David Craig, on August 8th, 2014I’ve just started researching and possibly writing a book exposing the massive scandal of Britain’s bloated charity industry. Though I’m not sure any publisher will have the courage to publish it as I’m not too complimentary about Britain’s hundreds of thousands of bloated, self-serving charities.
Here’s just a little foretaste of the kind of things I’ve found.
Just in England and Wales, there are 1,939 active charities focused on children; 843 helping the elderly (though some of these are branches of one large charity Age Concern); 581 charities trying to help victims of cancer or else find a cure for cancer; 354 charities for birds; 255 charities for animals and even in a more restricted field like leukaemia we have no fewer than 68 charities all eagerly asking for our money for a good cause.
If there is duplication, triplication, quadruplication and more, then this is probably costing ordinary members of the public surprisingly large amounts of money. For example, all charities with an income of £25,000 and above have to file properly audited financial accounts with the Charity Commission. If it costs an average of just £2,000 to produce a set of audited accounts for the 20,000 or so charities earning between £25,000 and £100,000, say £5,000 each in auditors’ fees for the 20,871 charities collecting between £100,000 and £500,000, perhaps £7,000 each for the 8,302 charities picking up between £500,000 and £5 million and £25,000 each for the 1,976 charities with over £5 million a year, then that’s £251 million pounds of donors’ money just for ‘beancounting’ how much money the charities collected and how they spent it.
Many charities try to get us to sign up to donating a small sum, maybe £5 or £10 a month. Just to pay the external auditors’ fees for the 51,149 charities taking in more than £25,000 a year would require an incredible four million people donating £5 per month or two million generous souls handing over a more substantial £10 per month.
Are we being scammed? Yes we are.
Meanwhile, on the Baroness Warsi front, a reader beat me to it yesterday when he wrote: “Where is her concern for the Christians being slaughtered in Iraq? Where is her condemnation for the two sides of the horror of Syria? Where is her condemnation of Boko Haram and their vile exploits? She is just another self serving politician. In fact she is worse, she is one that has been placed there purely on race and gender. Well good riddance to her, shows that selection on race and gender rather than merit is another PC load of rubbish dragging our country down the EU drain.”
Category: 
About ten years ago I flew to Bangkok on Qatar Airways and treated myself to Business Class. The gentleman sitting next to me was in his early thirties and when we got talking…it turns out that he ran a Nepalese children’s charity. He was on his way via Doha to Katmandu and flew that same trip four to five times a year. He opened his wallet to give me his card and there were more gold credit cards than I could shake a stick at. He told me that his job was very fulfilling. When I returned to the U.K. I googled children’s Nepalese charities and it turned out that his was just one of about ten that existed at that time.
Yep – it’s all a most profitable rip-off for hundreds – maybe thousands – of highly-paid “administrators” and others who live very happily indeed off the donations given in ignorance and good faith by the general population.
I well remember a friend, much better informed than I was at the time, who told me her aged father had advised her never, ever, to give to the emotionally-based appeals for aid that invariably follow any disaster – from the Penlee Lifeboat disaster and Aberfan, both of which occurred many years ago in the UK, to the most recent appeals of behalf of starving children in Africa. Her father informed her that indefinitely following any such disaster a substantial amount of the cash donated can still be found being held by the Fund, gathering interest/profits from investments, which is paying not those people suffering from the effects of the disaster, but the salaries of the trustees and other leeches who live very comfortably indeed in the UK off the dontations of others. Rather to my subsequent shame, I thrust my friend’s advice to the back of my mind a few years ago and donated what was, for me, a substantial amount following the Tsunami disaster, being moved by the plight of the humble fishermen of Sri Lanka, whose homes and livelihoods had literally been swept away. I regretted my generosity a year or two later, when I saw a TV programme showing us how the money had gone not to those humble fishermen but to the development of luxury hotels for holiday-makers. Never again; I’d have done much better to give the money to my children to spend on themselves or on my grandchildren.
Remember; Charity begins at Home!
I would never walk past a “tin rattler” for Help For Heroes. That was until I heard they refused a donation from the EDL for several thousands of pounds.
If they don’t need their money, they don’t need mine either.
I give a few bob to ABF the soldiers charity now and again.
When visiting my local garden center a lady had a table in the entrance with lots of leaflets as I approached she asked me if I would consider giving to the charity she was selling “Rescuing Distressed Donkeys” ? I asked the lady if she was being paid for doing this and are there many distressed donkeys. Her attitude changed immediately she replied with “Of course I am being paid you would not expect me to do this for nothing would you” Silly me, I thought people did it out of the kindness of their hearts, but no.. I am thinking about setting up The Distressed Bar Girl’s Foundation, which would require me too travel to Thailand and The Philippines by business class several times a year, to distribute money of course
Great idea. Go for it on the book exposing charities. I feel they are, in the main, a provider of very good pay to uncharitable staff and very little left for the people who the donors thought the money would go to. I think, if you do write the book, that it will need some inventive marketing as again its title will not be sufficient to grab the public’s interest.
On a lighter note there seems to be rather a lot of unpleasantness around,at the moment in the middle eastern countries. I heard a rumour that the main protagonists are m*sl*ns and they do seem to be a busy lo, fighting everywhere and trying to kill other folk who don’t share their religion. Presumably all the m*sl*s in the UK are not like that and abhor the violence and aggression of the nasty boys who share their faith? I heard it said that all the m*sl*ns believe that all non-m*sl*ns are infidels who they would wish to eradicate and take over their lands. That’s what they seem to be doing now in the middle east.That’s not very sporting is it? When can I expect them to be marching up my drive to persuade me? Will that nice Mr Cameron do anything to stop this happening?