Do you ever donate to charity?

catallus

Is giving books to Oxfam considered charity?

They never pay me!

I donate regularly, and Id say most people I know do too. Lot of people doing a lot of good

fleet_admiral

We give household stuff we no longer want to the NCBI all the time. Sometimes if we have a lot we will split it between them and Sue Ryder

Tiddlypeeps

Jayleen Crashing Vinyl wrote: »

But why? I imagine it's a very difficult job being the CEO of a massive charity organisation, perhaps employing someone who has a large salary, but is also very good at their job, isn't actually a bad thing? I imagine there's a better chance of a CEO on a high salary being great at their job and therefore actually bringing in a lot of money than a CEO on average industrial wage.

These CEO's could easily up and leave if their pay was cut, as long as they're doing a good job I don't really care if they're getting paid above the average industrial wage. Take MSF for example, their CEO is on €110000 a year, and in 2010 they raised €209116366, sounds like he's doing a good job, doesn't it?

www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highest-paid-ceos-are-the-worst-performers-new-study-says/

I don't agree that the cut off point should be the average industrial wage, but anything over twice it is taking the piss a little bit and very much wasting donation money.

I don't donate to charities because of the amount of corruption within a lot of them. If their were stricter regulations about them being more transparent with where exactly the money goes then I would consider. Some charities only end up spending single digit percentages of the revenue they generate on the actual cause itself. Everything else is spent on administration and marketing. This means that those charities purely exist to keep the people within them in jobs, and often well paid ones that that, with the odd token gesture towards the actual cause they are supposed to be helping.

I'm sure there are some great charities out there, it's just impossible for me right now to tell which ones are which.

smurfjed

I have people working around me who earn peanuts, so every so often i give them 20-100 Euro... At least i know that I'm helping someone directly with no commission taken by anyone.

0byme75341jo28

fleet_admiral wrote: »

We give household stuff we no longer want to the NCBI all the time. Sometimes if we have a lot we will split it between them and Sue Ryder

Ohh, that's a very deserving charity, the NCBI do some fantastic work.

fleet_admiral

Jayleen Crashing Vinyl wrote: »

Ohh, that's a very deserving charity, the NCBI do some fantastic work.

They have done great things for my wife

Sand

Every month. Plus of course chucking change into the charity box.

Tar.Aldarion

Yeah, gave to an animal shelter today in fact. You know these people are out not getting paid anything and they weren't aggressive chugging at you or anything and often house/pay for these animals themselves, as well as not getting government funding. I hate the paid chuggers harassing you.

For human charities it's more complicated as there are so many bad charities I wouldn't give to a lot of mainstream ones as the money is wasted and they are not great imo. Things like the gates foundation are a lot better but it's hard to give them money, you have to go through a process and probably want to give a lot. In general rich philanthropist ones are quite good though. I'd be interested in a centralised rating of charities here like some sites I see on American charities.

handbagmad

I don't donate money but rather food, blankets to my local animal rescue.
I buy a few tins extra each week and drop them out once I've a stash built up.

Deank

handbagmad wrote: »

I don't donate money but rather food, blankets to my local animal rescue.
I buy a few tins extra each week and drop them out once I've a stash built up.

:eek:

handbagmad

Deank wrote: »

:eek:

very funny a stash of dog food and blankets.

:P

handbagmad

handbagmad wrote: »

I don't donate money but rather food, blankets to my local animal rescue.
I buy a few tins extra each week and drop them out once I've a stash built up.

Great idea !

smellmepower

I help out, and shake a few buckets at matches for the Irish Street League and Homeless World Cup team (who are incidentally representing Ireland in Chile next week at the Homeless World Cup!)

I don't have the money to be setting up Direct Debits with the big charities like Amnesty, Concern etc.

Sam Kade

wazky wrote: »

Just sperm.

And the charity is an old sock.

Must be a fair hum off it by now :eek:

coolemon

No, I never give to charity. I generally subscribe to the views of Oscar Wilde on the matter:

"The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair." - Oscar Wilde

losthorizon

I have regular standing order forms for WWF for Nature and Gorta.
I also sometimes donate to the Irish Red Cross - especially for the Syrian Crisis. There are over 1 million refugees in Lebanon alone. Thats the equivalent of 12 million in Germany which is a much richer nation.
Irish Charities are getting very aggressive though. Constantly demanding more.

On the other hand the WWF are just happy to receive your money and tell you what they are doing with your money and send you a stcker ever year. My kind of charity.

murphm45

losthorizon wrote: »

I have regular standing order forms for WWF for Nature and Gorta.
I also sometimes donate to the Irish Red Cross - especially for the Syrian Crisis. There are over 1 million refugees in Lebanon alone. Thats the equivalent of 12 million in Germany which is a much richer nation.
Irish Charities are getting very aggressive though. Constantly demanding more.

On the other hand the WWF are just happy to receive your money and tell you what they are doing with your money and send you a stcker ever year. My kind of charity.

I give money every month (I used to do it through work but when they stopped i started doing it myself and generally split it between a few different charities) but this really gets on my wick so much so that if i ever get a letter, phone call or any other form of requesting communication from a charity I immediately stop sending them money end of.

It might seem harsh (and probably is) but i almost feel like I'm being bullied into giving them money which i don't like and if they're wasting my money on these poxy communication what else are they wasting it on? The reason it annoys me so much is because i give them money every month and while i don't have a standing order if i miss a month (due to other unforeseen expenditure) I'll always pay double the next month.

