***** Santas Strike Force 2015!!! ***** BEASTY BONUS MODE!! (Details in OP)

stimpson

How about you specify inappropriate activities on your donation post. Then your money can be used for activities you do like and other peoples can be used to pay for the boxing kit.

And I'd just like to point out that the Yoga is the work of Satan (if you believe in that type of thing).

You can't please everyone...

Dubl07

stimpson wrote: »

How about you specify inappropriate activities on your donation post. Then your money can be used for activities you do like and other peoples can be used to pay for the boxing kit.


And I'd just like to point out that the Yoga is the work of Satan (if you believe in that type of thing).

You can't please everyone...

I'm not that bad - this isn't a rant, just a thought. The team can (and do) spend my few shillings on whatever when it comes down to it.

BeeForBattens

Well BUMBLEance 3&4 are finished their upgraded and are ready for outfitting next week, plus BUMBLEance 5 (brand new) is in the way for delivery in the early summer. Don't worry, we will happily put SSF on each vehicle and we would be honored to continue to deliver smiles and sick kids across Ireland with your help!

BeeForBattens

Orion wrote: »

Bumbleance 2 was launched in Feb wasn't it? With a shiny SSF log on the side. 3 & 4 are on the way.

BUMBLEance 2 was launched in January.

Would you believe that BUMBLEance1 has covered well over 200,000km delivered over 700 children's trips (80+ angel trips) and the entertainment system provided by SSF hasn't failed once, lots of smiles delivered all thanks to you guys!

DeVore

What i didnt post about the boxing club (because of, you know, decorum) is that the club is for kids in trouble/danger/difficult backgrounds.
They dont need that millstone proclaimed especially on their big day. Let them just be kids today.

We sponsored the gym kits so that they can feel pride for once. Im a boxer. My family are from a boxing background and while may wrinkle the noses of those with "delicate sensibilities" boxing is and traditionally has been a massively beneficial out let and redirection of energy for kids from difficult backgrounds in Ireland.

I make a dozen such decisions in SSF every year. support these people, dont support those, add more to this budget, cut that one.

I am open about absolutely everything I do so that you are kept aware of where your money goes but I dont apologise for the tough calls I sometimes have to make.

I hope that answers that.

DeVore

Sorry. I got a bit cranky there. I understand the concern and yes it definitely crossed my mind when approving that spend.
Since it was specifically for their outfits I ok'ed it.
Sorry, I get irrationally protective of SSF because just being this close to it lets me see things which are amazing but also sometimes heart rending. How people like bumbleance do it day in day out I dont know.

So yeah, sorry for getting snarky. I think this one just slid under the bar and I think it was a good call tbh. I do want you to know I thought long and hard about it tho.

T.

Lucyfur

It's not one bit snarky or cranky. Kids that have it tough are deserving of a little something nice in their lives And boxing is amazing for fitness and fitness and exercise are important for mental health. Win-win.

hdowney

Agree with what Lucy said. And the kids looked so proud in their shiney new kit. Makes me happy to know I donate to such wonderful causes

DeVore

Lucyfur wrote: »

It's not one bit snarky or cranky. Kids that have it tough are deserving of a little something nice in their lives And boxing is amazing for fitness and fitness and exercise are important for mental health. Win-win.

Ok something more positive then... at xmas we did a hit on 4 kids homes. Kids who are looking for foster homes or off the street etc.
They asked us for consoles and age appropriate games. I went to my supplier and got 4 Xbox Ones. He told me they were selling out fast. 3 Kids beside me at his counter when I was picking them up had their eyes out on stalks.
I delivered them to the central organising office and they stood their looking at me.
I thought I had done something wrong!! "These are new" they said... yup! "These are new xbox ones". Emmm yeah? "You dont understand... these kids rarely get anything "new". They certainly never get the latest greatest new thing on the block".
I hadnt thought about it like that before... You know when you get a new bike or a new pair of runners and for that day you are cock-of-the-walk. These kids, they never get to feel like that. They just don't

Its incredibly hard to explain the feeling walking away from a meeting like that.... on xmas eve.
I wish everyone who donates could know what that feels like.

Lucyfur

DeVore wrote: »

Ok something more positive then... at xmas we did a hit on 4 kids homes. Kids who are looking for foster homes or off the street etc.
They asked us for consoles and age appropriate games. I went to my supplier and got 4 Xbox Ones. He told me they were selling out fast. 3 Kids beside me at his counter when I was picking them up had their eyes out on stalks.
I delivered them to the central organising office and they stood their looking at me.
I thought I had done something wrong!! "These are new" they said... yup! "These are new xbox ones". Emmm yeah? "You dont understand... these kids rarely get anything "new". They certainly never get the latest greatest new thing on the block".
I hadnt thought about it like that before... You know when you get a new bike or a new pair of runners and for that day you are cock-of-the-walk. These kids, they never get to feel like that. They just don't

Its incredibly hard to explain the feeling walking away from a meeting like that.... on xmas eve.
I wish everyone who donates could know what that feels like.

