£50 per month to charity until the end of the year

[TrixiBuG]

Please consider giving to a Dementia charity either

https://www.dementiafriends.org.uk/

or

http://www.rice.org.uk/

Its a horrible, life changing and incurable disease which can effect anyone regardless of life style or age.

It not only effects the sufferer but their family too and the sooner we have a cure the better.

In England and Wales there are 1,939 active charities focused on children; 581 charities trying to find a cure for cancer; 354 charities for birds; 255 charities for animals, 81 charities for people with alcohol problems and 69 charities fighting leukaemia but only 23 across the UK dedicated to dementia.

Otherwise, Cats Protection League (in your area) OR RNLI

 

[Amp34]

World land trust - Helping buy areas of threatened land all over the world in conjunction with local communities to both protect the land and to help protect threatened apex predators (and thereby protect the entire ecosystem. Patroned by David Attenborough. http://www.worldlandtrust.org

Trees for life - Scottish charity aiming to reforest parts of the ancient Caledonian forest with the aim of rewinding parts of Scorland for the "greater good". Good for wildlife and flood prevention. http://treesforlife.org.uk

Population Matters - Another small charity that aims to reduce population growth around the world by education, empowerment of women and other similar methods. Also patroned by David Attenborough. http://www.populationmatters.org

All three are small charities that provide the majority of their donations to the causes they support rather than taking large chunks off the top in admin fees.

 

[Ekim]

http://www.rowanshospice.co.uk/ gets my vote, they basically run a local hospice on donations, so you know that at least most of your cash is going to the right places to be useful

+1 about this time last year my mother was admitted to the Rowans after a long battle with cancer.

The care that my mother received from Rowans, and the support they gave to the family was second to none. We were there each day for around two weeks until she finally passed away.

Run on the kindness of volunteers and donations. I now have a monthly DD set up for them which can never be enough for the work that they did to make my mother comfortable in her last few days.

 

[ADT]

Can never trust these big charities. In my book if you want to do good, do it yourself and don't let others do it for you.
I'm all in for the local ones though as they are more likely to be genuine

 

[Diddums]

I'd like to throw Extra Life in the hat.

http://www.extra-life.org/

This is a charity very close to my heart and one I'd love to see benefit from your generosity

 

[Orion21]

Probably best to find a relatively small local charity to support.

More likely in my opinion that the money raised will be going towards the cause one way or another rather than admin. Also if the charity has a lot of volunteers then this probably suggests it is going to the cause too.

That said a lot of charities do need some staff and they obviously need paid fairly but hopefully the work they would be doing would actually be supporting the cause rather than bloated administration like in large charities. Easier to volunteer for a local charity too and less restricted since that tends to be how they try and keep costs down and spend funds on the cause.

Perhaps charities for the most part are better suited to be smaller local organisations staff by volunteers where possible. I think this works well with animal shelters as some have mentioned, and well I'm a bit dubious about the RSPCA's reputation etc (putting animals down perhaps too quick), and sometimes seem more interested money with all their fundraising which I'm sure goes back to admin etc rather than the cause.

Alternatively to paying donations why not volunteer, that way you know it is going to the cause as best you can do. That's a big part of the reason I volunteer rather than donate (and I'd only be likely to do either of those for a local charity too). As a result of volunteering I now know more about what goes on in the charity and I would be happy to donate if they were short of funds as I can see how they use the funds for the cause.

 

[mid_gen]

I don't give to charities, but I do have quite a bit of my cash tied up in Kiva. It's not doing a lot for me sat in a bank, but makes a real difference to someone else.

I usually lend to students or entrepreneurs needing startup cash.

 

[subbytna]

https://www.cats.org.uk/

A £50 donation will cover the cost of a cat being spayed and its injections. The link has the locations for centres near you, just look for the local centre to where you live.

You can sponsor a cat hut for a year for that amount too, you would be helping multiple cats that use the hut.

 

[DailyGeek]

My Nan rescues frogs and could buy a lot of frog beds and flies for Fifty quid.

Only joking of course.

I'd say Samaritans. They are run on a pretty tight HQ staff and it costs about 3 quid for them to take a call. I volunteered for three years and answered a LOT of calls. This country would undoubtedly be worse off without such an important service for those in their darkest hours.

 

[bignev72]

Never saw the point in the Give as you earn scheme...or charity's in general, the cut they take is ridiculous.

That's a mass generalisation. There are a lot of good charities out there.

