Friday 8 June 2018


How do we know our donations help people in need?

The total amount given to charity by generous Brits in 2017 was estimated to be £10.3 billion, according to the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), up slightly on the previous year.
The CAF says fewer people gave more last year as the number of people who gave to charity either via donations or sponsoring someone decreased from 2016.
SWMBO and I try to do our bit to help various good causes – monthly donations to a few causes dear to our heart; one-off events such as the Walk for Life and the Alzheimer’s Society Memory Walk and volunteering our time. Nothing unusual in any of that.
But SWMBO, who volunteers one morning a week in a local Cancer Research UK (CRUK) shop, got quite a shock recently when a TV programme revealed that only 20p from each £1 raised by CRUK actually goes to the people and organisations the charity is trying to help.
Apparently the money actually doing any real good when you donate to Age UK is just 5p from every £1 raised.
Now we all can understand that these charities have overheads – staff to pay, rent to find etc.
But just 5% or 20% of people’s hard-earned donations actually doing any good is mind-boggling.
All charities have their paid staff, usually in impressive multi-storeyed HQs on good salaries, and all rely heavily on volunteers, be it to man shops, shake collecting tins outside supermarkets or be on the ground helping needy people.
I bet most of these volunteers would recoil in horror if they knew how little of what they help to raise actually ends up helping people.
One woman who popped into the local CRUK shop this week to pay in her sponsorship money for the Race for Life said, quite innocently and perhaps even frustratingly, that she had heard that a very large percentage of people undertaking sponsored activities for charity never pay their money in. Is it just me or isn’t this absolutely outrageous?
Mind you, that snippet of information probably explains why most charities constantly remind people to pay their sponsorship money in.
Which of course means they are spending even more money on staff, phone calls, stationery and postage – all money that should be helping people.
I'm ready for you, Mr Squirrel.

Yep. It's war (right). My battle with a squirrel who keeps attacking our bird feeders has seen me unarmed. But no longer. Eat water. Much more fun than SIL's (sister-in-law's) suggestion of getting a squirrel-proof feeder.

You can’t help but have noticed there is a new series of it ain’t right, and it ain’t proper, sorry, Poldark, starting this weekend.
Numerous TV shows over the past week have featured cast members plugging the fourth series of the life and times of ordinary, and some extraordinary, folk in Cornwall in olden days.
I admire that there Capt. Ross for one simple reason – he has a sworn enemy in George Warleggan.
Which, in a roundabout way, leads me back to the subject covered in my last missive – the bucket list.
I want a sworn enemy. Every man should have one. But I am suffering sworn-enemy-less-ness.
Now that ain’t right. Applications on a postcard, please.

1 comment:

  1. The issue you discuss concerning the (alleged) tiny amount actually going to good causes out of each pound raised leads me to remind your reader about Rotary International. Most Rotary Clubs ensure that 100% of funds raised goes precisely where it was intended - to those less fortunate. In the Rotary Club to which I belong we rarely give hard cash, but purchase items that are needed.

    Many of the large charities are huge entities which require huge numbers of employees - the cost of which is also huge. Employing the 'best' people is important (?) and, as always, we only hear/see/read about the less savoury things that go on within the charity walls.

    The answer? I don't have one - but close with two thoughts. (1) What a generous bunch of people live in the UK (and some other parts of Europe) (2) Isn't it about time there was a cap put on the number of charities in the UK? Just saying...........

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