That just made me well up. I'm so glad you've donated to kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. We take it for granted that we can just go and buy Christmas presents for our kids, when there's so many out there who, as you said, never get to experience anything new, through absolutely no fault of their own.

hdowney

My heart is bursting. Just think how wonderful those kiddos felt for the first time in possibly forever. This is the kind of thing that would warm the coldest heart

Boards.ie: Niamh

Spotted on Twitter
https://twitter.com/iCANIreland/status/728580287433605124

DeVore

Ah I was just coming here to update
The iCan people posted a nice set of pics here...

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFEV0P1oKJs/

The kid in the blue top posed for a pic with me and his eyes were on stalks at the Xbox One. He had had bloods taken at 8am that morning and had been there waiting for results at 12.30. He said "Next time I'll play on that while I wait!" I asked him what he liked to play and he said "Minecraft" .... as it happens I had bought the special Minecraft edition with the controller and a copy of Minecraft so I showed him it and safe to say he wont be bored next time waiting for his results.
The staff were SO nice, they couldn't have been more delighted.

GLaDOS

Love seeing those sort of pictures

Zero-Cool

Well done again DeVore and all involved with bringing joy to these kids. Great to see/hear how it's having such a positive impact on these little lives.

DeVore

I'm just the conduit! Funny thing is, that's only about 1500 maybe 1800 at a stretch and they reacted like their had won the lotto. The nurses kept saying "its like Christmas!". Give me the wages of just half of the CEO's of some "general charities" and there isn't a ward in the country couldn't be fitted out like this. >.<

JakeBell

Given the whole sh1tstorm about Console and charity donations expected to suffer it might be a good idea to assure the public about Santa Strike Force as many other charities seem to have done.


I looked for a bit of info on SSF out of curiosity and could only find this (from the webpage):

How do we know we can trust you
I guess in short, you dont. But I have a long track record of doing crazy stuff for kids charities and all the SSF people on Boards.ie trust me implicitly. You can check later with the targets if you like! (Temple Street, Crumlin and also Barretstown have been hit in the past two years...

Which is a bit worrying and hardly ideal. Are accounts posted? Is there more than one person involved with the money? Is it on the Charities Register and regulated? It's a great charity and would be a shame to lose any donations if anyone had any doubts.

Beasty

It's not a registered charity. Registered charities have many overheads meaning not all contributions go to charitable causes. Every cent does in this case

Dev posts updates here. Many of the recipient charities openly acknowledge here or elsewhere the contributions. He's also dropped a few of us who have been perhaps a little more active in the fundraising the occasional e-mail about what's going on.

As someone who has contributed regularly over the past few years I have no doubts whatsoever and fully trust Dev with the SSF funds

JakeBell

It's not really about questioning DeVore. It's about the charity being open and transparent. Surely it has been made acceptable to question charities after the whole Console scandal? I bet you you could find a huge number of people who would have said similar things about Paul Kelly a few months back. But as I said it's not about that. A charity shouldn't mind being questioned (and I'm presuming DeVore won't).

I have no idea who needs to be registered. If he doesn't need to be then fair enough. According to the Charity Regulator:

If your organisation is any of the following...

- a charitable trust;
- a body corporate that promotes a charitable purpose only and must, according to its own constitution or rules, use all of its property to advance that purpose;
- an unincorporated body of persons that promotes a charitable purpose and must, according to its own constitution or rules, use all of its property to advance that purpose;

...and it is or intends to operate or carry on charitable activities in the State, then you should apply for registration to the CRA.

Story Bud?

DeVore sends email updates of what money is being spent to a group of mods and ex mods who have been heavily involved in raising funds. He started doing so precisely so he could be as transparent as possible without putting the individual causes in the spotlight when in might not always be appropriate.

It's the one charity that not a penny gets wasted in. Not a penny goes anywhere except directly to the causes.

It would be a crying shame if it was unable to continue.

Beasty

...that's the benefit of not having a constitution or rules.

Seriously there's a lot of admin (and cost) involved in registering a charity. SSF avoids that and as a result can throw all it's contributions at good causes.

If it got a lot bigger perhaps charitable status may be appropriate. However I for one am happy with it as it is (I did at one stage have a discussion with Dev over whether charitable status should be sought but my view was it does not warrant the admin and resultant costs involved when it's so small - indeed there would probably be nothing left to go towards any good causes it did go that way, even if it allowed SSF to get some tax benefits - (which would create further problems as anyone looking to make payments with tax credits would need to provide personal details))

JakeBell

Story Bud? wrote: »

DeVore sends email updates of what money is being spent to a group of mods and ex mods who have been heavily involved in raising funds.

It's the one charity that not a penny gets wasted in. Not a penny goes anywhere except directly to the causes.

It would be a crying shame if it was unable to continue.

