One in six UK charities questioned for a survey say they fear they may have to close in 2013 due to public spending cuts and falling donations, the Charities Aid Foundation has said.
Reality is harsh. And the reality here is that not enough people want to voluntarily support the causes in question. So, yes, they will close. So be it. What should not happen, and it is criminal that it does, is that the taxpayer is forced to keep causes going without having any say in the matter. Any charity that takes the taxpayer pound is not a charity – it as an arm of the state.
The sooner all charitable donation from the tax take is ceased the better. Those charities that provide a service that people want will survive – the fake charities and the hangers on will go and good riddance.
A report last month found that donations to charity have fallen by 20% in real terms in the past year, with £1.7bn less being given.
The number of people donating also fell – as did the amounts they gave, from an average of £11 to £10 a month.
Yes, well, join the rest of us in the real world who have had to tighten our belts. And there is a mindset that says that if the state is taking money from us and giving it to charities – possibly those that we disapprove of (NSPCC, RSPCA and all of the fake, moralising temperance fronts such as ASH, CASH and alcohol Concern) – then why should we give more, especially when we have less to give anyway?
I stopped giving some while back – financial survival of the Longrider household became rather more of a priority. At present, I have no immediate plans to resume my charitable giving as our recovery is still in the early stages. If and when I do, it will be exclusively to those that do not take a red cent from the taxpayer.
I tried LR.
I tried mightily but I could not summon even 0.00001% of a fuck.
As you say, any charity that relies on government money is not, by definition, a charity. It is a quasi-NGO. And God knows, we have plenty of them already.
I’ll sometimes give money to people on the streets, and I chuck my change in collection jars for the Lifeboats, but beyond that? Not a bean.
The government already steals most of my money.
There’s not enough left over, even if I did want to chuck them a few bob.
CR.
Kevin McKenna in the Graun is talking about Evil Osborne Cuts and talks about a charity that helps “up to 120 families at a time”. Cost per year? £350K. Know what they do? Play therapy.
I’m not against helping the poor, but my suspicion about a lot of fake charities is that they’re not really about helping the poor, but helping the Guardian-reading class that run these sorts of organisations. And just giving the £350K (plus all the other money dumped into fake charities) would serve the poor better.
Am I the only one who’s noticed a distinct increase in the number of charity collections in/outside supermarkets of late? And they seem to be getting more aggressive in their attempts to part me of my cash…
Aye. Same here. And all bloody gypoes selling the equivalent of “The big issue”.
And aye, they ARE Gypoes, or bloody “Roma” or “Sannti”, or some such bollox.
What I don’t get, and no one has ever given me an answer to, why, if, as we are told, they are “assylum seekers” from Eastern Europe, have they all nearly INVARIABLY got Birmingham/Yorkshire and Manchester accents?!
Someone with a Yorkshire accent has been taking most of my take home pay for 32 years, god bless her. (To be fair, I reckon I’m getting a bargain.)
Nowt wrong with a Yorkshire accent, or even bieng a Yorkie.
But when they are pretending(?) to be gypoes, tinks and thieves…..
I still give but check out who I give to.
Reality bites and not before time.
Yep, the local hospice and a friend’s local charity, but that’s it.
These NGOs are running our lives at the moment – it’s time to starve them.
Besides, when I see the CEOs of charities getting six-figure salaries I tend to get a bit anti.
I have to say I’ve never actually encountered a so called “chugger” but I do see people collecting now and then. The only ones I ever give to are the RNLI.
I’ve never had anybody try to pressurise me, one of the advantages of looking like one of Dr Evils’s henchmen I suppose.
Couldn’t agree more about these fake charities but I have that sinking feeling that their connection to the taxpayer teat will take more than a mere recession to break.
It’s interesting that in the US where, IIRC, there are stricter rules on taxpayer funds being handed out to ‘charities’, the population give proportionately much more than countries where the government acts as their extortion enforcer.
Logical, really. Through necessity they have gotten better at finding people who wish to support their aims.
For those charities here who are used to getting all of their key funding in one or two big blocks, and who only need to try and convince a small number of people if they want more, the prospect of approaching the general public is terrifying and alien.. and they literally have no idea what to do.
I saw a lot of this when some arts funding was withdrawn from regional theatres. Mainly there was just fear and outrage from those who valued said theatres. Very few people responded by cracking on with the job of trying to find some money from elsewhere. A few more are starting to get it (I’ve seen theatre groups raising funds on kickstarter… where previously they’d have had grants thrown at them) and having enough confidence in the value of what they do to believe that people will fund it voluntarily.
I don’t hold out much faith for many of our fake charities having the same confidence… and god-forbid that any of those well-renumerated fund-raisers should be expected to, y’know, raise funds.
I would take this argument even further. As long as charitable donations have an element of tax expenditure (i.e. the basic rate tax claimed by the charity after your donation, and the higher rate tax claimed back by the donator), they have some dependency on the state. I was the treasurer of a charity for a while, a community choir if you ask. It was bizarre to me as to why we had charitable status for what was effectively a middle class hobby. But we did claim back £1000+ pa fm HM government.
Hi, just discovered your blog, LR. Like it! And it loads quickly, unlike others I could name, but won’t, because I like what they write …
But anyway, I have a self-imposed rule regarding charities. I work on the basis that if a charity is well-known enough to be a household name, and one which most people wouldn’t have to have their supposed aims explained to them, then they’ve probably got too big for their boots and the money has probably now become more important than the aforementioned aim. So they get nowt. There’s a few exceptions, of course – Lifeboats, Dogs Trust and DeBRA, for example, are well known but seem still to adhere to their principles. But forget the NSPCC, RSPCA, Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid etc etc. Too big and too vague about what the money they get actually gets spent on. I donate quite a lot, but only to little charities and only after researching beforehand what their actual aims are and how they allocate their cash. Oh, and I don’t give a penny to any charity who spends their donations on people living overseas, no matter how worthy the cause. If, after all the aid we’ve given over the years, and all the massive donations made in response to various crises, the governments of those countries still haven’t got their act together yet, then that seems to me like nothing more than pouring good money after bad.
There’s only one charity that is worthy of the status and that’s the RNLI .
“they fear they may have to close
BUT
just under half of their organisations….dip into reserves
Note “dip into” and not “completely exhaust”. So no need for them to panic just yet, then. 😐