It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

YoungBlueEyes

This is a from a few years ago, and I shan't name the charity in case they don't do it anymore.

My sister works in a charity shop. The manageress keeps (kept?) all the good stuff to one side so that the 'valuer' guy can go through it and siphon it off in different directions as applicable. Maybe their online shop, maybe ebay, maybe the local auction house. The shop is staffed by volunteers (the manageress is paid), and this guy would show up fortnightly to do his thing.

She got talking to him one day about how easy his job is (we grew up in sale rooms/at auctions), and he was bragging about how little he does! His salary was very comfortable, big company car + petrol allowance etc etc.

Not the side people would be thinking of when signing up to donate £5 a month.

I'll also just add - I think it's wise to make sure they get the most money for an item as possible, and having a variety of processes for that is a good idea. I am a huge fan of charity shops as a whole, but am more cynical of charities themselves in general. A lot of them have enough billions stashed away to make our new PM look poor!

As arnoldy says - these are big industries, and are often in no way actually charitable sadly.

OrkneyStar

arnoldy said:

If you don't feel happy 'deciding' how to help, if you are able to help, then there are charities to which you can donate and who are able to help those in need

This is the better way, but my advice is to check that CEO pay of the charity first, far too much in UK recently charities have become "industries". Many charities are mere feeders of Government money rather that what we would regard as charities - volunteers and public donations. Some of their behaviours have been astonishing - we have all heard stories of pensioners and venerable people donating money and then ending up on charity mailing lists resulting in them being bled vast amounts of money. 

Donate, but dont assume all charities are the same.

I think we are all aware of this, my point really was that there are genuine homeless people who need help and if someone wants to help then there are ways of doing it. IMHO locally run smaller charities are often the way to go, as opposed to big national ones. 

OrkneyStar

YoungBlueEyes said:

This is a from a few years ago, and I shan't name the charity in case they don't do it anymore.

My sister works in a charity shop. The manageress keeps (kept?) all the good stuff to one side so that the 'valuer' guy can go through it and siphon it off in different directions as applicable. Maybe their online shop, maybe ebay, maybe the local auction house. The shop is staffed by volunteers (the manageress is paid), and this guy would show up fortnightly to do his thing.

She got talking to him one day about how easy his job is (we grew up in sale rooms/at auctions), and he was bragging about how little he does! His salary was very comfortable, big company car + petrol allowance etc etc.

Not the side people would be thinking of when signing up to donate £5 a month.

I'll also just add - I think it's wise to make sure they get the most money for an item as possible, and having a variety of processes for that is a good idea. I am a huge fan of charity shops as a whole, but am more cynical of charities themselves in general. A lot of them have enough billions stashed away to make our new PM look poor!

As arnoldy says - these are big industries, and are often in no way actually charitable sadly.

I think that donating to smaller and/or local charities is often a better way to go. Where we live there is one really good charity shop which opened a good few years ago - different local charities get a slot every week and it is well publicised who is in that week. Lots of local people choose to donate to them because they see where the money is going and how it benefits local people. As said earlier, we don't really have a specific homeless charity as there is not so much homelessness here (though of course there will be some), but we do have local branches of charities who support a whole host of those in need. The bottom line is none of us are forced to donate to charity, some of us might not be able to afford to, but those who want to shouldn't stop just because some homeless people are not as genuine as we might hope!

maryb

We have a local homeless shelter and several of the local shops have a collecting tin at the till and I always put something in.  It makes me feel OK about not giving directly.  Especially after one of them swore at me when I didn't give him anything because I remembered him spinning the same yarn about a sudden emergency as he had a month ago

I also make a direct contribution at Christmas which carries Gift Aid.  I do it to the local shelter rather than Crisis at Christmas because C at C bombard you with emails and there is no means of unsubscribing on their website - I had to email them to get them to remove my details from their database.  Not sure they should be doing that

shandyclover

We help a local homeless man on a regular basis. My husband met him through volunteer work he does. He's fighting addictions and choses to live in a tent than in the shelter the council provided him as he says there's violence and drugs there. We don't give him money, but he does have a cheap phone. We'll give him a call on an evening and tell him what we're making for dinner, if he wants we cook an extra portion, pop it into a tinfoil take away container and run it up to him so he gets a hot, home cooked meal. 

OrkneyStar

shandyclover said:

We help a local homeless man on a regular basis. My husband met him through volunteer work he does. He's fighting addictions and choses to live in a tent than in the shelter the council provided him as he says there's violence and drugs there. We don't give him money, when we cook dinner we cook an extra portion, pop it into a tinfoil take away container and run it up to him so he gets a hot, home cooked meal most nights.

I am sure he appreciates all you are doing to try to make his life that bit better, and wish him success fighting his addictions.

YoungBlueEyes

There was a charity shop where I used to live called Keith's Cats or similar. He was a one-man-band and was a smashing bloke. I always stuck some money in his tin because I liked what he was doing. The stuff had a good turnover rate because he wasn't greedy with his prices. He'd offer other useful info too - someone looking for a cat would be put in touch with someone rehoming theirs. Which supermarket had a good deal on cat food. Which vet was doing cheap micro-chipping. Etc etc. He even took in a couple people's cats when they were going on holiday. A genuinely charitable bloke that was making an actual difference.

Now that's above and beyond, but I was always happy to donate stuff there and give money.

Unlike the guy in a well known charity's shop I was in before we moved.  When I'd bought my few bits he didn't give me any change. When I asked for it he (very snippily) pointed out that they were a charity and "most people just leave their change actually" !! Made me feel very small asking for it, actually. 

YoungBlueEyes

That's beautiful shadyclover. People like you restore my faith in humanity!  

Floss

arnoldy said:

... my advice is to check that CEO pay of the charity first, far too much in UK recently charities have become "industries". Many charities are mere feeders of Government money rather that what we would regard as charities - volunteers and public donations...

I think that's a very generic view - and don't forget that charities will have employees, who need to be paid. And would you pay a CEO a low wage if they were running a multi-employee international organisation with the relevant statutory obligations? So why raise the issue of charity CEO pay, when it is generally the large multi-employee international organisations that have the high CEO salaries. They are businesses, just the same as Vodafone or Tesco.

linz

I don't like that charity that spends God knows what on The Snowman coasters and Christmas cards that get posted through everyones letterboxes at Christmas. If they didnt spend so much on junk merchandise they could spend more on research. Think its BHF?

I used to volunteer at my local RSPCA branch and they said the national RSPCA branch only gives local branches enough funding for basic animal welfare but any extra the local branches would like such as training treats or toys they have to fundraise for themselves. You do have to wonder where a lot of the money goes if this is the case.