'charity' holidays

linky on BBC site

Finally a BBC article I agree with. Nothing annoys me more…

Will you sponsor my marathon to raise money to pay for my flights to trek in the Andes to raise money for me to go to the Sahara on a sponsored camel trek to raise money to pay for me to swim with dolphins?

*rage*

So this doesn’t bother you as much?
Community service for killing a second cyclist

Calm down, it’s just a figure of speech.

I was reading about Phillipa Forrester and her husband Charlie, who’ve bought a large chunk of Amazonian rainforest, to help give a buffer zone to an existing reserve. You can travel out there, and all the money, apart from travel costs, go to maintaining the reserves.
That’s a much better way of having a holiday, and helping others. Although I s’pose you could ask all your friends to chip in for sponsorship… 😉

People doing this are either stupid (they don’t realise what they are doing) or clever (in exploiting other’s good will/stupidity in funding these trips). Nobody ever does anything for themselves these days.

I read this earlier on – Open letter to self-proclaimed adventurers[/url].

So this doesn’t bother you as much?
Community service for killing a second cyclist

not sure if serious….

years and years ago, I did a charity parachute jump. raised some money and did a parachute jump for free. One of the most exciting things I’ve ever done – win
I had to raise 2x the cost of the jump, so the charity made money out of it – win win
No one was forced to sponsor it and I’m sure the people who did felt good about sponsoring a mate to do something fun and put money to a “cause” – win win win
And there’s nothing you find more annoying in the whole wide world than that?

I upset a colleague by refusing to sponsor/pay for his “charity” holiday.
What annoys me more is some of the celeb charity trips. People like Eddie izzard running the marathons deserve respect and donations, others just seem to go on a nice trip, get lots of exposure, then expect you to give away your money. Chris Moyles for example.

I liked the “Trek or treat?” strapline. I’ve been making myself unpopular by not paying for your holidays mate for years.

I did a charity parachute jump. raised some money and did a parachute jump for free. One of the most exciting things I’ve ever done – win

If you would have paid for the jump yourself and still got sponsorship, you would have raised even more money for charity. win win 😉

If you would have paid for the jump yourself and still got sponsorship, you would have raised even more money for charity. win win

This…or run a marathon or something else that costs nothing. Your mates would all still sponsor you. Why on earth should someone sponsor you to have a good time and do something you want to do anyway..Id far rather you sat on your ass doing nothing, and I’ll just give the charity 100% of my donation

And there’s nothing you find more annoying in the whole wide world than that?

as pointed out by someone else it was clearly a figure of speech…world poverty, the injustice of the capitalist system, and 650b wheels all annoy me more…but thats about it…

Chris Moyles

Actually, his looked like bloody hard work, especialy seeing he wasnt exactly the outdoorsy/fitness type.

That and the BBC presumably paid for the trip and it probably cost the same as any other hour of television. The fundraising bit was for charity, not the cost of the trip.

I have no intention of giving money so someone else can have a good time, I’ll sponsor someone to do something genuinely unpleasant (sit in a bath of cold baked beans for 3 days for example) but I’m not going to fund someone else’s adventure (particularly if it’s something I’d like to do myself 😀 )

However… a month pr so back I received an email from someone who works for the same company as me but whom I’ve never met.

She was asking for sponsorship for her trip to climb Kilimanjaro to raise money for something or other.

I was initially struck with “I’m not paying for your adventure” rage until, in the last line she wrote “I’ve always wanted to do this and so am covering all the costs of the trip myself so everything donated will be going to charity”

I donated a tenner plus giftaid when I read that.

My mother in law did the same Kilimanjaro trip as Chris Moyles. She was 67 at the time, payed for it herself, raised money, did it in less time(like everyone else), and then payed her taxes. (Unlike moyles)

I won’t sponsor people to do anything that could be conceivably “fun”, including:
– skydives
– bungee jumps
– adventure hikes up macchu picchu

This

I did a charity parachute jump. raised some money and did a parachute jump for free. One of the most exciting things I’ve ever done – win

jon1973 – Member

If you would have paid for the jump yourself and still got sponsorship, you would have raised even more money for charity. win win

Is there any decent argument against this being the ‘best’ way?

Is there any argument against this being the ‘best’ way?

Not really, no. OK, so you could just forego the jump altogether and make a direct donation (Think of all the polar bears when you’re burning all that lovely avgas somewhere over a DZ!), but getting others to pay may make more than the cost of the jump.

I did seriously consider sponsoring those Radio 1 people going up Kilimanjaro though as a) they would hate it and b) there was always a chance that some of them might have come back in a box.

I was initially struck with “I’m not paying for your adventure” rage until, in the last line she wrote “I’ve always wanted to do this and so am covering all the costs of the trip myself so everything donated will be going to charity”

This concept of paying for things yourself is lost on some people. I genuinely think some people believe that when you give a donation, every penny of it goes to the charity and that the trip they are going on is actually free!

If you would have paid for the jump yourself and still got sponsorship, you would have raised even more money for charity. win win

Is there any decent argument against this being the ‘best’ way?

Yes, there is.

Like it or not, if charities forced people to pay their own expenses the uptake would drop so much that the net amount going to the charity would be significantly lower.

