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ronin
10th May 2014, 17:37
do you give to charities.
every now and again i will get a knock on the door.
people representing charities such as oxfam,charities for the deaf people ect.
often they go door to door in teams.

i stop them in their tracks and say that i do not believe in giving to a charities as we pay our taxes and it should be the government that help fund.

then i ask do you get paid?does your manager get paid,how much actually goes to the said charities?
i say you should be knocking on parliaments door with a petition as they say their funding has been cut.

help the heroes i have not come across yet but hear that they are collecting.
people join the army,get injured,have psychological issues due to the fact they where fighting for a group of greedy people .
then they ask us to help them?

i really don,t get it sometimes.

if i see a homeless person on the street i always offer.

but these charities they don,t want a cash donation they want your bank details and a direct debit every month!

ohhh i don,t know call me grumpy...

777
10th May 2014, 17:51
Spot. The. Heck. On.

Charity by virtue is a choice to give not a demand to take and I abide by that completely. If anyone has to demand a certain "fixed" fee or monthly charge then it is a business that has budgeted thus, not a true charity. It pains me to watch people donate to charities that help people with diseases that were introduced to the populace and then profit from it. I am not taking anything away from the victims, we have all been touched by it and/or know those who have.

Your example of Help for Heroes is a particular gripe of mine too. If you sign up to fight an illegal war in the name of someone who's authority you never sought to question, please do not expect me to help towards your surgery when you return from your killing spree injured. I will certainly not be manipulated into guilt money under the guise of freedom.

It's cliche but charity really does start at home. I will help anyone in need if I can as long as that is an exclusive transaction, whether financial or energetic.

Spiral
10th May 2014, 18:19
^ ^ ^ What he said.



:tiphat:

PS;

All these "charities" now have agencies working for them who are very aggressive in their pursuit of your money, if you do a direct debit they will badger you all the time to increase it.

One of my uncles once did one of those "sponsor an African child" things & never heard the end of it, it got to begging letters for him to get a visa & pay for the person to come to England & pay for them to go to university !

Cash in a collection tub is one thing, giving your details is another.

Wolf Khan
10th May 2014, 23:26
I do not give to any charity. I would help a beleagered human in distress, but not any charity.

Tribe
11th May 2014, 00:48
As for charity in our country the uk . I'm a great believer in charity starting at home , and by home I mean community ' when I am out and about with my son in town I am aware of people struggling , either with their shopping , homelessness , etc etc , I often help people and give a little , In the winter months I buy hot drinks and a little food for the people sleeping rough . I knit blankets for them to . I have been a volunteer support worker for the Cornwall blind association and taken a group swimming once a week . Funding for that has now stopped :( but yes I think if everyone looked after their community's we would be making a massive improvement . What a waste of money all these advertisements on tv etc , so many people to pay .whats left and does it even get there ??

sandy
11th May 2014, 02:55
I give monthly to a local childrens hospital and have for several years now. Other than that I help family and friends when they reach out as it seems that I have several who cannot think past their wants to identify the difference between want and need. Thus find themselves in binds that can be demoralizing and debilitating. Although I very seldom hand over money (don't have much being a single senior on pension) I do what I can to support while they dig out of their mess by providing some groceries and home cooked nutritious meals to boost energy and moral somewhat, as they seem so ............:frantic:

Seikou-Kishi
11th May 2014, 04:02
It depends on the charity. If the charity is of national or international size, then no, I refuse to give absolutely because I know the money won't go where I intend it to go. It won't go to the people whose distress is prostituted out by these charities for their own ends. If the charity is a small charity which operates only in a small, local area, then yes, I do and I give happily. For example, there are many local cancer charities which use donations to fund nurses for additional support and even counsellors to provide emotional support to those with cancer and the families of such people, or provide a place away from home in which to live with close-at-hand medical care in the closing days. I have done a lot of work with such local charities and I can tell you that none of them is dining out on donations. They run on the indefatigable good will of "unsung heroes".

The nurse who sits and comforts a dying person as their high dose of morphine and the general shutting down of their body leave them delirious — they are not in it for the money. The counsellor who goes home every night overburdened by the sorrow of the world in which they willingly work — they are not in it for the money. It is the large charities like Comic Relief, which funds arms companies in war-torn countries — they are in it for the money. If you want honesty, go local. It is the same in charity as it is in food shopping. Anything too big becomes impersonal and anything impersonal is open to those kinds of abuses against which common human decency is a protection.

