So as much as I dislike charities having worked for one that turned out to be run and owned by fraudsters. I’m a bit apprehensive to say the least especially since admin fees are a hit.

I have several quick questions…

Do these cancer type research charities actually need money upon money from fund raisers on top of gov’nt chunks so I hear that they receive anyway iirc ?

Why on earth would I want to tick the box to add 5% in order to top up my donation to cover fees for the platform ?

Can I really trust this site to deliver my monies to the charity ?

oh and f cancer but also f charities that are preying upon donations and these f so called platforms to receive payments.

😕

Can’t comment on the needs of any one charity, but certainly some will be doing research that wouldn’t be funded by any other source.

The tick box is asking if you want to donate 9.50 to the charity and pay a 50p admin cost, or donate 10 quid to the charity and pay a 50p admin cost.

A charity could set up its own platform but would likely cost just as much to operate and be less convenient for you.  In days of old someone had to count the cash, bank it, etc and probably had lots of promised money that never materialised, and I am sure both fraudulent and accidental never getting sent in donations.

ive never heard any suggestion that the big name platforms were not passing on the payments.

Thanks for info, yes having understood the 5% shortly after I posted this. 🙄😂

think I’ll skip it tbh as I have no trust for these things.

😬

Just Giving are a for-profit company. There are alternative services with lower fees, so more money goes to the charity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_charity_donation_services_in_the_United_Kingdom

Thanks Craig, exactly as I thought and I shall take a looksee later on.

👍

Most efficient is a bank transfer direct to the charity. Also specify that you want no further mailings or phone calls. The cost of follow up marketing can eat up a lot of the value of a single donation. Its extra work for you but it is the most efficient by some way

At the last count Just Giving still hadn’t released the £17k+ raised for a member of the mountain bike comunity who was injured last year (in part through this forum)…

update here apparetly they released it after 80 days and getting panned on social media…

JustGiving still has Peter Lloyd's money from the fundraising campaign that ended 78 days ago! You can't phone them,…

Posted by Ben Mills on Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Got to confess I didn’t appreciate that JG could be used to raise money for an individual rather than a registered charity. Not excusing a 78 days delay but some sort of investigation must have to be done by them before handing over the cash. Seems like it could be prime for misuse/fraud.

Giving to a charity via JG is many times better than making your donation via a chugger employed by a third party firm. And the 5% pales into insignificance when compared to the ‘experience’ cost (parachute jump, charity place in a high profile marathon etc) that the event charges the charity. I stopped sponsoring people running the London marathon using an official charity place when I learnt that their place in the marathon cost the charity north of £600 so for your average runner less than half of what they raise actually goes to the charity and remainder is effectively a bribe to the marathon to jump the queue and get a place on the start line.

As for charities in general I am sure there are some dubious organisations but the ‘admin’ cost thing is often totally misunderstood and used as a tool by the ignorant to bash charities over the head. For example a charity that supports adults with learning difficulties and employs 700 care workers – the employees that recruits those care workers, trains them and checks for suitability to work (CRB), administers their pay and investigates when thing go wrong is considered an admin cost on official figures. But would you trust an organisation that employed 700 people that did such difficult and intimate work that didn’t have that structure in place?

I’m using Virgin Money’s charity giving service. They are not for profit so more of the money raised goes to the good cause.

Unfortunately, most people do not question this. This has been a bug bear of mine for years. Glad to see they are others on here who think similarly.

Also not many people question or care to understand/know what percentage of the donation made to the charity is used towards the admin& governance vs charitable spending.

Unfortunately, most people do not question this. This has been a bug bear of mine for years. Glad to see they are others on here who think similarly.

All charities of any size have to spend a fair percentage on maintaining / finding new donors, it’s just a cost of doing business. Most are quite open about it. e.g Amnesty tell all their donors the costs in their annual report.. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/our-finances

‘Charity’ is a bit of a loose term these days.

There’s a lot of ‘soundalike’ con artists, these are the types who drop those Sweet Boxes into offices or put bags through your door asking for old clothes, these tend use names that sound like charities you know, but in reality they’re in the business of providing an income for their owners and only give a very small % of their income to actual charities who do ‘good work’. I know of one person who built a small fortune for himself doing this and pretty much retired at 40ish.

There are ‘charities’ who are actually 3rd Industry Providers, we work with a lot in my place – they’re ‘charities’ in a legal sense, but in reality they’re in the business of providing outsourced public services through grants. They all do ‘good work’, some genuinely seem to do their best, run efficiently to provide the best service to users etc, some seem to me to be very top heavy management wise, are ruthless and aggressive to deal with and seem pretty keen to run as efficiently as possible to provide the minimum level of service as per their contract with local government, treat their front line staff poorly whilst the little clique who run them seem to have very comfortable lives.

I’m glad to say we also work with Charities who are actually what most people would think charities are actually like – from Children’s Hospitals to  Homeless Shelters who take the minimum they need to actually run the thing and the rest goes to ‘good work’ – we bend over backwards to help them, we’ll ‘make do and mend’ stuff to keep them running.

My advice, if you want your hardearned to do the maximum good, give them cash, send them money directly, or offer them some of your time. Yes, they do, especially the bigger ones do have an admin team, a HR dept, a well-paid MD (usually a lot less than they’d get in Private Sector’) corporate headquarters and all that, some people see this as some kind of smoking gun excuse to never give to charity, but you can’t just employ a few thousand staff to do ‘good work’ without some kind of organisation.