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***** Santas Strike Force 2015!!! ***** BEASTY BONUS MODE!! (Details in OP)
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Well, you will be glad to hear that they just launched Bumbleance 2!
If you look real close at this pic you will see, in the background, a familiar logo
2vSPnAFd by Tom Murphy, on Flickr 0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Yup, and my front hall is currently buried under farm yard animal toys, colouring books and Fat Finger Freddie Crayons (which sounds like a London gangster to me but apparently they are all the rage in the recovering-kids set these days).
BrookieD is helping me with that one (see earlier in the thread)
Bumbleance 2 is on its way and I'm awaiting an invoice from (I think its) St Micheals school for children with special needs. Lexie is helping me with that one! (one of the NoDrama peeps who works there).
You really would be surprised how long it takes to get rid of 15K when you aren't just throwing it at people 0 -
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_Tombstone_ wrote: »Might stop them stabbing themselves or you.
I guess this is After Hours.
How about music, judo, yoga etc? The bumbleance is great. Just because some kids gravitate towards boxing because it's been the only activity in an area for a long time, that doesn't mean it deserves funding. I'm just raising a concern for the longterm health of the children involved.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
It's not one bit snarky or cranky. Kids that have it tough are deserving of a little something nice in their lives And boxing is amazing for fitness and fitness and exercise are important for mental health. Win-win.
Ok something more positive then... at xmas we did a hit on 4 kids homes. Kids who are looking for foster homes or off the street etc.
They asked us for consoles and age appropriate games. I went to my supplier and got 4 Xbox Ones. He told me they were selling out fast. 3 Kids beside me at his counter when I was picking them up had their eyes out on stalks.
I delivered them to the central organising office and they stood their looking at me.
I thought I had done something wrong!! "These are new" they said... yup! "These are new xbox ones". Emmm yeah? "You dont understand... these kids rarely get anything "new". They certainly never get the latest greatest new thing on the block".
I hadnt thought about it like that before... You know when you get a new bike or a new pair of runners and for that day you are cock-of-the-walk. These kids, they never get to feel like that. They just don't
Its incredibly hard to explain the feeling walking away from a meeting like that.... on xmas eve.
I wish everyone who donates could know what that feels like.0 -
Ok something more positive then... at xmas we did a hit on 4 kids homes. Kids who are looking for foster homes or off the street etc.
They asked us for consoles and age appropriate games. I went to my supplier and got 4 Xbox Ones. He told me they were selling out fast. 3 Kids beside me at his counter when I was picking them up had their eyes out on stalks.
I delivered them to the central organising office and they stood their looking at me.
I thought I had done something wrong!! "These are new" they said... yup! "These are new xbox ones". Emmm yeah? "You dont understand... these kids rarely get anything "new". They certainly never get the latest greatest new thing on the block".
I hadnt thought about it like that before... You know when you get a new bike or a new pair of runners and for that day you are cock-of-the-walk. These kids, they never get to feel like that. They just don't
Its incredibly hard to explain the feeling walking away from a meeting like that.... on xmas eve.
I wish everyone who donates could know what that feels like.
That just made me well up. I'm so glad you've donated to kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. We take it for granted that we can just go and buy Christmas presents for our kids, when there's so many out there who, as you said, never get to experience anything new, through absolutely no fault of their own.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Ah I was just coming here to update
The iCan people posted a nice set of pics here...
https://www.instagram.com/p/BFEV0P1oKJs/
The kid in the blue top posed for a pic with me and his eyes were on stalks at the Xbox One. He had had bloods taken at 8am that morning and had been there waiting for results at 12.30. He said "Next time I'll play on that while I wait!" I asked him what he liked to play and he said "Minecraft" .... as it happens I had bought the special Minecraft edition with the controller and a copy of Minecraft so I showed him it and safe to say he wont be bored next time waiting for his results.
The staff were SO nice, they couldn't have been more delighted.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Hey there! I've absolutely no problem with answering questions.
Are we a registered charity? No. That takes about 1500 a year to do formal account and returns and all the rest. I've been toying with the idea of asking someone to do it Pro Bono for my own protection as much as anything but then every year I think "this is the last year I'm doing this so whats the point!". I'm still kinda thinking that but given the whole Console boll*x, maybe this is a good idea regardless. We collect about 15,000 a year which means its likely to cost about 10% of the donations.
Do we do accounts? Not formal ones but I keep books. I keep a separate bank account into which all the money goes from the online donations and from private donations too. Out of that comes only amounts to pay for the projects. This means the money never mixes with my own cash. There is a very clear Church & State there which makes it all clean.
I keep a track of which projects got which amounts (at the start of this it was pretty speckled, now its a lot more organised). There are some payments I make on my credit card (things that need to be bought online) which have to be refunded to my credit card but in those cases I make a 1-to-1 payment for each transaction so that its clear whats going out and why. This makes it nice and neat. If money comes in, it goes into that account directly. If it comes out of that account its going to pay for an invoice or its going to pay for a credit card transaction that has been tracked.
