Needy or greedy charities?

Joey the lips wrote: »

Forgive my ignorence but having read the article and knowing already that the greehouse effect will cause most harm to developing countries i cannot see why you target oxfam?

Because being angry at things that they can't understand is a perennial hobby of every second shithead with a blog.

Doubly so on a blog who's sole purpose is to champion every contrarian view possible with regards to anthropogenic global warming

bth is africa any better off than it was 20 years ago? not really... most of the money charities collect goes to paying the top director's salaries.

i stopped giving to those along time ago.

also dont give those roma gyspies money either... they ALL get welfare inc RA and are not homeless.

there is a family of them living in a house across the road from me.

Give me money so I can trek the Andes
Give me more money so I can climb Mount Kilmanjaro

Give me even more money so I can run the New York marathon. While I admire the training that was done there are races all over Ireland. So realy I'm paying for your shopping trip in New York

Pay me to go to Africa to build houses for Niall Mellon
Well now :

• You are a lady weighing about eight stone so you are going to be useless on the site
• If you didn't go then local African workers can be employed, create some jobs
• Niall Mellon is in NAMA and why are developers trying to help Africa with their profits after ripping off Irish housebuyers for years with huge prices and cheap and nasty estates. Any chance of some housing for Ireland's homeless?

This is what charities encourage and I'm plagued in work with people asking for money for holidays of a lifetime and claiming it's charity

I'm saying greedy, not needy charities
They have administrators to sort peoples flights, accomadation and guides when they go walk the Inca trail.
How about just spending my donation where it's needed and not on holidays of a lifetime?

Lot of negativity... how about mentioning some of the good ones a bit more? I feel desperately sorry for the decent charities out there. A lot of them are really trying hard to do good. It's just my opinion, but I reckon the good charities are suffering as a result of the chugging, I think the ones who are chugging are building up a real body of public charity-resentment because people just get harrassed so frequently by chuggers. I've no problem with someone standing holding a bucket, but please don't harrass me. Life's tough enough as it is without some snotty brat trying to lay on the guilt cos you're 'loike, so not thinking of the poor african babies lioke'.

Thing is, people ARE starving. Both here and abroad. Charity does remain very important, regardless of how pissed off the chuggers make people. I just think charity needs to be more targeted, rather than just blindly giving out food and medicine, I think politicians need to take a much, much harder line approach with certain developing contries. Just look at the population stats for Ethiopia for instance. Post live-aid, the population doubled... Now twice as many people are starving... Yet it continues to have a HUGE military.... Focus on fixing the underlying problem, rather than treating the symptoms indefinitely.

Charities I think are Great:

ones that work at home:
The Simon Community: http://www.simon.ie/
RNLI : http://www.rnli.org.uk/rnli_near_you/ireland
ISPCC: http://www.ispcc.ie/
ISPCA: http://www.ispca.ie/
DSPCA: http://www.dspca.ie/
Barretstown: http://www.barretstown.org/
Jack and Jill foundation: http://www.jackandjill.ie/
Make a Wish foundation: http://www.makeawish.ie/iopen24
Ronald McDonald Houses: http://www.rmhc.ie/

abroad:
Bothar: http://www.bothar.ie/
WWF: http://www.wwf.org/ (planet doesn't just belong to humans)
National Geographic: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/about/

I'd like to be able to put some sort of lobby group in here that tries to pressurize negligent third world governments into fixing their own problems, but, alas, I don't know of any (no, please, not amnesty international).


Now for a rant about the lousy ones
I wouldn't go near the SVDP. Relative was starving - literally no food or money left in the house, 2 small kids to feed. Asked SVDP for food and they turned her away because she owned her own house and so clearly didn't need their help.

Friends were emigrating and wanted to donate a barely used (really was less than a year old and barely used, it sat in their good room and nobody tended to sit in there) suite of living room furniture. Beautiful and expensive set of furniture. Rang up SVDP asked where they could donate it, hired a van, loaded it up, brought it to them. SVDP said "Oh no sorry, it's used? No we only accept NEW furniture donations". Sorry, exactly how needy are the people they help? Because if they're that fussy about the living room furniture they sure as hell aren't needy! Whatever about matresses, which I could understand wanting them new, a suite of living room furniture is fine. I'm sure people who are actually needy could have used it, or stick it in a drop in centre somewhere.

Another one I don't get are the asthma society. I mean, excuse me? What exactly do they do??? I have asthma (albeit mildly), some of my friends have severe asthma that's left them hospitalized several times. None of us have ever had any contact/support, even when they were barely breathing in hospital. Having a laugh if they think they actually do anything.

Anyone chugging really annoys me, some of them are even a bit underhand about saying exactly what the charity does - some that chug are actually a christian missionary service who go to third world countries try to convert people in return for aid, yet none of this is mentioned when their chuggers stop people - it gets sold as simply providing food and clean water.

wilkie2006 wrote: »

What are people's views on "charity muggers"; those guys who stop you on the street, striking up an inane conversation before asking you to set up a direct debit with Oxfam or whoever?

I'm in two minds about them. On the one hand, I think that in these recession years it's pretty invasive and insensitive to put someone under pressure to sign up to something when they might not have a job. When I was on the dole I was caught by one of these guys who ignored my excuses (all intimating that I didn't have a job) until I had to come out with, "I don't have a job and I don't have any money. That's why I'm out, walking around at 2pm". I thought it was really f*cking demeaning and made me feel like a real loser not being able to afford 3E a month or whatever it was.

On the other hand (and I'm not just being philosophical because I now have a job - I thought this the same day), although I didn't have a job, I was a lot better off than the people the money would go to. I'd been lucky to have been born in Ireland and lived through the last 10 years (well, pre-recession, I mean). So what if I was made feel uncomfortable for 10 minutes; there are other people in the world who are going to feel a lot more uncomfortable for a lot longer. Even without a job, I wasn't going to be raped, go hungry for days, die of a curable disease or be murdered in a robbery.

What are other people's views on these characters?

The idea in your first point really gets to me. When I was unemployed I had to go into the post office to pick up my social welfare and without fail, every single time there would be some ****er with a bucket from the hanely center sitting outside the door hasseling everyone that came out. 90% of the people that use the actual post office building are picking up some form of social welfare payment. Kinda sickens me.

I do feel bad that there are people out there who are much worse off than me. I don't feel bad saying no to those people that hassle you in the street. It was pointed out already these people are paid a crazy amount of money to do that job, and are paid commission too. The CEO's of most of the the large charities earn huge salaries, just a quick search turned this up http://society.guardian.co.uk/salarysurvey/table/0,12406,1042677,00.html it's from 2003 and only of British charities, too lazy to look for a better list I think this one get's the point across just fine. I doubt many of them have since grown a conscience. At the end of the day only a small portion of donated money ends up being used for the actually cause.

Edit: Just found this link on Irish charity CEO's http://www.herald.ie/news/charity-chiefs-earn-up-to-euro150k-three-times-average-pay-packet-2887476.html

Sizzler wrote: »

€16 p/h?

Pffft !

The CEO of Concern is on c.140k a year FFS

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/top-charities-defend-fat-cat-ceo-salaries-1062042.html

Sadly they are now being run more like big businesses than charities, a well meaning idea that simply got WAY out of control, a bit like facebook lol

Yep. Trocaire are the same. I will now only donate to charities where the admin costs are low.

When I was in my twenties every charity collector stopped me. Now that I am old they are afraid to ask.