About 8 years back our eldest girl landed a post with a charity. It paid quite a bit more than her, then, position as deputy head of year in a good school, came with a car, mobile and a good expenses account
- she was also told of ways to boost her "extra income". She turned it down, especially when she learned that as much as a whole penny from all collections went to the charitable cause.
Duh...a whole penny from every pound.....
I'd say it impossible to run a charity of any size without some permanent employees. Just how many people could you find who are willing (and qualified) to take on what would be a full time job for free?
Which is better - a full time registered charity providing essential services to a council in exchange for funding - or a commercial firm doing the same thing? With shareholders to be paid.
Of course you could argue that a decent welfare state would have no need of any charities. But the way things are these days many essential services are provided by charities, rather than by the appropriate authority.
I'll give one example. A single pal is pretty ill with various cancers including bone cancer. He is still just about managing to live at home. His pain management is provided by nurses from the Trinity Hospice. A charity. Which does all the usual fund raising through charity shops etc.
In message , Andy Cap wrote
My pet hate is charities that seem to spend fortunes on junk mailing but haven't put in place any mechanism to determine that sending £1s of junk at a a time to some households results in a zero return.
I'm on the mailing list for the British Legion??/Poppy Appeal and it would take the contribution from hundreds of poppies sold by the real volunteers to pay for the junk they have sent me in the post in the past couple of years.
The above is not the only "charity" that seems to have an endless bucket of money to send junk mail. And how about the adverts on daytime TV urging people to part with "only" £2 a week (presumably to pay for the TV adverting)?
Even the suits running some charities seem to have no idea on how to spend money effectively on the real work of the organisation. I recently purchased a DVD from the Diabetes UK charity hoping that it may give some useful medical information about the condition.
I was presented with ready steady cook meets celebrity big brother (but of a lesser quality). It's a superficial cookery class given by some seriously overweight has-been TV cook, with self confessed zero diabetes knowledge, and a middle class chatting classes dinner party, sprinkled with so called TV "stars" discussing the condition in a disjointed way. The filming technique is by some meja graduate with no experience and the script is poor and cringe worthy. I gave up with the first few chapter in less than 5 minutes.
Perhaps the suits having seen the results of their spend didn't have the balls to say that it was bollocks for fear of losing their jobs?
There is some useful information on the DVD but why did they think is was _much_ less important than a poorly staged TV daytime programme look-alike. Cut out the rubbish and there is about 20 minutes worth of good information on the DVD - the rest is 50 minutes of pointless filler. For me a 20 minute DVD with all the relevant information would be worth the price I paid.
Logic says that this sort of bulk mailing does produce a worthwhile return
- otherwise why do it? Annoying though it might be. But commercial organisations use the same technique - blanket coverage including to existing customers.
Sorry to say, but many charities have been turned into corporations ... with agents on commission, and 3rd party collection agencies who work by taking a cut of what they raise in the name of that charity.
I had a "collector" for Macmillan Cancer Trust knock on the door a few weeks ago. I might have been tempted to put a fiver in the tin, but no ... he wouldn't accept that. It was either sign a direct debit form, or nothing. After he admitted he was being *paid* to go round "collecting", and that pay came from what people signed over, I asked him to leave.
Nowadays our charity is old and unwanted clothes into collection bags - hopefully they get to people who need them.
Trouble is many charities use professional fund raising companies and see very little of the money raised.
I have seen reports that the the company's whose callers sign people up for £2 per month or whatever take the first years money. Many people do not donate for more than a year and the charity gets nothing.
Same with the chuggers in the high street. When I was looking for a job there were plenty of charity fund-raising jobs available where pushy, cheeky employees were being sought quite openly.
Even Just Giving take quite a slice.
But of course that is a big scam in many cases too. Unless it's definitely a well known charity, the clothes collections often aren't even for a charity at all. I know this is almost a separate issue, but...
Sadly most of the collecting bags around here have charity names on them but closer inspection reveals that it is a commercial company that says it gives some money to charity - or not.
Whichever provides better value for money - eg the best care for the money available - which is not necessarily the charity.
Much of the managerial theory of firms applies to charities as to other organisations. So, for example, the top management of a charity may decide the key objective is to become "the leading charity for [x] in the UK". That can then justify (in their view) switching spending of charitable donations from direct "good works" to publicity and lobbying (and the press officers etc to do it). It's all justified by the greater good that will come from the ultimate accrual of power and influence - and beating the competing charities.
Also don't assume that charitable operations don't have to make a return on capital. Most charities competing for government business operate through subsidiary trading company which transfer some or all of the profits of that company back to the charity as a donation. The trustees of the charity ought to be asking some serious questions if the company is not making a return on any capital provided by the charity.
Didn't say it was.
Given the amount of dubious practices between councils and commercial organisations, I'd still put my money on the average charity.
Around here drug and alcohol charities and the like have to do the same as many NHS Trusts - tender for the various business available from PCTs, local authorities, county councils etc. Many are effectively not for profit businesses.
Professional suit wearers seem to be getting more and more divorced from reality. So many business people I know are so wholly convinced that whatever they do is great that your diabetes DVD bunch probably thought they could be in line for a Bafta.
There are several usenet forums where diabetes is discussed if you haven't found them: alt.support.diabetes.uk (fairly quiet but not a lot of flaming); alt.support.diabetes (mostly American, rather polarised and quite a lot of flaming, but some good stuff if you can filter out the rubbish); uk.people.support.diabetes; alt.health.diabetes and misc.health.diabetes. The last three I can't comment on.
Indeed. And it's important work for all of us. An addict in recovery is capable of going back to work, rather than being a burden (and worse) on the community. However, it would be pie in the sky to expect to find enough trained volunteers to be the councillors, etc.
In message , Chris Hogg wrote
The USA seems to have a lot of snake oil wonder cures for me to purchase :)
I'll stick with advice from UK sites and my very good community health centre.
There is a statutory requirement that the charity gets a minimum of 10% of any money raised in its name by an outside company. The company is also normally contracted to guarantee a minimum amount that the charity will receive each year. Many charities find that minimum sum is more than they could raise by conventional means. Donations to charities have dropped significantly since the founding of the Lottery Fund, as a lot of people have the impression that it now funds all charities.
Colin Bignell
And actually, the Diabetes UK printed material is very good - lots of stuff in their regular magazine too.
In many cases, the clothes go to a recycling firm, who pay the charity for the right to provide the service. A few, like the Salvation Army, do get first choice of the clothes, with anything even they cannot sell or use, going for recycling.
Colin Bignell
In message , Nightjar wrote
Not now that they have raided the funds to pay a few athletes millions for a few minutes appearance at something called the Olympics.
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