Charity adverts on TV

Off_it

Was thinking of putting up a post about the proliferation of charity adverts on the TV at the moment and how they all seem to be the same formula - soft music, heart-wrenching pictures, some bloke telling you how you would give "just £2 a month" if you really cared about donkeys/snow leopards/starving children in Africa/abused children, etc, etc.

The tone always seems to be, to me at least, that if you don't give them £2 you are a heartless bastard who just doesn't care.

Having done work for some of these charities in the past I'm pretty certain people would be shocked about just how much of their money actually goes towards what they think it is going towards. No all of them mind you, but certainly there is a hell of a lot of waste in the sector.

I had decided against starting the thread it as I didn't want to be seen as a heartless bastard who just didn't care, but have just seen a great advert from Cancer Research UK which focussed on how they would spend the money on research and didn't try tugging at the heart strings too much. Well done CRUK.

iaitch

I suppose they have overheads like any other business but when you read that a CEO is on £500,000 a year it does make you think what percentage actually gets used to help the cause.

Off_it

They're big businesses, so it's only natural that they pay wages of a certain level to attract the right people, but there's a hell of a lot that get's spent that people just wouldn't dream about.

cafctom

They love tapping into the whole Christmas thing as well. "This Christmas, this lad will have this, this and this........"

I saw one the other day about how a poor lad is in desperate need of bone marrow, or a new organ or something. However, the adverts always make it out to be that critical issues like these are so much more desperate at Christmas time. Surely something as important as that is a big deal the rest of the bloody year as well?!

iaitch

If the CEO wages can be justified by the amount of funding they can secure then fine but as you say I'm sure there's lost of wastage/unnecessary spending.

Are the ads any different to the chuggers you get in most high streets laying the big guilt trip on you, i.e you say you're not interested and they reply "so you don't care about children/people/animals suffering".

Webby

One of my employees left to work for a cancer charity that her friend was a manager. Offered her twice the pay I could, half the hours and in an area where unemployment is high. I regularly fund raise for charity personally and through my business and this in my opinion undermines why so many people don't give to charities. Why on earth should a charity be allowed to spend our hard earned cash on such ridiculous salaries, she had no experience or knowledge of the business and probably just the tip do the iceberg. For that reason I prefer to try and give directly to the end product where possible and cut out all the middle men.

randy andy

Interesting article on big charity on the bbc recently.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20762278

stop_shouting

I think there's something morally wrong with companies using charities to promote their product. See pampers and UNICEF.

I-SAW-POUSO-PLAY

Bob geldofs made a good living out of charity.

SilentAddick

I worked in the charity sector for many years and got out when it was more concerned about finding funds for "core operations" than for the cause itself. There were seven senior managers all on £80k plus and the concept that their jobs need to be merged to save core costs were stamped on with a passion that wasn't evident when discussing the projects and services... Moved to private sector where people produce at least twice in their output - never going back there at all!!

Off_it

randy andy said:

Interesting article on big charity on the bbc recently.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20762278

That's a very good article.

I once did some work for a fairly big and well known charity that had so much money swilling about they genuinely didn't know what to do with it. They had to spend a big chunk of it as they kept getting in trouble with the charity commission because they had such large cash reserves - so they went and built themsleves a new headquarters building to try to solve the problem.

randy andy

Strange you mention about charities being awash with cash. Saw this article about Wikipedia and it's annual donation drive:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia_chugging/

Lincsaddick

Many of the sacked 'bankers' and advertising chappies have moved into the charity market .. they are experts at weedling money from gullible, witless people

PeanutsMolloy

I don't support charities that:
1. advertise on TV
2. employ chuggers
3. cold call you to "give you updates" (i.e. ask for more money)
4. support the Robin Hood Tax campaign
5. are endorsed by Bill Nighy.
Too many large charities pursue political campaigns and waste money (mainly because they get too much).
Small charities are starved of money and typically deploy a much higher % of their funds on their causes.
Support your favourite small charities.

MrOneLung

Top 1000 Charities by Donations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/apr/24/top-1000-charities-donations-britain#data

Goonerhater

18 Billion expenditure FFS thats staggering

Off_it

Goonerhater said:

18 Billion expenditure FFS thats staggering

Not if it's being spent in the right areas it's not. After all, what's the point in giving money to charity if they then don't spend it?

