Charities Wasting Money

takman

kelpie35 wrote: »

This is the main reason why I don't donate to charities.

They use donations to pay themselves large salaries and waste so much money sending you rubbish.

I shop in charity shops but only buy items I think are bargains to me and don't really care what they do with my money.

That's just a poor excuse!. If you really wanted to donate to charities then you could find many small charities that waste no money at all. I know of one local charity that is run by a couple and 100% of the money goes towards supporting children with cancer. They don't spend 1 penny of the money on anything else, any expenses that can't be avoided are paid for by themselves.
So how much will you be donating to this charity if I give you the name of it?

takman

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Sending out a letter is OK, spending money to put unwanted rubbish in it and sending a reminder letter isn't!

Wrong in what way?. The extra things such as pens are good advertising for the charity and are something people usually keep, so stay as a reminder to donate to them. If the extra items were not shown to generate extra money overall they would soon stop including them.

paddyrg

It's called 'Reciprocation', it's one of the most powerful sales techniques. A 'free' coffee or favour done leaves you with an inbuilt, primitive obligation to reciprocate. It's actually taught on sales courses.

Pollycat

kelpie35 wrote: »

This is the main reason why I don't donate to charities.

They use donations to pay themselves large salaries and waste so much money sending you rubbish.

I shop in charity shops but only buy items I think are bargains to me and don't really care what they do with my money.

takman wrote: »

That's just a poor excuse!. If you really wanted to donate to charities then you could find many small charities that waste no money at all. I know of one local charity that is run by a couple and 100% of the money goes towards supporting children with cancer. They don't spend 1 penny of the money on anything else, any expenses that can't be avoided are paid for by themselves.
So how much will you be donating to this charity if I give you the name of it?

I'm not sure what takman means is a 'poor excuse'.
I buy stuff from charity shops if I want to buy an item.
I do not give any thought to what they do with the money I pay for the item I've bought.
I donate all my unwanted clothes & bric-a-brac to my local Hospice shop.

knightstyle

Charity Choice said the top 100 charities spent an average of 78p in every pound on their charitable activities, while 21p was spent raising more income. The remaining 1p was spent running the charity, including staffing and office costs.

Read this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/11245357/Find-out-exactly-how-charities-spend-your-money.html

lincroft1710

takman wrote: »

The extra things such as pens are good advertising for the charity and are something people usually keep, so stay as a reminder to donate to them.

One charity's pens aren't marked.

takman

Pollycat wrote: »

I'm not sure what takman means is a 'poor excuse'.
I buy stuff from charity shops if I want to buy an item.
I do not give any thought to what they do with the money I pay for the item I've bought.
I donate all my unwanted clothes & bric-a-brac to my local Hospice shop.

Well they said that the main reason that they don't donate to charities is because of the wasted money. So this is a poor excuse for not donsting because with very little effort you can find charities that waste zero money.
They might aswell be honest and say that they simply don't want to donate and not make excuses!.

DomRavioli

takman wrote: »

That's just a poor excuse!. If you really wanted to donate to charities then you could find many small charities that waste no money at all. I know of one local charity that is run by a couple and 100% of the money goes towards supporting children with cancer. They don't spend 1 penny of the money on anything else, any expenses that can't be avoided are paid for by themselves.
So how much will you be donating to this charity if I give you the name of it?

So Cancer Research UK pay their head honcho £240,000 a year. That's not ok. That money could be spent literally saving lives, and instead it is lining a single person's pocket.

Nor is the £85 million that Oxfam have in reserve, and have had for a rather long time.

I would never ever donate to "big" charities, and most people choose if they do or don't, and if they do, to whom. I donate occasionally to a charity that is extremely dear to me, but I will never respond to people coming across as begging, including you in the quoted post.

Maybe spend your time fundraising for this charity you know if you need an outlet - everyone wins that way.

takman

DomRavioli wrote: »

So Cancer Research UK pay their head honcho £240,000 a year. That's not ok. That money could be spent literally saving lives, and instead it is lining a single person's pocket.

Nor is the £85 million that Oxfam have in reserve, and have had for a rather long time.

I would never ever donate to "big" charities, and most people choose if they do or don't, and if they do, to whom. I donate occasionally to a charity that is extremely dear to me, but I will never respond to people coming across as begging, including you in the quoted post.

Maybe spend your time fundraising for this charity you know if you need an outlet - everyone wins that way.

I dont think you understand the point of my post. The point i am making is that generalising and saying that the reason you don't donate to any charities is because they waste money is just an excuse when there are many smaller charities who don't waste any money to choose from.

I'm not saying they should be donating I just don't see the point in people using that excuse when in reality they don't want to donate money but think it makes them look bad to admit it. There is nothing wrong with not donating to charity because everyone is free to choose what they do with their money.

Also I purposely left the name of the charity out of my post because it would be unfair to mention them in this kind of online discussion. So my post is definitely not "begging" of any sort and my last sentence was to make a point.

daytona0

takman wrote: »

I dont think you understand the point of my post. The point i am making is that generalising and saying that the reason you don't donate to any charities is because they waste money is just an excuse when there are many smaller charities who don't waste any money to choose from.

To be honest, I don't really donate money to charities these days. Prefer to give any donations directly to people, especially the homeless people around Liverpool whenever I get a chance.

You are right, though, in that people should be donating to smaller charities if their sole reason for not donating is the "waste" of money from bigger ones! Why? Because the smaller ones can't afford to send you free pens and junk like that! The money it costs to make and send that pen is instead used as a donation!

Look, I'm not against charities when they market themselves. I just don't like it when they capitalize the market. You'll typically only see the bigger ones on TV (fair play to the donkey sanctuary charity a while back! Possible exception), sending out pens, cold calling you, approaching you on the street!