In addition to this I send a rough budget to a mailing list of mods, ex-mods and interested parties. Why is it rough? Well, say I ear mark 3k for the children's arthritis ward in Crumlin (as I did)... it may cost more and it may cost less to execute on the project... I don't have precise costs at that point (the start of the year). Later I send a round up to clarify what costs were incurred.
I also encourage targets to post here (this also is a recent addition) so that people can see a direct connection between their money and the projects. It would be hard to fake that
SSF is not a charity. People give me money and I buy things for charities that I happen to know they need. That's it. Its no more formal than that. If I need a charity reg number to buy something for a charity, then either I get them to buy it and refund them (this is the most common) ... or I use their reg number and act on their behalf (like when Barretstown got iPads from Apple on the charity scheme they run).
As others have said, 100% of the money goes to the charities. SSF has actually cost me in things like taxi fares (I don't drive so delivering the goodies is usually done by cab) and things like website costs which I don't book to SSF because I kinda take that as my donation to the cause.
If you are really doubtful, I'm happy to sit down with you and go through say, last years expenditure (genuine offer!). But if you look at what we have done in the last year and then add up the donations, (which come to about 15,000). You can pretty easily see that there isn't much change to be pocketed by anyone
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Well a couple of independent people ARE involved in deciding where the money goes... and so far every admissible charity suggested here by the general public (eg: the children's arthritis ward in Crumlin just this year) has been sanctioned. I'm actually SHORT of admissible charities to support usually. In addition there is the oversight committee who I mail and who have input... I don't actually know many of them in person, I think I've met some of the mods once at a beers and I met Beasty once in a corridor... These are some of the biggest donators to the cause and they are content about where the money goes.
On the other hand, I take your point about being "seen" to be transparent and I've been working towards getting presentable informal accounts done, as much for my own protection as anything else. I'll take that on board this year as something that needs doing. I'm not sure about publishing them publically but they should at least be available on request and sent to the steering group formally. I'll get that sorted.
Fair enough?0 -
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Well a couple of independent people ARE involved in deciding where the money goes... and so far every admissible charity suggested here by the general public (eg: the children's arthritis ward in Crumlin just this year) has been sanctioned. I'm actually SHORT of admissible charities to support usually. In addition there is the oversight committee who I mail and who have input... I don't actually know many of them in person, I think I've met some of the mods once at a beers and I met Beasty once in a corridor... These are some of the biggest donators to the cause and they are content about where the money goes.
On the other hand, I take your point about being "seen" to be transparent and I've been working towards getting presentable informal accounts done, as much for my own protection as anything else. I'll take that on board this year as something that needs doing. I'm not sure about publishing them publically but they should at least be available on request and sent to the steering group formally. I'll get that sorted.
Fair enough?
Sounds like a good plan to me.
It might be a good idea to update the following from the webpage to incorporate the changes:How do we know we can trust you
I guess in short, you dont. But I have a long track record of doing crazy stuff for kids charities and all the SSF people on Boards.ie trust me implicitly. You can check later with the targets if you like! (Temple Street, Crumlin and also Barretstown have been hit in the past two years...
That's where I ended up when looking for the info so that's likely where most other people will end up too. And I think maybe it could be reworked a bit - be a bit more concrete. If that mentioned that a number of independent people gave the okay on where the money went and that accounts were available on request I'd never have asked the question. Hope you don't mind the suggestion.
As I've said it was never about criticising yourself or SSF. Just a question which I'm sure many people here will be asking about charities for the foreseeable future. Have donated in the past and will be happy to do so again in the future.0 -
Join Date:Posts: 29920
Nope, I don't take it personally at all, in fact I'm happy to explain. The whole mailing list thing was set up by me because one day I just sat there thinking "jesus, people REALLY trust me... maybe *no one* should be trusted this much!" and I sorta force-volunteered the people on that list as an over-sight committee.
I'll change the website (it needs a remake anyway) and put in some updated info about our processes.
You're not wrong about accountability, its a good thing.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 29920
Actually.... I have been thinking about this. The reason I didn't make the account completely public is because I felt people might freak at the horrendously inefficient state of most charities in Ireland but maybe its good that you know. Let me explain...
We collect monies at Xmas but xmas is a REALLY BAD time for charities to deal with us and also pretty bad for me to deal with them. Everything is cheaper in the Jan sales so I wait until then and typically do one symbolic hit at xmas. Most charities don't operate over the holidays and the ones that do, do so because they are collecting. That makes it bad timing for us to rock up and take up their time sorting out a "not just cash in the bucket" donation, which is BY FAR the sort of donation they prefer. (I've been asked outright a few times by charities if they could just have the money and I've always refused... some then haven't bothered continuing contact I have to tell you).