There are some sections of the media that have vendetta's against certain charities. They print all sorts of things which end up becoming "facts" which unfortunately the general public believe and gives those charities a bad name, undeservedly so in some cases.

 

[Arthur Hucksake]

Please consider giving to a Dementia charity either

https://www.dementiafriends.org.uk/

or

http://www.rice.org.uk/

Its a horrible, life changing and incurable disease which can effect anyone regardless of life style or age.

It not only effects the sufferer but their family too and the sooner we have a cure the better.

In England and Wales there are 1,939 active charities focused on children; 581 charities trying to find a cure for cancer; 354 charities for birds; 255 charities for animals, 81 charities for people with alcohol problems and 69 charities fighting leukaemia but only 23 across the UK dedicated to dementia.

Otherwise, Cats Protection League (in your area) OR RNLI

My vote goes to these too.

Dementia is starting to hit younger nowadays and there really is absolutely no treatment. It's pure evil. It is worse than cancer.

 

[loopylou]

I say a dementia charity too. To see a loved one forget who you are, who they are and every single memory is heart breaking for everyone.

 

[Xordium]

I've worked for and alongside institutions that get a lot of charitable money and in my opinion the only one to really use it efficiently and effectively is Médecins Sans Frontières. Yep, most of the big charities, the big children's hospitals, etc waste money like it's going out of fashion they really don't deserve it because they don't use the money efficiently or effectively.

 

[Pudney]

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) - 92.5p on charitable activities, 7.3p on raising income & 0.2p on administration.
Oxfam - 73.7p on charitable activities, 25.8p on raising income & 0.5p on administration.
WaterAid - 77.3p on charitable activities, 22.1p on raising income & 0.6p on administration.
British Red Cross - 67.0p on charitable activities, 31.7p on raising income & 1.3p on administration.
Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) - 87.8p on charitable activities, 11.5p on raising income & 0.7p on administration.
Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture - 72.1p on charitable activities, 27.5p on raising income & 0.4p on administration.
Save the Children - 86.5p on charitable activities, 12.9p on raising income & 0.6p on administration.

The figures for most of these really are quite shocking. At various times I have given to all of the Charities above but I will stick to MSF in future.

"raising income" is a fairly important part of running a charity...

 

[dowie]

Seems perfectly reasonable in my opinion, from what people were saying on the previous page I expected less than 50% going to charitable activities.

what do you define 'charitable activities' as? Would be interesting to see what gets included in that category

is it not worrying that say Oxfam is seemingly spending over 3 times more on fundraising than MSF?

 

[Xordium]

what do you define 'charitable activities' as? Would be interesting to see what gets included in that category

Well I can tell you that a well known institution where I suspect I lot of people have given money to use part of it for staff training. Some of the staff training is senior team building and that building is often done over dinner ...

There is far more waste there than people account for. Inappropriately bought items etc that weren't need or were the wrong type, remedial building work that is demolished in short order, new build when facilities are moving away in short order etc. It's very easy to spend someone else's money I've noticed.

 

[Pudney]

Well I can tell you that a well known institution where I suspect I lot of people have given money to use part of it for staff training. Some of the staff training is senior team building and that building is often done over dinner ...

There is far more waste there than people account for. Inappropriately bought items etc that weren't need or were the wrong type, remedial building work that is demolished in short order, new build when facilities are moving away in short order etc. It's very easy to spend someone else's money I've noticed.

How much waste? I.e. how much of their donations do they waste on staff training? How is that accounted for? Is it admin costs? It normally would be.

 

[stopper]

local charities > multi national charities

That's what I would do. Write a cheque to an autism school, disabled school, boy scouts, local fire brigade, etc
Never, ever, EVER give money to a registered charity, at the end of the day they are a business, and they exist only to make a profit.
Cancer charities are the worst, if you must give to them, give a cheque to the cancer treatment ward at your local hospital. Not to a registered charity who have to pay their employees and taxes.
Sad, but true.

 

[Jambo]

I tell you what OP. **** these scaming charities, that includes you cancer research UK and go give that chque to your nearest homeless shelter. You will be making a difference to your LOCAL society

Please explain how Cancer Research UK is a scamming charity.

Never, ever, EVER give money to a registered charity, at the end of the day they are a business, and they exist only to make a profit.

Absolutely ridiculous comment.

 

[StriderX]

Please explain how Cancer Research UK is a scamming charity.



Absolutely ridiculous comment.

As said prior, why not just donate to the local NHS trust unit for cancer? Has to be better...