Charity Events - Where does it start / end?

mickmcl09

Controversial topic? Maybe.

Irish Independent highlighted that 18 CEOs out of 24 charities in Ireland were on more than €100k and some other charities wouldn't divulge what they pay their top dogs.

Will this change your view on charity?
Will sportif organisers put more thought into their nominated charity?
I.e. raising funds that go directly to the needs of a recipient(s) rather than national charities who soak up hugh amounts of generously donated cash for their own salaries.
Will the nominated charity of an event, be higher up your list in terms of considering whether to do the event? I'm not suggesting that you don't do an event because a certain charity is involved, however, I am suggesting that you consider doing another charity event instead based on the link below.


http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/charities-need-to-learn-austerity-2893078.html

Now before anybody gets started on me, there's great charities out there. Nearly all cycling clubs in the country do something charity related. All I'm saying is, should organisers review who their nominated charity is?

Like they say, charity starts at home, a certain charity comes to mind, as I dropped in all the excess food after an event during the year to one of their hostels. It felt like the money spent and raised on the event went directly to the end beneficiary in that instance.

HivemindXX

Running a large charity is like running any other large concern. Having a good administrator at the top will improve the work the charity does and most of the time that costs money.

I think the percentage of donations that go to the stated recipient instead of other expenses is a far better measure.

Some charities are basically scams. They run dinners and events to collect money and they distribute 90% of that money in appearance fees and other ridiculous benefits to the benefit of the organisers and their chosen cronies.

I consider a charity that distributes 90% of the money they receive and pays 900k in salaries to be doing a good job. One that pays 90% of the money they receive towards speaker fees and luxurious events but only pays a nominal 50k to the staff is a scam.

I hope the organisers of sportives do a bit more in depth research on what charities to support than just reading some unsourced, unattributed, rabble rousing opinion piece in the Independent.

RacoonQueen

Hard to know, a friend of mine has been working as an 'intern' for a charity for nearly a year. They are based across the road from a major Irish charity and one I've given money too freely over the last few years, considering it my charity. Apparently they got the front of their place fully painted twice last year, and, while it's a bigger charity they have 3 people doing the same job one person does where my friend is(though some of these could also be interns, people claim to know more than they do)

Must admit, the stuff she said did put me off a bit. Though it could just be office bitchiness that fueled her little rant. Apparently the charities are 'rivals' even though they are for completely different, unrelated causes... :rolleyes:

It would be interesting to see what % of what charities receive in donations go where.

Jawgap

I tend to be very picky about which charities I support as I know someone who worked for one of the larger ones and was shocked to hear some of things she came out with - this one in particular had a strong commercial attitude in its approach to fund raising, which to my mind grated with the whole notion of "charity."

Any charity that uses "chuggers" is definitely out in my book - I don't care how worthy the cause is!!

reilig

You just have to look at one of our presedential candidates. She had been promoting herself as head of one of the biggest volunteering groups in Europe - Special Olympics. Now I think that Special Olympics is great and the people that volunteer for to work with the athlethes are brilliant! But this woman had built her campaign on the idea of volunteering and she had me, and half of the people who volunteer for special olympics, convinced that she too was a volunteer. I was disgusted when i heard that she receives €150,000 per year for it, as well as €50k per year for being on government appointed boards. We all need money for to eat and live, but she must be living on caviar. How would she survive on the average industrial wage if she did get into the Aras???

Anyway, sorry for going off topic, but you can see that charities are very often not what they appear to be. Wording is everything and 100% of your donationrarely goes directly to the cause.

Lumen

mickmcl09 wrote: »

Like they say, charity starts at home

Yeah, but most people who say that actually mean "charity ends at home".

Harrybelafonte

I did a lot of work for charities over the last 11 years in producing media for them. It didn't take long to be put off by a large number of them. Bad organisation and infighting and an inability to communicate internally and externally meant they wasted large amounts of money having to redo work simply because they didn't check things properly or get the go ahead from the correct people. It was a bit like working for various gov departments, except even the civil service were able to get stuff done quicker and cleaner. They were given huge amounts of leeway simply because they were charities and they squandered it. In saying that, there were people there who did their jobs well and worked really hard, harder sometimes to make up for the laziness of others I have a personal list now of all the different charities I will not give money to, and in a way it's very depressing to see other people donating to them.

I still give money to The Irish Red Cross, even though there have been some terrible management stories from there, so someone probably views me the same way.

Isn't there a Charity Evaluator site for the United States? It'd be nice to have the same thing here.