Why I won't be giving anything to mainstream charities again.

Following the demise of the Lads mags, I've decided to sponsor an out of work glamour model.

I have to agree Study. I'd like to think I'm a compassionate sort (away from the forum) but it was on the radio the other day about all these scammers who rattle their tins under your nose who cream off the lions share and leave the actual charity with about 20 pence in the pound. We're now down to sponsoring a young girl in Africa, Donkeys in Palestine, a couple of other animal charities and we give to the Sally Army. It seems to have become something of an unsavoury racket with plenty of these firms.

I_agree_with_nick

In the 21st century there is no compassion, only business,war and greed !

I totally agree with you study.  Especially about the donating to shops.  Every time I move, which is often, I donate loads of good stuff to shops, so the last time I checked and I could not see hardly any of it

Save a fortune on your laundry bills by giving your dirty shirts to Oxfam. They will wash and iron them and you can buy them back for 50p.

An ex girlfriend of my ex boyfriend was always giving him stuff that she got from the charity shop she worked for. It is very annoying to think that the stuff you could have sold for serious money ends up in an employee's pocket

They published charity top earners and it was a disgrace how many were on £100K+ a year.

Lots of them had come from business and were already millionaires so should be working for free and volunteering imo

On a serious note, maybe anything half-decent goes on ebay where they may well get a better price than in the shops.

AFTERTHOUGHT  • December 28, 2015 10:44 PM GMT 


In the 21st century there is no compassion, only business,war and greed !

I agree with you there Afterthought

wages are a scandal

i_agree_with_nick    28 Dec 15 22:54 
Save a fortune on your laundry bills by giving your dirty shirts to Oxfam. They will wash and iron them and you can buy them back for 50p.

i_agree_with_nick

that was funny

Stolen from Viz (nap)

“good writers borrow, great writers steal.” Happy New Year Mike/Guys.

Total agreement with o/p and to some of the smaller charities a gift of 20 or 30 quid is desperately needed. Still not convinced? Two words 'Kids Company'.

Problem now is you know if you sign up to one of these charities say £5 a month or something of that ilk the charity will then give your information to dozens of other charities who will then bombard you with loads of junk mail, I think the whole process has become very divisive, yes they may be charities but its just become " big business "
With these large salaries  only a fraction of the money donated goes to where you would expect it to go.

There are more than 195,289 registered charities in the UK that raise and spend close to £80 Billion a year.
Together, they "employ" more than a million staff – more than our car, aerospace and chemical sectors – and make 13 Billion ‘asks’ for money every year, the equivalent of 200 for each of us in the UK.
In England and Wales there are; 354 charities for birds and 255 charities for animals.
A 2013 parliamentary inquiry into the charity sector found there were so many charities that the Charity Commission for England and Wales was struggling to ensure that most registered charities were genuine, rather than tax avoidance schemes or political campaigning groups.

The inquiry said the Commission, which receives more than 900 calls, letters and emails every day, didn’t have the staff to check whether our donations were actually going to real charitable purposes at all.

Plenty going to daesh

I attended a charity tennis tournament last year and I'm convinced it was rife with corruption.

Why did an Englishman win?

Churches are charities - give generously !

I agree.

I played in a tennis open event up here a few years ago now and got through to the semi in both singles and doubles. They were so determined that a sassenauch wasn't going to win that they abandoned the competition and I never got paid out.

There was a funny one on the radio a few days ago. Right wide boy. Can't remember the exact details but he'd set up a company and employed his family and if memory serves me right they were collecting money to give to the company with some fancy pull your heart strings title like, "Childrens Lives Hanging By A Thread." Of course they didn't tell the gullible who they were coning that it wasn't a charity. The interviewer pressed him several times how much they'd given to charity and every time he straight batted it and said they had donated to, "Childrens Lives Hanging By A Thread" which of course was this company with him and his family getting the spondies.

I got a semi in the mixed doubles once... perfectly natural imo...

As long as you didn't try to return service with it.

Oh please. short tennis skirts and cotton panties - I am trying to bet on the footy at the moment!!!

Not sure what the others were wearing  Errr!!!

Mobo, do you contribute to all those charities for FGM? I wonder if some of them are scams? What do you think?

they just didn't like you EO !



Fury over £234000 salary of the top boss at Save the Children

www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Fury-234-000-salary-boss-Save-Children-Charit...

2 Feb 2014 - Fury over £234,000 salary of the top boss at Save the Children: ..... Paris Hilton looks downcast in head-to-toe black after back-to-back trips to ...


Statement on CEO pay | Save the Children International

https://www.savethechildren.net/statement-ceo-pay


Save the Children International's CEO, Jasmine Whitbread, earned $368,260 in 2014. As CEO of Save the Children International Jasmine Whitbread is the head ...


How We Pay Our Staff | Save the Children UK



www.savethechildren.org.uk/pay-at-save-the-children


At Save the Children, each of us is driven by our mission to build a world where all ... Our principles are to pay our staff a fair salary that is competitive within the ... the Chief Operating Officer, the HR Director and the Reward Manager, all in an ...

every few years there is a scandal over pay .... and then it appears to be forgotten

I picked on Save the children as it was my charity of choice until a similar scandal erupted

... it appears they have gone back to scratching each others backs

WHO ARE THE TRUSTEES ?

give to people you know - big issue or local food banks?