It is only the large charities able to secure entire regiments of lazy but well-meaning t-shirt-wearing volunteer-beggars that give their CEOs obscene salaries. It is in the local charity, not afforded the plastic prestige of the large charities, that real compassion is exercised. In these charities, you might have to look quite hard for the person who is legally the chief executive, because these people are usually as hard-working and hands-on and as over-worked and under-paid (if at all) as anybody else who works for the charity.

Members of my family are active in many charities and have founded many, too. Many such charities are making continual losses and it's only our ability to absorb those losses on their behalf that keeps them operating. I do not wish to sound like a Marxist, but "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs" is not a bad idea, though it cannot be compulsory. If we can absorb the losses that frequently accrue to small charities in a harsh, capitalist economy in which even charities have to operate with business-like ruthlessness, then why not? There is so little appreciation of noblesse oblige these days.

It's also possible to create what are called "subsidiary trading companies" and these are companies that are owned by a charity (or group of charities, etc.) and these engage in business (which charities cannot do) on behalf of those charities. They are able to funnel their profits into the charity or charities in whose benefit they are created. It's not necessary though that businesses are created with that in mind, and many independent businesses can freely decide to funnel their profits in that way, as companies are free to do with their profit as they wish (though to what extent this is practically/operationally true is a matter of ownership and corporation form). These do not have to be huge companies.

If you have some sort of marketable skill or resource, you can establish a business around that as you ordinarily would and then funnel the profits from that business into a charity you have either created or which you wish to support. If you abandon any idea of taking that profit for yourself, you will find yourself able to afford salaries or wages that respect your employees' dignity and effort while also providing a relatively self-running source of revenue for your charity. Well-paid and well-respected employees are happy employees and your consideration will be returned in loyalty and diligence. In that way, you provide an income for those employees, a service to your clients and a source of funding for your charity.

As an example: one of my cousins was given a number of houses in a busy town for a birthday a few years ago. Actually, she was given a small business that owned a number of houses and employed a manager to oversee the day-to-day issues that arise when leasing property, which is administratively efficient/less burdensome. She took one of the houses and used it as the premises of a cosmetics business. She employed some of her friends who I guess were good with that sort of thing and they were pleased to have an appealing income having not fared well in the economic situation through no fault of their own. Because she owned the property, she was able to forego any rent which meant that more of the revenue from the business could be given to her employees as a salary increase. The profit from this business was then directed into a charity set up by another cousin who had wanted to take people from local "elderly care homes" for days out and provide for dinners and so on away from the homes in order to help them feel connected in a world that could very easily become carceral.

This is what I mean when I say "foregoing any thought of personal profit", because using a business like that means moving away from the dog-eat-dog business model in which everybody is trying to get as much as they can. If the owner feels no need to cream off the profits and is able to disregard the entire venture as a source of income, then that frees up a lot of "overhead space" which allows for greater pay for employees. At the same time, since the business does not exist "as an end itself", there is no need to use the profits for expansionist purposes (premises maintenance are, like bills, of course a part of the overheads and not a reinvestment of profit). Actually, since word spread that this business was established for the sole purpose of providing funding for such a worthy cause, they have found that clients are willing to pay above the market rate for their services because they know it is going to a good place. At the same time, the employees are also tipped extravagantly, which only increases their sense of job satisfaction and their sense of being appreciated. (I should emphasise here that relying on tips to supplement insufficient wages is a disgusting business practice; these employees are very well paid and do not rely on their tips the way many service-industry workers do.) This just shows how a little good will can snowball. When greed is taken out of the equation, we find that there is more than enough to go around. Generosity encourages generosity — it is a "Free Energy Generator" :-)

I understand that many people will not be able to do this. Not many people out there will be given houses (and the rents derived from them) as coming-of-age gifts. My family has many advantages that enable things on this scale. For example, enough of us are trained in law that these sorts of corporate structures are easy for us to arrange. When my cousin wanted to use a residential property for business purposes, a third, mutual cousin helped her in the administrative "red tape" incumbent in such a thing. I am not so blind that I believe everybody could do this and people are just awaiting the idea, but most people are able to do something and, perhaps more importantly with our world as it is, most people are able to do something meaningful without ruining themselves.

Most people have skills which they take for granted. Our skills are usually normal to us and so we overlook what others might not. Many of us enjoy hobbies which produce things others would pay for, for example, but we do not think to do this because we see it primarily as a hobby and not as a business venture. There is another type of business, less formal than things like "subsidiary trading companies" and the whole range of corporation-forms. For example, say you go to have the tarot cards read for you by a person who operates out of their home. They probably have not arranged their business as a legally distinct entity (a corporation) and instead operate as a "sole proprietorship" — this is a business operation with no legal distinction between business and business owner. Now imagine that you had a normal occupation, doing the whole 9-5 grind but read the cards for people from your home in the evenings. You could use this skill as a source of revenue for a charity, too. You would essentially just be donating your profits, but donating in this way feels more engaged and personal than merely handing over money.