Goonerhater

agree but its still a hell of a wedge.

ME14addick

I work for a charity and funding the the Third Sector is very difficult at the moment. It IS necessary to have campaigns to raise money, be they by phone, face to face, door to door, postal etc. How else can you raise money without letting the public know you are there? Money doesn't just come in without having to do some work to get it. I have lost colleagues to redundancy this year and they have all been very good at their job and their expertise is a great loss.

Stig

I hate those ads that are ridiculously optimistic/simplistic about what can be done. Apparently for for just £2 per month I could stop all child cruelty for ever. For another £2 I could save the Amur Leopard from extinction. Unfortunately, neither are the case in reality. The sad truth is that you could pump millions into the NSPCC and barely scratch the surface of child cruelty. And no matter how much you give the WWF, the amur leopard is no more safe than the dodo.

Also, can't stick Dog's Trust (and similar) with its over-simplistic anthropomorphic bilge.

randy andy

Yep, they never put a healthy dog down, you know, apart from when they do, quite regularly actually

lancashire lad

charity should start at home, then when we have solved our own problems is the time to help other countries.

Bedsaddick

I hate those adverts that try to make you feel guilty into sending money. They should be banned. Thank heavens for sky +

richie8

My Uncle and Auntie had a pub and they did charity stuff.My Auntie was invited to a bash to say thank you for the donations their pub had made.She was horrified that they were trying to get her to claim expenses for the day out and they got narky when she refused to take the expenses. So after that they raised money after that they went straight to a firm that manufactured hospital equipment and took it to the hospital themselves.Cut out the middlemen that were on the make!

SilentAddick

ME14addick said:

I work for a charity and funding the the Third Sector is very difficult at the moment. It IS necessary to have campaigns to raise money, be they by phone, face to face, door to door, postal etc. How else can you raise money without letting the public know you are there? Money doesn't just come in without having to do some work to get it. I have lost colleagues to redundancy this year and they have all been very good at their job and their expertise is a great loss.

And the management still in their cosy jobs, I presume?

lancashire lad

just seen one of those "give £3 ads" and it occurred to me that there should be a bit of small print saying what percentage of the donation goes to the actual work of the charity.

Leroy Ambrose

I've volunteered at charities before, donating my time and knowledge to fixing their IT infrastructure. I stopped doing this when I discovered the systems bloke there was making more money in his 'day' job there than I was in my 'day' job (inverted commas because whilst his 'day' consisted of rocking up whenever the fuck he felt like, doing bollock-all then disappearing off home at 4:30). Not all of them are like this, I hasten to add - there was one charity I worked at years ago who were very cash-strapped - but the majority of them are money-making enterprises. You'd be surprised (and appalled) at how little of the money you give most of them actually goes directly to funding research/actual charity projects/the end cause.

For instance, I do one charity thing a year - and am a firm believer that this has to actually be a worthwhile endeavour before asking people to dip into their pockets. This year I'm cycling from London to Paris in 24 hours - but I have to raise 1200 quid before getting accepted onto it - and it sticks in my craw wondering how much of that is going towards the CEO's salary.

Off_it

I don't like the way charities now do things where you have to guarantee raising a certain amount of dosh for them, i.e. because they have paid for your trek through Nepal and they want at least 4 times as much back as they have outlaid.

That's fair enough in eceonomic terms, but I'm fucked if 25% of my dosh is going to pay towards some twats "life changing experience" before the charities overheads get taken out, so less than half of the dough actually goes to the cause you wanted it to go towards.

Against that, I can say with certainty that there are some absolutely brilliant people working in the upper echelons of some charities who absoutely earn every penny they take home. Some could undoubtedly earn a lot more if they took a more "commercial" job elsewhere, but they do it partly for the love of it and their convictions.

Mind you, there's a hell of a lot of chuff in the sector too.

smudge7946

I saw one of these adverts the other day, I didnt see which charity it was,
but it claimed that there was a cure for HIV. Is this claim true?

MrOneLung

No way would there be an advert on the tv that stated there was a cure for HIV.

Any charity advert on TV or in print should have a notice that clearly states that 15% (for example) of money raised is used for administrative purposes (i.e. wages etc)

Off_it

Advert asking me for £3 to help children in Syria now.