So it depends how you define ‘best’… the method that raises most money for charity or the method that gives the highest % of money donated to the charity.

edit: before anyone gets the wrong end of the stick I should point out that:
1) I’ve never done a sponsored holiday – the only thing I’ve been sponsored for in adult life was the London Marathon and I paid for that myself
2) I don’t sponsor sponsored holidays
I’m just suggesting that it’s not clear cut.

higgo – uumm not sure I agree as most sponsorship requests I see are not the ‘free experience’ type. If anything those are the ones I refuse to donate to so the charity’s net take from people like me is reduced.

Ah, but you (and me) are in a minority.

Just to make things worse, people expect you to pay your sponsorship in advance via ‘justgiving’ or similar and then don’t even offer a refund if they fail to complete their poxy adventure/bikeride/marathon…….

Sponsored a friend to climb Everest base camp. Raising money for a hospital ward for a serious disease they helped her with. She covered the cost herself.

Didn’t sponsor a second friend to go pony trekking in Iceland – her ‘dream holiday’. She didn’t cover trip cost herself and raised just enough to get a free trip with almost nothing to charity. I say ‘friend’……

My band got asked to headline a charity gig the other weekend. When I asked about it, the ‘charity’ was actually a girl that the drummer had gone to school with, that needed money to spend 3 months in Africa doing ‘charity work’. She was no more specific than that as to what she was actually doing. Needless to say, we didn’t play……for me trips like that are a lifestyle choice for those that don’t have firm ties or commitments, with a little bit of ‘charity’ thrown in to ease ones concious when travelling to areas of abject poverty.

Now I myself would actually quite like to do something similar, but I wouldn’t think of asking others to fund it! Ironically, the lead singer of the band sponsors an orphanage in Kenya but doesn’t really ram it down peoples throats or ask promoters to put us on as a ‘charity gig’!

There is so much that is sad about this sort of charity donation. The fact that so many people need events like this to be prized of their cash; the fact that charities are prepared to be the minority benefactors on this sort of activity (and chugging) trading on their name knowing they will still be better off than if they just relied on ‘proper’ donating; and people ‘fund raising’ like this that are either too stupid to appreciate or too greedy to care what they are involved in.

I’ve been guilty of being peer pressured into sponsoring/paying for friends’ jollies in the past but am now a stubborn git and refuse. I gift 1% of my take home to charity by direct debit to charities I have specifically chosen and put aside a couple of hundred a year for ‘spur of the moment’ donations directly to charities in response to appeals. I acknowledge that charity donation is also a little about making you feel good about yourself (true, no matter how much you deny it!) and giving this way makes me feel better than donating to friends’ fun activities.

As an aside, I find the popular connection between sporting activity and charitable sponsorship very weird. When I was doing long distance triathlon the amount of people (normal, non sporting folk) who couldn’t work out why I was doing it without doing it for charity or would try to make me feel guilty for not doing so was amazing.

To me the real problem is that so many, especially the big charities, are just businesses in disguise. They spend a huge proportion of their donated money on running themselves and not what they are set up to do.

Have a read through the actual accounts of big charities, and not just the PR bits, and work out how much running cost spend is hidden in the so called ‘charitable works’ bit. It was a real eye opener to me.

I read this earlier on – Open letter to self-proclaimed adventurers

That’s an idiotic piece. Getting kidnapped is not an adventure, going over Niagara is a gamble not an adventure. The only one of the 3 stories that is an adventure is ‘No Picnic on Mount Kenya’.

To me the real problem is that so many, especially the big charities, are just businesses in disguise.

The deeper problem is that we need charity at all. If taxation was higher and rigorously applied then the government could meet most of the needs that are currently met by charity.

Chrismac. Not to me- but then my wife worked for a charity for 7 years so I’ve probably got a better handle on what is involved in running a large charity than the headline accounts figures might indicate. You are right though, big charities are big organisations and like other large organisations,irrespective of their charitable status, there is a lot going on behind the coal face. In my experience it is often the small charities run in very ‘amateur’ ways by well meaning but ultimately ill judged individuals that waste the most money and the most energy proportionally (whilst all the while being very worthy and well meaning).

That’s an idiotic piece. Getting kidnapped is not an adventure, going over Niagara is a gamble not an adventure. The only one of the 3 stories that is an adventure is ‘No Picnic on Mount Kenya’.

The point is that not one of those stories required a sponsorship form and pledges from 3rd parties

My wife did one of these trekking across Mongolia on horseback for Guide Dogs.

She did however pay all the costs associated herself and raised several thousand pounds.

It was a fantastic trip that she had always wanted to do. She made some good friends on it. She probably would have continued dreaming about it but the thought of raising money galvanised her go ahead and do it because it was more than just a very expensive holiday then.

I think that like most things in life it is on a greyscale. From the charity event to raise money for somebody’s gap year (not getting any money from me) through to people paying for something special then asking for sponsorship on top of it.

The point is that not one of those stories required a sponsorship form and pledges from 3rd parties

That’s a fair point but not the point of that piece or if it is it’s very poorly made.

You idea that nobody ever does anything for themselves nowadays just isn’t true. Plenty of folks out there walking the walk and not crowing it from the rooftops.