People in my family do both of these. We have both legally distinct businesses used as sources of revenue for charities we work with, but we also rather shamelessly whore out our talents and hobbies too. I enjoy painting and paint prolifically. I do this not for any monetary gain but because I enjoy the process of painting. In other words, it is a hobby, an end in itself, not something I do in order to attain or achieve something else. But because I paint so prolifically, I produce quite a number of different pieces. When there is a sufficient number, we hold an auction. Ordinarily it will not be just my artwork, but also things other family members have produced as part of their own hobbies. One cousin enjoys designing clothes, another makes jewelry. One designs shoes and auctions off "commissions" so that a person can bid for a certain design and then commission the shoes to be made in whatever size is appropriate. We gather together the fruit of our idleness and auction it off before a gathering of family, friends and acquaintances.

If you have a hobby that produces something like that, you could do the same. If you need to, you could deduct the cost of your supplies as an overhead from the proceeds of your auctioneering and use the rest to support a charity. If you do that, consider setting a reserve price so that if it comes to the worst, your items don't sell for less than it cost you to make them and the time you invested in them. Essentially, if you produce or provide anything which others value, you can leverage that value in favour of your chosen charities. If somebody likes what you produce let them have it, but let others benefit from it too. If you create a broach and a friend is eager to have it let them have it, but let a homeless person get a bed for the night out of the deal. You will all remember the dearly missed member Breeze. She once showed me a bag she had created for herself that was very colourful and stylish, made in blues and yellows and covered in hand-crafted fabric flowers. When you have a skill or hobby like that (and most of us do), there will always be somebody eager for us to produce something for them. By auctioning or selling those things, we can exact a benefit for others from it at the same time.

If you're skilled with music, for example, you could create albums even at home and sell or auction them off. If you are doing these things for charity, nobody will care if your CD labels look home-printed or the CDs themselves are not printed upon. Many people would look upon that as the good will and resourcefulness of an individual, not the mechanical money-pulling machine of a large, impersonal charity. You could also look into releasing your music on iTunes. Use the forms available to you. When I was a youngster and Pokémon was at its height, I took orders for pictures of the characters and required in exchange a donation to charity varying in degree according to the intricacy of the particular character (easy to draw characters were cheap, difficult characters were not). I had a handful of different charities and left it up to the other person to decide which got it. Sometimes they'd split it between them :-). My girlfriend got in on it and started cross-stitching them too and they looked amazing. It was quite surreal because adults would come up to us and ask us for them too. We'd have a poster with all the available characters so they could choose one without knowing anything about the thing itself. Most of them made jokes about trying to be cool in front of their kids, but it was obvious they just wanted a reason to give to charity. I still burst into a broad smile today to think of grown adults walking away with something 11/12 year old kids had made and exclaiming to their friends "Oh my god, look at my jigglypuff"

The first painting I ever did that was auctioned off in that way was one I painted when I was 5 or 6 (it was two pteranodons in the sky) and it sold to a third cousin of my mother's for Ł20. It was atrociously bad and the payment was pretty much a "pity payment", or I guess you could call it an encouragement. With auctions ostensibly held for the benefit of charities, many people are willing to pay over the odds because they know they're not just buying whatever the lot happens to be. You could create informal auction groups like that. Gather together your friends and their families, pool your talents and see what you can auction off to each other. You needn't even bid in money. Why not bid in kilograms of pasta for a food bank? Or hours volunteering? Humans are creative beings, so why not make full use of that?

Tribe
11th May 2014, 10:13
You could create informal auction groups like that. Gather together your friends and their families, pool your talents and see what you can auction off to each other. You needn't even bid in money. Why not bid in kilograms of pasta for a food bank? Or hours volunteering? Humans are creative beings, so why not make full use of that?

Sk , that's a great way to do something that you enjoy to do , so it doesn't feel like a chore and one gets joy out of both the action and of the result because you know your going to help fund a local charity .. I'd be the first person to duck out of a fun run, swim . Or the like which are often the charitable events that are organised down here , they put me right off , but what you describe would bring a lot of my friends pleasure .. I have many friends who are crafty. I have managed to knit two hats this year , before I could only do blankets . And the ladies in my group can felt the most beautiful bags and shoes, glass cases etc. I sew too so I could start a few projects in that line as well. Thank you I am inspired by this ! X