Which charities do you donate to/ believe in?

[Shy_pretty_Angela]

Ive been donating a lot to animal charities recently and this has made me feel really good. I just wondered how you all feel about giving to charity? Do you? And if so which ones?
A part of me is really cynical about the whole business and wonders where the money actually goes too.

I have cancer so I donate to Cancer Research too with the hope that the money is being used for research!

I also want to support MIND but there are no others that I particularly believe in!

I was also reading some really negative things about some of the charities I support and so now Im having doubts. I want to help causes I care about but dont want to be too gullible!

[Clumsy*]

Hi Angela,

Recently, I've been hitting the round-up button when at the self checkout machines, to give some pennies to random charities.

In the past, I donated to Alzheimer's Research because my nan died of dementia. I'm just realising I haven't done that in a while, and your post might just be the prompt I needed, to honour my nan's memory.

[Blackflies]

Most animal shelters will take physical donations to help with animal care. Could be simple and cheap items like paper towels, towels for bedding or pet toys, shampoos. At least you know it’s definitely more likely to be directly used by the intended.

I know you like foxes so maybe contact some local fox charities and ask if there’s anything you can help them with directly. One local to me sent me a bottle of mange treatment for free for a fox I was feeding for a while. They also sent a leaflet with instruction.

I’m not sure how active it is these days but there’s also;

https://www.postpals.co.uk/

I think you’d potentially find it therapeutic as it focuses on children going through different medical diagnosis’s including cancer, you can send cards, letters or trinkets, art supplies or games etc to.

AgeUK also do a telephone befriender service which you might benefit from if you can commit to a regular telephone chat with an older person.

[Shy_pretty_Angela]

Thanks for the suggestions!

[BFG_]

None they're all grifting con artists. Though we do the lottery so I guess that counts as charity but at least they might give us a few million back.

Top grifter - Cancer Research UK *6 Paul Nurse £140,000 salary per year! Don't know what year that's from though so they're probably getting paid even more now.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...042677,00.html


Highest-paid individuals

With an annual income of over £1.2m, Steve Gray of Nuffield Health remains the highest-paid chief executive. Gray earned between £930,000 and £940,000 in 2021.*

Al Russell, chief executive of the London Clinic Trustees and Paul Nurse, CEO of the Francis Crick Institute, ranked second and third, earning respective incomes of £510,000-520,000 and £420,000-430,000.

Julie Maxton, executive director of the Royal Society, is the 4th highest earner and the highest-paid female leader, with a salary of £385,000.*



https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/...vey-shows.html

If they can afford to pay ceos 940k they certainly don't need any donations from me.

[Shy_pretty_Angela]

Oh my god that is really shocking!! I have heard this said before but didnt pay much attention! So where do you think the money donated actually goes BFG?

[BFG_]

To heat the ceo's swimming pools

[Shy_pretty_Angela]

Hehehehhehehe

[Avocado]

Personally I wouldn't give to most of the large medical charities, with the possible exception of Macmillan. Local hospice charities are often quite large (8 figures annual turnover) and they are OK too. The problem with the large medical charities is that you think you're funding research into prevention and treatment of the disease in question but actually you're funding the sort of research that's approved by the pharma industry, which is a very inefficient use of funds, because what the pharma industry mainly wants is something "novel" that they can patent, which doesn't align with the patient's needs unless perhaps the patient has an obscure genetic condition that really does need some high-tech solution. Unfortunately there are underresearched treatments that seem to work very well anecdotally and in small pilot studies but which are completely neglected by the large research charities because they can't be patented.

Smaller medical charities tend to work harder for your money. If you want to get value for money from your donations, some of the smaller charities that provide basic medical care for people in low-income countries are difficult to beat. Having said that, some small charities like that can be inefficient too so it's worth looking at several, reading their accounts etc to understand what they're actually spending your money on; if you can't work out what they're spending your money on then don't give. In one smallish charity I know of, year after year most of the money was spent on salaries for staff from high-income countries and to pay for them to fly to conferences, but they seemed to have quite a poor understanding of the tropical disease condition they were supposedly set up to treat, and numbers treated were small.

Animal rescue charities may actually be quite a safe option because they should be fairly easy to understand. They will likely say in their annual reports how many animals they've saved during the year, and you can divide their annual income by that number to find out how much they take in donations per animal saved; if that's some unappealingly huge number (or if they don't tell you how many animals they save) then you can find another charity to give to.

[biscuits]

Not that I do this any more, but I think I'd be more inclined to donate my time and resources rather than money. Some of the posts on here sort of highlight why. It's been a while since I've volunteered though because I work full time and I could only find things that are in the week. All I do is donate cat food!

I was going to do the telephone befriending service that BalckFlies mentioned but again I wasn't suitable because I can't guarantee when I'll be home to do it and don't want to let anyone down by not calling on time. I think that one is a really sweet idea.

I also went through the application process of joining The Samaritans - but then realised I could very easily clam up so thought it was best not to.

[Mike.Kzov]

Does the fact that senior managers at some of the largest UK charities receive comparable salaries to other similar sized companies really demonstrate that the charities do nothing of benefit?

I make a regular donation to a small overseas development charity that helps children in a poor country receive education. It's not much, but I don't earn much. It's a lovely charity, it's a shame they don't have the funds to set up more than just a few schools.

[Azi]

I've never really believed in charity (in the sense of donating money to an organisation). I sort of feel that the roles/actions charity fulfills should (mostly) be met by the state and that there's a tendency for governments to absolve themselves of their responsibilities by passing them on to charities (e.g. the rise of food banks).

That's not to say that charities don't do wonderful things, of course. It's that those things should be invested in by the state, first and foremost.

On the other hand, charities can and do do incredible advocacy work and can hold governments to account/challenge governments in important ways. They can also channel money into local projects that matter to local people that wouldn't be met so effectively by the state. So I've softened a bit in my views of charity, but still prefer to donate to small, local causes or support in other ways such as by volunteering.

[Shy_pretty_Angela]

It just feels so nice to give sometimes! I really love the idea that I have helped these charities out!
I love animals and donate mostly to animal charities but sometimes MIND too

[BFG_]

^^ "community pantries"