Charity

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

Man of Honour
Joined
29 Mar 2003
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Location
Stoke on Trent
Last night I went to a presentation where we gave 7 charities a bit of money from the proceeds of a rock festival that I headlined at.
3 charities got £2033 each and 4 got a quarter of £2033 each.

The Air Ambulance received £2033 and a representative gave a speech thanking us and then said it cost £1.2 million to keep 1 Air Ambulance in the air for 1 year so I did a breakdown.
Basically our measly £2033 would keep an Air Ambulance going for two thirds of a day:eek:
When you consider the Air Ambulance is charity run and not a penny comes from the Government I think it is shocking.

Other charities that received £2033 each were Donna Louise and Dougie Mac and it as been announced this week that our local Donna Louise must close for 2 days a week because of no income.

Who would gladly give a small donation in their tax every week to keep the most worthy causes going without begging?

(Of course somebody is now going to name a 1000 worthy causes).
 
The Air Ambulance should be government funded.

But with other charities regardless of the great work they do, you have to draw the line somewhere, or you would end up with tons of waste.

How do you decide which should and should not get tax funding? or knowing the government a body would be set-up to decide these things and 90% of all the tax collected would be wasted on admin.
 
dmpoole said:
Who would gladly give a small donation in their tax every week to keep the most worthy causes going without begging?.
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I do twice a week, the lottery. A large percentage of that goes to various charities.

It is a joke that the air ambulance isn't part of the NHS.
 
Air Ambulance and the RNLI should both be government funded... £1.2 million per year is nothing compared to some of the money Brown's been throwing away...
 
dmpoole said:
Of course somebody is now going to name a 1000 worthy causes
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I could list 168,000 and you can see them all here:

www.guidestar.org.uk

and that's just the registered ones.

Seriously though, I think your sentiment is a good one. However it is already happening and some of your tax goes to helping charities right now. A large proportion of charities, particularly the big ones, have some of their funding coming from Government initiatives. For example, the one I was once a director of started off with a £2.9million grant from the Treasury. That was paid out of our tax.

And you can't really judge worthiness by size or cause either. For example, not that I have anything against them, but we could take two of the largest charities Guide Dogs for the Blind and the National Trust.

NT have assets beyond belief and make a nice income from visitors and members. They don't need so much Government funding. Guide Dogs for the Blind have enough cash in reserve to keep them going for a long time and give every blind person in this country a dog if they wanted to. Due to some great innovation on their part they make a load of money from selling guide dog sperm worldwide, so they don't really need Government money.
 
BigT said:
NT have assets beyond belief and make a nice income from visitors and members. They don't need so much Government funding.
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That's not quite true. My mum is a member of the National Trust for Scotland and gets their newsletters. Apparently they keep having to close properties because they don't get enough donations or non-member visitors. They have lots of assets, but the whole point of NT is protecting those assets - if they have to sell properties and items within to function then that kind of defeats the whole purpose of the charity!
 
I don't understand why the Air Ambulance isn't apart of the NHS.

Helicopters can get to places much quicker and easier then an Ambulance can.
 
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Vixen said:
That's not quite true.
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Thinking about it, you're right and I'm wrong. The assets can't be declared on the balance sheet because they could never sell them. However there are other large charities who have signifcant assets that could be released to release funds if they so choosed.
 
Air Ambulance should definitely be funded - it's our life line out here, and i've called it out twice in the past 12 months. Amazing service.

Also, as mentioned, RNLI. Absolutely brilliant service, both are essential
 
Governments can't do everything. If the British government tried to fix the world then we'd have income tax of 120%. At the moment the government needs to be spending billions of pounds less, not finding new things to spend money on, however worthy they may be. Whether it's "fair" or not, the air ambulance and the RNLI seem to be surviving as it is. That seems to be a good enough reason not to spend public money on them. Keeping them separate from government also makes it much easier to get voluntary help.
 
get rid of some of the pointless quangos and put the money into RNLI and Air Ambulance.

simple.

its a no brainer.
 
BigT said:
Thinking about it, you're right and I'm wrong. The assets can't be declared on the balance sheet because they could never sell them. However there are other large charities who have signifcant assets that could be released to release funds if they so choosed.
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I was talking specifically about the National Trust.
 
PinkPig said:
Governments can't do everything. If the British government tried to fix the world then we'd have income tax of 120%. At the moment the government needs to be spending billions of pounds less, not finding new things to spend money on, however worthy they may be. Whether it's "fair" or not, the air ambulance and the RNLI seem to be surviving as it is. That seems to be a good enough reason not to spend public money on them. Keeping them separate from government also makes it much easier to get voluntary help.
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Do you have any idea how much fundraising needs to be done to bring in enough money to provide the lifeboat service?
 
I pay more than enough tax, we do not have a fair tax system in this country and it is not spent in a decent manner, if things were dealt with efficiently then many of these causes could be funded in a proper manner

I am also getting sick of the attitude of many charities, guilt trip pressure, commission bases sales people
 
I think I'll add another charity that should be at least part government funded besides the air ambulances and RNLI and that's the RSPCA.
 
dmpoole said:
Who would gladly give a small donation in their tax every week to keep the most worthy causes going without begging?
Click to expand...

The two problems with this is as soon as it is coming from taxation it is no longer a donation. So those that want to support the charity are effectively forcing others to do it. Also the list of charities supported could be controversial. Animal charaties for example if someone believes people should be supported first.


Secondly, as soon as it gets in to government hands we then see the value of the contribution fall. Rather than £1 going to the charity you have 60p going to the charity and the other 40p going to the new government department set up to deal with it. (Numbers are made up btw).
 
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