Quote: keewik @ February 1 2013, 11:20 PM GMT

Silly bastards! Sounds like a real turn-off. Don't forget cancer research. When all's said and done people come first ( though I belong to RSPB).

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I wish smaller and less well known Charities could get more support.
A large company who choose a cause each year invited suggestions from employees and the person who made the suggestion put a lot of effort into a presentation, complied with everything they were asked, was given the impression their charity had been chosen, then when it went to a higher level it was thrown out because 'no-one knows anything about it.'

It boiled down to it not providing them with the kind of kudos the wanted.

No one knows about it = no funds = no advertising = no one knows about it.

Oh god

Oh dear dear god

Have you seen the advert for Sky TV featuring Robert lyndsey and that fat welsh girl off Gavin and Stacey?

F**k me

Skin crawlingly puke making shit of the highest order

What a pair of c**t bags

Ruth Jones.

But yes, the ad is horrible.

Getting begging letters from charities you already support drives me absolutely mad. I appreciate that they are trying to get more money, but they go about it so badly that you end up regretting giving them your information. The only charity I support that doesn't bug me on a regular basis is Earthwatch Institute - they just send me a bi-annual 'this is what we're doing' letter.

I'm also growing increasingly fed up with adverts on the TV showing crying children trying to make you feel guilty that you have indoor plumbing. Guilt is not the way to get people to actively involve themselves in improving the lives of people around the world, it's a way of getting people to put awful truths out of their mind by telling themselves that they have already done all they can by donating £2 a month. Give us your money and we'll take care of this - you won't have to think about it anymore.

There's so much dishonesty and cynicism in charity fundraising. If the charities were honest and open about how they use all the money, produced adverts that gave detailed information about the projects that the money goes towards, and allowed people to feel like they weren't just throwing money into the void they would have so much more success.

On the phone the woman was pretty much telling me off for giving a one off donation

Oh no, don't do that - give us cash amount per month

Monthly is easier for us due to admin costs blaa blaa blaa

F**k off!!

Sorry if my thoughtlessness is inconveniencing you in any way

Goooood grief

Quote: lofthouse @ February 2 2013, 12:48 PM GMT

On the phone the woman was pretty much telling me off for giving a one off donation

Oh no, don't do that - give us cash amount per month

Monthly is easier for us due to admin costs blaa blaa blaa

F**k off!!

Sorry if my thoughtlessness is inconveniencing you in any way

Goooood grief

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You should have hung up on her.

It's the dishonesty, cynicism and guilt tripping of charities, especially their advertising campaigns, that make an egotistical c**t like myself feel good for not donating.

Quote: Blissfully Ignorant @ February 2 2013, 12:51 PM GMT

It's the dishonesty, cynicism and guilt tripping of charities, especially their advertising campaigns, that make an egotistical c**t like myself feel good for not donating.

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Wouldn't quite go that far, but I can't imagine you're alone in being completely put off donating. It amazes me that charities haven't realised this.

I keep seeing ads for a bog standard documentary about Richard III's bones being found in a carpark. But Simon Farnaby is in it, which keeps making me think it's a comedy mockumentary.
What's going onnnnnn?

Charities are not clueless, they are preying on peoples consciences to the max.
Apparently the best and most honest charity you should donate to are Doctors Without Borders (or "Médecins Sans Frontières"). I think its largely volunteer based with qualified doctors sent to crucial poverty and war stricken areas. Strangely, I don't think I have ever seen them advertised anywhere.

Quote: Blissfully Ignorant @ February 2 2013, 1:02 PM GMT

Charities are not clueless, they are preying on peoples consciences to the max.
Apparently the best and most honest charity you should donate to are Doctors Without Borders (or "Médecins Sans Frontières"). I think its largely volunteer based with qualified doctors sent to crucial poverty and war stricken areas. Strangely, I don't think I have ever seen them advertised anywhere.

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The charity-sector is hardly a money-making scheme, I think it's just mismanaged.

A relative of mine has worked in financial management for a number of large charities and is quite scathing about how they spend the money on themselves, e.g little old ladies giving their time for free in charity shops so that paid officials on forty grand a year can treat themselves to expense account lunches.

Main charities I give to are Practical Action and EIA; both seem fairly focussed in their spending but I could do without quite so many begging letters from them telling me this.

Quote: zooo @ February 2 2013, 12:59 PM GMT

I keep seeing ads for a bog standard documentary about Richard III's bones being found in a carpark. But Simon Farnaby is in it, which keeps making me think it's a comedy mockumentary.
What's going onnnnnn?

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Yes, I saw that. If it was Jim Howick it might make more sense... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6JczvS1PL4

2 things that have made me resent large charities:

1 - The adverts already mentioned. Aggressive narrators, almost getting angry at you for having a home of your own etc. If he's narrating it for free, I'd give him some lee-way, but I doubt it somehow. Plus the graphic images that I frankly don't want to see uninvited when I'm at the dinner table etc.

2 - Chuggers. Students on commission-salaries, who work for a "marketing agency". In many cases, they do a different charity every day, and try and harass and guilt-trip you to sign up, so they can have a bit of weekend beer money.

I don't think these charities are rotten to the core, or anything. Although I imagine a few upper-middle-management types could probably have their fingers in the biscuit tin occasionally.

However, it seems they have allowed themselves to be run by the type of bullish dickwads who run and market regular companies, and thus use the same aggressive, deceitful, cynical and increasingly-desperate methods to gain 'business' that the regular companies do.

I know so many people who are sick to death of charities now, and any initial increase in donations that the Chugger Revolution might have initially gained, is now being wiped-out by public cynicism. It's just short-termism.

Anyway, when I was in London, I got to know a homeless guy near Waterloo East station. Really interesting guy, who never asked for a penny. I used to drop him a quid whenever I passed (which was most days).

That's charity for me. Giving a little bit that has a small-enough target to make a difference. Giving money to "AIDS in Africa" is spreading it so thinly that it evaporates.

Careful not to choose a smack-head though.

In Glasgow, chuggers have had limitations put on them as to how much time they can work the city centre. So now the bastards are coming outwith the city to pester us on our doorsteps. They really do annoy me necause so much of the donations will be going on their salaries and very little will go to the actual charity. Likewise some collectors at Supermarket doors. I got into conversation with a woman once who was collecting for children with leukaemia. When she referred to the response she'd had the previous week when she was collectin g for people with kidney problems, I realised she must have been employed by yet another agency which gathers in the cash and only hands back very little to the charities.

One charity which relies heavily on volunteers, so spends a lot less on admin, is the Leukaemia Research Fund.

An elderly lady I knew was so distressed by the pictures of starving children put through her door she signed up for more than she could afford and got into financial trouble. Similarly an elderly gentleman let a charity caller into his home, gave him all the money he had in his wallet and was then bombarded with phone calls.
If people approach me in the street I ask them politely if they would like to donate to a charity of my choice in return for my donation to theirs. No-one has taken me up on it yet.
I can't avoid the TV ads but I do have a sign on my door saying 'no charity callers.' I know some people think I'm mean and miserable, but I don't want to open my front door if I don't have to and I prefer to choose who I donate to.

The charity I support now has one part time paid admin and everything else is done by volunteers. Fundraising is done via coffee mornings, cake sales, sponsored mountain climbs etc, but the sponsors are almost always friends and families of the fund raisers and there are only so many times you can ask without becoming the type of person you don't agree with - ie, making people feel obliged, pressured, upset or guilty.

Getting a celebrity involved seems to help, but the chance of a small, unknown charity who can't advertise and are not easily recognised in the way that cancer charities are for example, are very slim.