Christ knows why it shouldn't be able to continue or where that suggestion came from. It's merely a question which I think shouldn't be awkward for a charity to answer. I don't think we should be debating the trustworthiness of DeVore before he gets a chance to reply, nobody has suggested anything untoward. It's a simple query that as I say shouldn't be awkward to answer.
If there are others involved, fantastic.

Story Bud?

JakeBell wrote: »

Christ knows why it shouldn't be able to continue or where that suggestion came from.

See beasty's post re costs

DeVore will, as always, be happy to answer your questions himself. He's been asked similar before.

sullivlo

JakeBell wrote: »

Christ knows why it shouldn't be able to continue or where that suggestion came from. It's merely a question which I think shouldn't be awkward for a charity to answer. I don't think we should be debating the trustworthiness of DeVore before he gets a chance to reply, nobody has suggested anything untoward. It's a simple query that as I say shouldn't be awkward to answer.
If there are others involved, fantastic.

SSF is not a charity though...

DeVore

Hey there! I've absolutely no problem with answering questions.

Are we a registered charity? No. That takes about 1500 a year to do formal account and returns and all the rest. I've been toying with the idea of asking someone to do it Pro Bono for my own protection as much as anything but then every year I think "this is the last year I'm doing this so whats the point!". I'm still kinda thinking that but given the whole Console boll*x, maybe this is a good idea regardless. We collect about 15,000 a year which means its likely to cost about 10% of the donations.

Do we do accounts? Not formal ones but I keep books. I keep a separate bank account into which all the money goes from the online donations and from private donations too. Out of that comes only amounts to pay for the projects. This means the money never mixes with my own cash. There is a very clear Church & State there which makes it all clean.
I keep a track of which projects got which amounts (at the start of this it was pretty speckled, now its a lot more organised). There are some payments I make on my credit card (things that need to be bought online) which have to be refunded to my credit card but in those cases I make a 1-to-1 payment for each transaction so that its clear whats going out and why. This makes it nice and neat. If money comes in, it goes into that account directly. If it comes out of that account its going to pay for an invoice or its going to pay for a credit card transaction that has been tracked.

In addition to this I send a rough budget to a mailing list of mods, ex-mods and interested parties. Why is it rough? Well, say I ear mark 3k for the children's arthritis ward in Crumlin (as I did)... it may cost more and it may cost less to execute on the project... I don't have precise costs at that point (the start of the year). Later I send a round up to clarify what costs were incurred.

I also encourage targets to post here (this also is a recent addition) so that people can see a direct connection between their money and the projects. It would be hard to fake that


SSF is not a charity. People give me money and I buy things for charities that I happen to know they need. That's it. Its no more formal than that. If I need a charity reg number to buy something for a charity, then either I get them to buy it and refund them (this is the most common) ... or I use their reg number and act on their behalf (like when Barretstown got iPads from Apple on the charity scheme they run).

As others have said, 100% of the money goes to the charities. SSF has actually cost me in things like taxi fares (I don't drive so delivering the goodies is usually done by cab) and things like website costs which I don't book to SSF because I kinda take that as my donation to the cause.
If you are really doubtful, I'm happy to sit down with you and go through say, last years expenditure (genuine offer!). But if you look at what we have done in the last year and then add up the donations, (which come to about 15,000). You can pretty easily see that there isn't much change to be pocketed by anyone

Barry Badrinath

You're a good man DeVore.

DeVore

McGruber wrote: »

You're a good man DeVore.

Thanks, but really everyone else does it through their donations. I just chaperone the money.



I've often said "I wish I was half the man my dog thinks I am!"

JakeBell

Cheers DeVore and thanks for the speedy reply.

I'm surprised to hear that it isn't a charity.


To be very honest I think it could be more transparent and I think a couple of independent people should be involved in okaying decisions regarding where the money goes as well as receiving full end of year accounts. That would be for your own protection as well as assurance to contributors.

And that's not an opinion based on you or SSF - it's based on the format. It's one person receiving big sums of money into an account in their name and deciding where it goes and what happens to it.

DeVore

Well a couple of independent people ARE involved in deciding where the money goes... and so far every admissible charity suggested here by the general public (eg: the children's arthritis ward in Crumlin just this year) has been sanctioned. I'm actually SHORT of admissible charities to support usually. In addition there is the oversight committee who I mail and who have input... I don't actually know many of them in person, I think I've met some of the mods once at a beers and I met Beasty once in a corridor ... These are some of the biggest donators to the cause and they are content about where the money goes.

On the other hand, I take your point about being "seen" to be transparent and I've been working towards getting presentable informal accounts done, as much for my own protection as anything else. I'll take that on board this year as something that needs doing. I'm not sure about publishing them publically but they should at least be available on request and sent to the steering group formally. I'll get that sorted.

Fair enough?

Beasty

DeVore wrote: »

I met Beasty once in a corridor

I was in the process of feeding my lycra fetish at the time.....