Sorry for the rant, I obviously needed to get that off my chest!

SkyBlueClouds

I donate my time and effort to charitable causes by volonteering. Not giving money to unaccountable NGO's.

corner of hells

I work fulltime for a charity , Ive been working for different charities for a few years, different types of services.I do a little voluntary work as well for them from time to time.

It never ceases to amaze me how generous people are particularly during these difficult recent years.
I understand people's hesitance around donating money , Im wary myself of donating cash however most charities these days particularly those involved in frontline services will gratefully accept non perishable foods , decent quality clothing and if you have a skill or talent even your time as a volunteer.

Semele

I have a (very small) monthly direct debit to Amnesty and I'm going to set up one for an animal related charity as soon as I pick one! Otherwise I give money to my local animal shelter every time I'm there (they also do pet boarding which I use a lot and I usually round up what they charge by a few quid).

Ive done loads of different voluntary work over the years and I regularly donate bags of stuff to charity shops, mainly Oxfam (after researching how much of what's donated various charities actually make use of) and another local animal charity shop.

anncoates

Not in a direct debit sense but I'm a extremely soft target for stuff like collections, text donations and once-off stuff.

0byme75341jo28

coolemon wrote: »

No, I never give to charity. I generally subscribe to the views of Oscar Wilde on the matter:

"The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair." - Oscar Wilde

So what do you do to promote Oscar Wilde's ideology? I strongly disagree with it to be honest.

TheBeardedLady

No direct debit here either (because I don't always have money in my acccount...like right now, for example) but give money to beggers regularly and to collections and sponsored stuff or if there's an appeal or something.

Lalealynn

Uh huh.

I have two standing orders. And I do give a few bob here and there when I see a cause online or something. I five pens and three pins for breast cancer awareness in the last few months. And of course the odd euro to people on the street. (from Merrion sq to st stephens green must have a hundred homeless between by the way it's unbelievable.)

I also give my time. I volunteer for animals causes and work with volunteerssouthDublin doing various stuff, making care packages for the homeless etc. I also do stuff with glenn and LGBT stuff. Also with causes like LGBT marriage campaign. Or rally's for things I believe in.

I do it as I want to. If I have more work stuff I do less.

I was told last weekend by six friends I have not seen in a while not to let others drain me. There are a lot of scammers out there. I have probably been taken in a couple of times. I am very emotionally intelligent but I am not very shrewd at all.

I have friends who have gone to Africa to work with kids for a few months and worked to save to fund that themselves. And used their wages to support them over there. People don't realize you have to fund that. A close male friend did it and went into shock ..when he can bag it was a mind **** to see Irish people carrying around bags of food. Like WHOLE bags of food.

You can do things that actually fit in with what you like. I preformed in mountjoy (music stuff) and worked with fr peter Mc Verry for a while. But I kind of sensed that was a bit toxic for me. When I was finished performing or leaving one thing struck me though. Every single prisoner always came up to personally thank me and shake my hand. That's rare.

I volunteer with IT for the DSPCA sometimes and to help at the shelter up near mount venus. It's great it's like having one of every animal but not all the responsibility.

I have a friend who organizes funding events for things like blood donation and other stuff. Her events were AMAZING. They were great nights out.

Time is really a generous thing to do.

On the southdublinvolunteerssite they have a list of '30 random acts of volunteering'. I love that!

You meet the nicest people. And sometimes not the nicest people. But you learn to deal with them.

It's like sometimes you have to 'zone it' and only enter in your Hazmat suit. I was probably too young to do the stuff in mountjoy when I did it. It was through Uni I did a philosophy degree and I made friends with people who volunteered and raised money for charity a lot.

It's weird though it doesn't make you a better person necessarily. The stuff I do is very lightweight. I'm a lightweight lol!

By the way the Views of Oscar Wilde on the matter were swayed considerably toward the end of his life I think by his experiences of suffering and in particular his time in prison.

Now just to leave you with this thought.

I played Jesus in a male prison. Get your head around that now! I'm female ...Get your head around that head ****ery....It was surreal!

I am amused with people who shame altruism with begrudgery meh...:p

Frito

I have supported a few charities in the past but now I am on reduced means (!) I have cut back and support one charity. I can't afford to support more than one and it annoys me when chuggers don't take no for an answer. I just pretend I already support them and add that I already make gift aid donations.
I would do some shopping occasionally for food banks.

Lalealynn

Frito wrote: »

I have supported a few charities in the past but now I am on reduced means (!) I have cut back and support one charity. I can't afford to support more than one and it annoys me when chuggers don't take no for an answer. I just pretend I already support them and add that I already make gift aid donations.
I would do some shopping occasionally for food banks.

You are a truly generous soul

Yes aggressive chuggers can be slightly anti-social.

Lalealynn

Actually some causes can be slightly aggressive and anti-social too in the way they go about them.


I can be full of hyperbole sometimes and I notice a lot of charitable causes can be online too.

Your manner is important.

0byme75341jo28

I never give money to Trocaire or that kind of crowd who chase you around the street looking for sponsorship. I've got some very snide remarks off some of them when I told them I'm not interested so I don't think I'll bother giving them anything.

Raminahobbin

I never, ever, give money to human charities, but I donate regularly via standing order to a couple of animal charities and give my time whenever I can to my local shelter.