Charities are getting annoying

[Diddums]

I've had a charity on the door step asking for donations. When I offered some cash they refused it and said they only accept a direct debit mandate. I put my money back in my pocket and closed the door.

This is where it all started for me. The inability to accept whatever I have on me at the time and instead require a monthly commitment. That was a mental shut down faster than Paris Hilton can get her knickers off.

My skepticism from that day has seemingly been correct, at my last job one of my clients had many offices for charities as their clients, so I was going to them on a weekly basis to carry out their maintenance, and I can safely say that they're not in any need of funding, make no mistake.

I've also come across various items over the years which the press obviously covers up as quickly as possible, but here are a few small bullet points:

• Wells built in Africa are built as cheaply as possible with no maintenance plans or futureproofing. They provide water for a week and as soon as the filters are dirty, the charities are nowhere to be seen.
• Same with schools built by charities, they are issued one set of everything, like books, chalks, etc. As soon as the charity can tick that box, they're out. Teachers get no training, they literally build a school, furnish it, and then leave the locals to figure it all out*. Classes with over 100 pupils, led by an uneducated teacher is standard practice.
• Clothes "donated to charity" are always old off by the kilo and often end up in markets in Africa. I worked with a Nigerian fella for a while who explained to me how they can get massive name brand stuff for pennies in Africa because it's all just sold by the kilo. Whatever doesn't sell ends up in landfill or burned.
• Computers donated generally don't get used as computers, they are actually stripped down for their precious metals in huge dumps, and the rest is burned. Often computers which have usable components in them are stripped of said components, new PCs built from them, and used to scam Western targets.

Here is some interesting watching:

Computers:

Clothing:

I can dig out some good resources as this is just the tip of the iceberg, but make no mistake, the money donated to most of these charities is either squandered here, or ends up in corrupt peoples' hands in the destination they were intended, or others are making money off it.

If you really want to help, then do it face to face. Give a homeless man a sandwich and a cup of tea, help at a soup kitchen, that kind of thing. Giving cash is a terrible idea.


It's such a shame as I know many volunteers who sacrifice their free time with the best of intentions, yet their actions are being undermined by the greedy fat cats in management.

 

[jon86]

Not as annoying as people using the word 'gotten' on an English forum

Not as annoying as the misuse of the word of.

Should of
Would of

 

[Kelt]

Not as annoying as the misuse of the word of.

Should of
Would of

People should have been banned for this.

It's gotten to be an outrage.

 

[Rroff]

My skepticism from that day has seemingly been correct, at my last job one of my clients had many offices for charities as their clients

There are some good charities out there don't get me wrong - but one of my jobs involved creating IT solutions for charities and saw first hand for myself how some are run and operated, etc. hence I very selectively give to charity any more

 

[mmj_uk]

Here is some interesting watching:

Computers:



Clothing:

That Sakawa documentary was pretty interesting. I remember watching a BBC documentary (Reggie Yates?) about the burners who basically burn the plastic covering off copper wires, they had all sorts of lung problems from it. It's pretty tragic really, if governments throughout the world were serious about the climate/environment the first thing they should do is build some high tech recycling plants throughout Africa, export waste there and give the locals secure jobs whilst at the time improving working conditions for them. They wouldn't need to scam people on the internet if they had the opportunity to earn a decent living without doing damage to the environment and their own health and our waste would get recycled properly instead of dumped in some land fill.

 

[memyselfandi]

The annoying chuggers on the streets get paid an absolute fortune by the charities for each donation they secure as well. A mate did it for a while and it was in the order of a few months worth of donations he would be paid in commission.

So much this. I was sitting down in a coffee shop a couple of years back and this guy at the table next to me was interviewing a girl to be a chugger ... It was quite shocking the amount she stood to get for signing people up.

I work on the principal that if you approach me in the street you get ignored (had to perfect this at university in Cardiff in the '90s). If I decide to donate to you then if you badger me for anything more then you get nothing further. I give to several charities reasonably regularly at the moment and one of them is getting towards being added to the blacklist.

The company I work for also has a thing where you get a couple of days a year for volunteering for local community projects which is preferable to giving money.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Charities have to say how much of the donation actually goes to the cause.

The really efficient ones tend to be small, locally run by people who do all of the administration in their own time.

The big ones tend to be lower but still fairly reasonable. You just wouldn’t be able to get the scale, deliver specialist or sustained effort without full time skilled staff (e.g. a proper CEO on a proper salary). People will be happy to give up a day here or there but that isn’t sustainable when your goal is to deliver aid to people in poverty on the other side of the world. Likewise charities need to spend money to fundraise in a wide ranging game number of ways to keep the donations coming in.

I know people criticise big charities for paying their top jobs large salaries but they would never attract the talent needed to run a complex organisation with thousands of staff taking in and distributing £10’s of millions in donations each year. That’s pretty much a fact and tends to be forgotten in the internet outrage.

 

[Superficial]

I appreciate that this may not be the greatest day to say this but there is another VERY large element that people should be aware of.

I went out with a lady that is an charity industry journalist (yep they're a thing) and she travels extensively, pricipally to South America and Parts of Africa.

