Charity Or Children?

wisewoman

I know you can do anything, Martin. Set up a website for kids...I would expect some really sophisticated responses...and ask them what they would like to happen. Teaching today's kids will be an investment in the future...their new knowledge and understanding will be passed onto their children, and indeed to their own parents. Go for it.

MSE_Martin

Im not making any judgements about how it'll work at the moment. My point is the real task isn't about the information and expertise on the MoneySaving side, I have that, and Im sure site users would help. The task is about distribution and targetting.

Also this primarily isn't a web issue. This is about possibly printed guides for parents to go through with their kids, teaching packs, childrens guides themselves. It's about building up a MoneySaving guide for kids in any format.

As for the cost. Don't worry about that - its for me to do - some of the money will come from the charity side, and more will come from me to (of course the money from the charity fund is coming from me anyway, but its a bit different).

As for who will do it. One of the reasons I can do this quite effectively is that my father is going to do the feasibility study for me. He was a headmaster for 27 years, and is now an educational consultant for law firms, educational assessments and charitable organisations, one of his major specialities is designing courses for kids and educational impact assessments.

So while he can't do it for free (he has to make a living like anyone else), I will be far from paying fully commercial rates to get it done. However I don't particularly want to harp on about this too much, as that's not what it is about.

ceebee_2

Whilst there have been arguments put forward, supporting the idea of using charity monies to teach children "money saving", it doesn"t leave scope for applying the money to other charitable causes. So, if I could state the obvious, by maintaining a general charitable fund, the money could then be disbursed, as now, to any charitable cause, including educating children w.r.t. "money saving".

My personal view is that the monies from small charities (no disrespect intended to your worthy causes, Martin) should be used to help individual immediate cases of distress, etc.

ekekiman

MSE_Martin wrote:

Ivan - don't worry yourself about the feasibility study...

I think the idea of helping kids manage their money is a grand one. However, rather than going it alone (the problem with so many charitable initiatives) how about scouting around for allies, to help maximise the impact? The Friends Provident Charitable Foundation (in which I have contacts but no formal association) is all about helping people use their money the right way and I'm sure they'd be very interested in sponsoring/promoting/talking with you. Address:
http://www.friendsprovident.co.uk/common/layouts/subSectionLayout.jhtml?pageId=fpcouk%2FSitePageSimple%3Afriends_provident_foundation_landing+_page

Incidentally they have a very thought-provoking book called "The Right Use of Money", looking at spending from an ethical point of view. https://www.policypress.org.uk/

By the way Martin have you tried dictation software to help with your RSI? It works very well these days and it worked for me...

MSE_Martin

Hiya

First of all it looks like the vote is going for 50-50. Which is probably a good thing. So we will be looking at redoing the charity nomination process for new funds

As for bringing money in - of course we'll have a look at that - though i want clear blue water between this and any financial institutions

Kippsy

I think the 50-50 split is probably a good idea.

Also I think a money saving kids website that could perhaps be in addition to any educational programe would keep kids upto date with what to do and how to spend and save.

I remember at school we got some (very brief) financial advice from barclays.... The only thing I can remember is that a lot of people in the class liked Barclays because their cash machines let them withdraw just £5, if thats not money saving I don't know what is..... LOL!!!!

IvanOpinion

Martin
You talk about producing printed guides. I would presume that you would consider offering these free (or possibly for nominal costs - to cover production/P&P etc.). The one thing I would say about offering anything free is that as soon as some people see something flagged as 'free' they will request one and then figure out that they may not need it, they may not want it and in some cases can not be bothered even opening it - as an example I remember seeing one poster on the freebies board asking what they should do with the free dog food they sent for (they didn't have a dog).

Have you considered simply preparing the items and posting them on this site (and/or some others) as PDF documents (and possibly other formats). This would allow all the effort and costs to go into the production of the actual content while putting the cost of ownership with the recipient (who would simply need to download anything they were interested in and, if they chose to, print it out). You may need to give consideration to additional bandwidth though.

If you really wanted to produce printed copies then these could be focussed at schools and other educational or group establsihments. They could form the basis of study guides which in the first instance give people the URLs required to get their own copies.

Just a thought
Ivan

larochelleuk

IvanOpinion wrote:

All very interesting but you are missing the point I am trying to make. We are talking about a relatively small amount of money £40K (no offense intended) - any feasibility study would probably eat that sort of money up just trying to organise itself not to worry doing any investigation or coming to any conclusions.

Ivan

No - if you commission someone to do that, you outline your expectations and what they are being contracted to find out, and how. If they don't do that, they are in breach of contract. There's no reason to assume that would happen.

x

Former_MSE_Andrea

Below are the results to our previous poll. Thanks to the 1037 participants who took part in this poll.

Previous Poll Topic: CHARITY OR CHILDREN? Poll started 31 May. Over the last year, this site's donated £40k+ to charities selected by users (see About Us for details). I'm considering ending this to instead fund a 'MoneySaving Kids: A childrens money education fund' as scarily most financial education is funded by the banks. What do you think?

B. Split the money half and half 40.4% - (419 Votes)
C. Stick with the charity fund, it helps many 31.2% - (324 Votes)
A. All the money to MoneySaving kids 28% - (291 Votes)

Total Votes: 1037

meheraltaf

one complains that he has no shoes but then he meets a man who has no feet