I work for one of the biggest charities in the uk and I have to say without any shadow of a doubt they are the most inept, badly managed ,fraudulent, wasteful  and generally clueless employer I have ever worked for (and I’ve worked for a few).

Examples:

The overwhelming majority of donations (90% +) are sold on to third party businesses at rock bottom prices or simply thrown away. For example any books not deemed sellable (owing to lack of storage room, poor condition, or an existing abundance of that particular title, genre etc) are sold to World of Books for the princely sum of 17p per kilo. Staff training is poor and many valuable and rare books are missed and offloaded in this way. Indeed the tendency for most staff is simply to hazard a guess when it comes to price.

World of books source exclusively from Uk charities and are very successful.  Absolute nonsense that a company should be able to make a profit from charitable donations in such a way.

The same is true of clothing donations which are sold to “rag” companies who pay by the kilo in a similar way . Much of this stock ends up sourced to high street retailers as boutique and vintage at a premium price. Again, completely ludicrous.

In order to secure the very best price,  the optimal way would be to sell the more specialised items (lenses, rare books etc) on ebay. However such sales are credited to the general charity ebay account and not to the individual shop so there is no incentive to sell in this way. Managers see ebay as one giant disincentive and would rather take a tenner for an item and be credited with that sale than the charity take £100 for it but the shop be credited with zilch. Ridiculous.

Fraud and theft is commonplace from the volunteer level right up to senior management . However prosecutions are rare as the management will do anything to avoid bad publicity. Petty cash “payments” are commonplace and I know of several drivers who were clearing 3x their official salary cash in hand.

The story in the paper today that Miliband the Davider is getting £425k salary from a charity makes me absolitely sick. Wtf specific skills did he gain in his life as a slimey career politician that he deserves that sort of money to run a ****ing charity?

The hypocrisy of lefties, I'm sure he'd not be short of a bit banker bonus bashing when they've made large profits for their company, when he's off milking the donations to a non for profit organisation to an obscene degree. That's 3x Cameron's salary, for running the UK.

Gordon Brown has his own charity

after expenses of course

What I'm saying is they all do it.
Not just the lefties. Some posters on here find it necessary to make an unnecessary political point at every opportunity.
It's nearly always 'luvvies, lefties, do-gooders' whether it's the press, the TV, the weather, state of the economy (any time, any economy), music, their (almost certainly limited) sex lives, roads, education and in this case.... charities.

What I'm saying is that this is not a leftie/rightie issue. It's an issue about how charities are a great big con.

I have no doubt that for every Miliband there's a Shapps or an Archer.
You can guarantee that the same people who post such as that quoted in my last post, would avoid mention of a similar occurrence if said politician had been a Tory.

fwiw, I have no affiliation with his political leanings, just less loathing than that of his supposed opposition.

That's what I'm saying.....

See you next Tuesday.

The more the merrier Study

PS Spelling mistake intentional, let's see how that pans out

I've voted Labour in the past and I'm happy to say it to everyone on the forum, and also I might again if I believe it's the best choice. If anyone here is a stereotype, it's not me.

Glad to have made your new year mac, have a good one all of you :)

It does irritate me when they say 'we only pay salarys that are in line with the rest of the sector'. I always find it interesting which lines fatcats use to justify themselves. Thats one of the slimiest imo.

The recent Oxfam nonsense reminded me of this thread (and my big moan about charities) from over 2 years ago.

The whole 'sector' should be regulated by someone who actually regulates - Not the charities commission, which is as effective as the gambling commission

muslim women's network uk

We gave some really good stuff to an Oxfam shop, including new clothes costing £100's it never appeared in the shop we left it at and I always doubted it ever made the sort of money we intended for the charity.

Also, just walking home from work, along my local high street, there are loads of charity shops. Their prices are ridiculous!!!
2nd hand board games and books at about 70% of their original price.
The whole thing is just a wage earner for a few thousand people.

It - like so much else - is easy to fix. Just have a maximum salary of 40K. Then maybe they could employ people who really are there to help and not just there to have a career.

Agree with all the reservations on here regarding said charities.

However, there is one that maybe comes close to being 'squeaky clean' (possibly') and that one is the Salvation Army. I've never come across a bad word or a scandal involving them at all, unless someone on here knows otherwise?

Study- with hindsight like that, you really should buy lottery tickets!

That because at the end of problematic issues lies a leftist at the helm, with double standards.

Slicer. I don't understand your post.

I.S. course it is. only a "Leftist" could do these things!
ffs.
it never stops.

They are almost impossible to check properly. Because everything is given, usually without receipt.

Probably mate, yes.
I've been moaning about them for a few years.
Especially when I learned how much of a "career" it can be and that it is now a "sector" in which to make a living.