Apparently Cafod seem to be operating in a similar manner to Save the Children. They had a delegation travel abroad recently on a jolly that cost a large amount in expenses.

I've stopped giving to charities completely as they are now all tarred with the same brush as far as I'm concerned.

David Milliband paid $600,000 per annum by refugee charity International Rescue. The whole thing stinks.

wtf is milliband going to do for them??

The same as Blair did as middle east peace pudding ambassador

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.

That is very interesting, Kelly.
Sort of reinforces my view.

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.

Good post Kelly, cheers.

Gordon Brown has his own charity

after expenses of course

Had to meet an estate agent at a brand new property, a good few years ago, to carry out an inspection.

The place was a fair size (almost 3,000 sq ft) and lavishly appointed.

Asked what the owner did, and was told he is a charity fund raiser, based in London during the week!

The house isn't visible from the road now but these pics should give you an idea....

Jan 3, 2016 -- 12:33AM, Just Checking wrote:

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.

This 'leftie hypocrisy' thing you attach to every thread seems to be something of an obsession.

There are greedy, self-serving, perverted, lying politicians on the side of all 'wings'.
They don't just make their money from charity either, they claim most of it from the public with dodgy expenses no other occupation would provide, with second and third properties they don't need and so on.
So perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the hypocrisy of politicians.

The charity rip-off is not the single domain of Miliband and I'm quite sure that there are many other politicians and ex-politicians of all persuasions on the various gravy trains they've developed for themselves. There are certainly plenty of slimy career politicians in government and the mere fact they align themselves with any charity should be warning enough to all those who wish to help those less fortunate than themselves ought to be looking at both the charity and the people involved.

As was outlined by Sidthekid earlier in the thread, there are now too many to police.

Sorry STUDYFORM but I'm not intelligent enough to understand your last post. Are you Vilifying Miliband or making an exception because you agree with his political leanings ?

  Confused of North Essex

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.

btw coat,
I might bring my brother on Tuesday too if that's OK with you.
(saved me having to play snooker with him tonight).

The more the merrier Study

Bascially if george osborne left government and got £425,000 a year miking a charity, lefties would be all over this forum screaming about it. But a bit of what-about-ery from a little apologist studyform is just classic hypocrisy. FFS that "socialist" Sturgeon is on more than Cameron as a Salary for "running" Scotland, and she spends her time appointing "ministeraial" posts to her friend women to make up 50/50 job quotas to areas that aren't even devolved to that parliament in the first f**kin place, so are beyond pointless.

Is there any "socialist" apologist out there that can't see why zimbabwee is their role model, not a warning?

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

wtf are you talking about.
I never see 'lefties all over this forum screaming" about anything as much as I see you waxing lyrical about the wonderous conservatives and berating everyone who could possibly have anything to say on any subject - which may in any way differ from your (mostly blinkered, completely bombastic) view, as a 'leftie' whatever it is they are trying to say.
I am not an "apologist" for anyone. My thoughts in starting this thread were specifically about how "charities" operate. I couldn't give a toss about which party various people who can be pin-pointed belong to. Nor could I give a toss about Miliband, Osborne, left, right, top of fecking bottom. Nor about who's appointing friends to what position, though if you think Sturgeon's the only one, you are incredibly naïve.

You, as always, are just using this as another thread to make the same boring, blinkered political points.

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 :)

You too JC, hope you have a wonderful 2016! If you ever venture up north, I'll treat you to some Haggis, Neeps and Tatties and Whiskey and introduce you to Nicola. It may change your stereotypical view of her and the Scots. She is a highly intelligent woman and extremely articulate.

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.

along with 'one of my friends is black' spouted by racists

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

oh what timing study - that goldring  or whatever his name is, trying to play it all down as though it was only a few involved etc etc

its in the guardian

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

you won't like me saying this but I am appalled at the islamic 'charities'   -   amazing scenes

I bet there are zillions of others that are not really a charity

muslim women's network uk

Charities seem to be the opposite of what they should be, should be well off people working for free or enough to get by, the wages of some of their employees is utterly disgusting. I know i would not be able to sleep at night if i worked for a charity and took home their crazy salaries.

I have worked in an oxfam shop for free and drop stuff to them every few months, now i detest them, which is the wrong view to have.

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.

The whole 'not for profit' sector has grown into a mega multi million industry. A few investigative journalists would unearth some gems I am sure. How did the Oxfam story get into the public sphere. Was it a whistleblower and a journalist?

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?

The Salvation Army has revealed it sacked four members of staff in the past year for sexual misconduct in Britain.

The Christian charity was forced to fire three employees for having sexual relations with clients and the forth staff member was let go for using a work computer to access pornography.

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

I remembered this thread. Some really good posts then it descended into the usual 'leftie' stuff and died.

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

Sure.

Slicer. I don't understand your post.

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

I remember reading an article on a charity that was folded because it gave less than 10% to the cause it was there for.
TMM that should be a starting point when issuing charity status. They should have running costs restricted to a reasonable level.
Not sure what that would be but it would certainly curtail wages offered.

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

I am saying that you foresaw the problems with the charidees. At least that was my loose interpretation.

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.

Exactly. Your main points from the op are so relevant today it is amazing. Anyway, good luck.

.