on the gift. In fact, because I pay tax at 40%, I can give the charity £1,000 out of my net income and the charity gets £1,667.

Then the charity accounts show that it received £11,667 in income, but had £1,000 of expenses and gave away £10,667.

The expense ratio has gone up from 0% to 8.6% - but the charity has actually done more good with the same amount of external (non-trustee) money.

Do you see what I mean? It is inefficient for charities to have things bought on their behalf by donors, and more efficient for the donors to give the cash under gift aid and for the charity to pay its way properly.

ceebeeby

I organise 3 types of charity - 2 local and 1 overseas. None have admin costs associated with them as I try to get that part covered by volunteers (as per Mark and Su's mail, sometimes easier said than done).

I guess all 3 charities are fairly fluffy (associated with children) but very very hard to raise funds. 1 (overseas) very fortunate to have support of city wide newspaper who does free advertising for us as it's linked to hospital.

I make sure that every penny that is spent on any of the 3 is always fully accounted for, so if any donor ever wishes to see the books, or query how money is spent it is available (in fact, for my 2 local charities, I issued invite to anyone who wished to see full annual charity return - no-one did though).

It's a huge responsibility though, and sometimes I do worry about it.

Good luck with your decision OP