Anyway she changed my entire opinion of the charity industry as she explain that there are many charities she personally would not give to...one being the Red Cross, which at the time I was giving to along with World Vision. She explained that her work regularly rubs shoulders with the higher ups in many charities and that many of them simply waste huge sums of money that we all all donate on corporate events and functions as well as travel and whole bunch of other rubbish that we do not consider when we give to these people.

The problem with charities is that people automatically assume that damn near 100% of the money they get is used for their cause but it simply isn't the case...charities are Non-Profit and therefore untaxed...but that is NOT the same thing as being chocked full of volunteers - far from it. She told me that salaries are enormous along with executive perks too.

in addition to the above I make a point not to give to charities a I have never heard of because, and I'm sorry to say, it does rather look like a lot of them are started as a gravy train.

Thankfully the industry is regulated and each chairity must by law and by-and-large they do but some are worse than others:

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/how-much-charities-spend-good-causes

 

[BowdonUK]

I don't really see how building schools, wells and other structural buildings like that is considered charity. It's more like foreign aid.

The reason the people in those countries don't have those type of things is because of corrupt governments not letting the money, information and knowledge trickle down to their populations. They are purposely being kept poor in order to control them. We shouldn't be throwing money in the direction of a country that is acting like that.

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

We should be teaching the people how to build things, where to get the materials from. Finding a way to incentise the foreign government to get involved, and as a last resort lets do a regime change for genuinely good motives.

If I want to give to a charity I will do. I don't like being door-stepped, especially when there are scammers that do that too.

Charity shouldn't be about throwing money at countries and people. It should be about changing lives. I think if we had more confidence in the charity process more would be given. But the process of donations have been corrupted. I remember a few months ago some of the transgender community were talking about how companies will fly the lgbt banner and say they are giving money to that community. But the companies take most of the money before it even gets to its target.

Charity, politics, and religion, seems to attract a large number of psychopathic scammers.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

We should be teaching the people how to build things, where to get the materials from.

Hate to burst your bubble but that tends to be how it actually works, most charties that building schools etc. are not shipping down a bunch of bricklayers and London bricks from the UK to build a school. They use local labour and materials, they have the knowledge, just no resources to actually do it because they are in absolute poverty.

 

[BennoUK]

More than a couple of pounds goes to pay the CEO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEO_compensation_among_charities_in_the_United_Kingdom

Not only that, it’s the huge London based HQs they have - why?!

The Salvation Army is the worst - have you seen that swanky HQ of theirs right next to St Paul’s on the way down to the millennium bridge? Clearly most of the donations are not making it to the actual good cause!!

 

[Efour]

Many Charities use 3rd party professional fund raising companies and these guys can be bloody pushy because they get a cut.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Not only that, it’s the huge London based HQs they have - why?!

The Salvation Army is the worst - have you seen that swanky HQ of theirs right next to St Paul’s on the way down to the millennium bridge? Clearly most of the donations are not making it to the actual good cause!!

According to their website 91% goes to the cause, that's well inside the ballpark for a large Charity and way more than the likes Oxfam (84%) and BHF (76%). You might want to re-consider your statement....

Also have you ever thought what having a central London presence might actually do for the profile of the charity and therefore generate more income for it? It's the same reason you see all the big names in central London...

BTW I'm not here to defend these charities, but I thought 3 seconds of google searching might add something to the conversation rather than it turning into a 'brexit means brexit' type debate with no actual substance or facts.

 

[BennoUK]

According to their website 91% goes to the cause, that's well inside the ballpark for a large Charity and way more than the likes Oxfam (84%) and BHF (76%). You might want to re-consider your statement....

Also have you ever thought what having a central London presence might actually do for the profile of the charity and therefore generate more income for it? It's the same reason you see all the big names in central London...

Yeah, well that would depend on what they define as the ‘cause’ and what can be attributed to it from an accounting point of view - I am high skeptical of that figure and even if it is 91%, it could be higher without trying to act like an international business.

Yes, I have thought of the London presence and hence the anger at it. They would be much better spending that money on small modest centres in towns/cities all over the country for a visible presence where I live and I would donate to them, as it is they do not and I will give them nothing - I can’t be alone in my thinking either.

I give directly to the homeless to spend as they desire. If some of that goes on a drug habit rather than hostels/food, then so be it - at least it is a 100% transfer.

\edit - there are volunteers who I sometimes see giving the homeless haircuts/hot meals in the high street - they will have my money in the future as I can see them helping a very visible problem.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Good job there are laws and a regulator for policing how they account for their money. Please let us know why you think its wrong or how they could increase with without reducing the overall money spent on the cause.

Again your are completely ignoring the advantages of having a prominent London presence, you can attract top talent to run the charity (or a business for that matter, that's why they are there after all) as well as having access to the wealthiest cross section of the population who might want to you significant donations. The top few % donors tend to make up a disproportionate amount of donations. A charity like the Salvation Army also has a presence around the UK so I don't know what your beef is there either and clearly have not even bothered spending 3 seconds on Google before posting. While not alone in your thinking doesn't mean its been fully thought through.