So, we kick off in Jan really, and it goes pretty much 8 months or so before I can execute on all of the projects. This is almost exclusively because the charities are slow. And I'm being kind there when I say "slow". Some are beyond incompetent. The bigger the charity, the more bureaucratic they are and for them, I pretty much just bypass their offices and go directly to the "in the field" people. These are the people I really want to deal with anyway, they know best what would really make a difference and they are SUPER keen to get their hands on the goods they need (as soon as they get their heads around the idea of "just tell me and I'll go buy it for you". )
Other charities like Bumbleance are delayed because we are a small cog in a big endeavour. Their new Bumbleance was delayed being fitted out for example (there are a MILLION additional safety checks before you can turn what is basically a hi-ace into an ambulance). So we ear mark money for them and keep it in the SSF account until they are ready for us.
Some charities simply ignore us, others respond and then when they find out they have to do a modicum of work (just finding out what the field guys would want) we never hear from them again. 3k isn't registering on most of these charity's bottom line, they need 300K to get excited.
The best charities are the ones like Blossom Ireland, its run by 3 mums with kids with special needs and my god they make a little go a long way. They asked us for iPads for example, then they set about using them to get the kids to make films with them and play games against each other, educational uses and all sorts of stuff. They were so so ecstatic when we delivered the goods it was heart melting.
The exception to the "avoid the big ones" rules are Barretstown because wow are they efficient. I have a very good contact in there who is a group leader and knows exactly what they could do with. She keeps me in her back pocket for those times she needs something special which is exactly what we are here for. Barretstown is a machine, a machine which manufactures fun, but a machine none the less. They some how manage to raise 2M a year while at the same time really maintaining the ground view and never taking anything for granted.
Rehab... I have a contact on the ground there and I go straight to the front lines. I know they have a bad rep now but unless their head office is going to confiscate rocking chairs from their houses for autistic kids, we're safe. That's one of the best things about this, our donations cant be put in someones arse pocket. Unless that person really really wants a rubber dinosaur in their back pocket. I dunno, some people are weird that way.
But this stuff is tricky. Its slow and its a pain and frankly some of the charities need a kick in the backside. A the time of writing I still have 7k ish left in the account. Now I've ear marked at least some of that for a charity that I have had to chase a few times. I cant spend it until I either hear from them, or I abandon them and find a new target. This means that the money sits in the account while these people twiddle their thumbs. I poke them, they respond and tell me they will get me the details... nothing happens. I poke them again, rinse and repeat. Its frustrating and the only positive is that at least we earn some interest on the money (which accrues into our SSF account).
No one is ever going to write back and say "free stuff? nah, we'll pass" so I am faced with a choice: Axe them and move on (which risks them coming back late to find Santa is broke now) or keep hanging on while they twiddle.
When people donate to SSF , they want to hear the good news. They want to feel like they did good and see the fruits of their donation. They don't want to hear the logistics I have to go through (and we haven't even discussed the trials and tribulations of "delivery" here)
So before I have kinda drawn a veil over that but perhaps I shouldn't. I do think that if you go on a ferris wheel, you don't necessarily want to know how its oiled and serviced.0 -
Guys I want to gauge interest (already spoke with DeV about it) on using some of SSF funds to help Féileacáin.
Féileacáin are the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death association of Ireland.
Up until two people very close to me lost babies at birth this year, I had absolutely no idea the number of parents who lost children in this way.
Féileacáin supply much needed support to these bereaved parents in many many ways, the way I think that SSF can help though, is by donating blankets/teddy bears/cameras to put inside memory boxes given to parents while they are still in hospital so that they can create some special moments with their little infant.
500 of these memory boxes were given to parents last year, that's 500 little babies who never made it home after birth. It would be so great if SSF could help keep these boxes going.
Would it be something you guys would be happy to see your money go toward?0 -
Story Bud? wrote: »Guys I want to gauge interest (already spoke with DeV about it) on using some of SSF funds to help Féileacáin.
Féileacáin are the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death association of Ireland.
Up until two people very close to me lost babies at birth this year, I had absolutely no idea the number of parents who lost children in this way.
Féileacáin supply much needed support to these bereaved parents in many many ways, the way I think that SSF can help though, is by donating blankets/teddy bears/cameras to put inside memory boxes given to parents while they are still in hospital so that they can create some special moments with their little infant.
500 of these memory boxes were given to parents last year, that's 500 little babies who never made it home after birth. It would be so great if SSF could help keep these boxes going.
Would it be something you guys would be happy to see your money go toward?
This gets a huge, huge +1 from me. This charity has helped far too many of my friends. Not only do they provide memory boxes and professional photographers, they also fund raise for cuddle cots, which allows parents to keep their much wanted baby next to them for just a few hours longer. Several boardsie friend have done a huge amount of fundraising for them.
They're an amazing charity.0 -
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