Saw a banner for the London Evening Standard today saying ‘Companies slash charity donations’. Ouch! That has to hurt. It’s triple whammy isn’t it, to be paying higher food costs, higher utility bills, and now less corporate donations. And maybe the value of investments diminishing too. And governments cutting back to bail out finacial institutions? Makes that a quintuplicate whammy actually.

So what to do? Has to be a way of looking at your expenditure to increase the ratio of what you do for those who receive your funds against outgoings on admin etc. Hate to bang on suggesting sending out less envelopes and smaller, with less info stuffed inside. Finding ways to send the mailshots where they count – and where they do count don’t bombard people with mailshots before they have even had the chance to write a cheque in reponse to the last appeal.

As i said i would last time i wrote to Breadline Africa explaining my stance, and my annoyance. It’s not the irritation it causes me that matters, it is that sending too many appeals to me or anyone else simply is not efficient. It is wasteful and that too offends.

I only say this as i care. Even tho i am not responsible for the consequences of of 19th century imperialism, nor the brute bulling of (mainly) the US now, i do feel guilty to be part of the nations which meddled then and meddled now in the affairs of other nations. And i am aware that the rich west not only gives too little but continues to take more back than ever it gives – looking not only at debt servicing, but also at the darin of skilled people from Africa to the West. So i will give as long as i am able, propitatiating the gods for my good fortune in the time & place of my birth etc. But i really need to feel every penny counts. So i go on. And i really wish dozens of cahrities would falme me with angry comments explaining just how wrong i am.

I had a meeting today with a young women on the Civil Service fast track scheme, so scarily bright i felt like an amoeba in comparison, intellectually. We got to talking more generally and she told me about the presentation with which she was required to finish her degree in Maths & Ecomomics. She presented paper on how, if the US stopped fighting just one of it’s wars for one day, the money saved would be enough to buy a mosquito net for every child in Africa. Think i’ll be boring for Britain with that statistic for a while yet.

One can only hope the financial holocaust in the US will at least mean they can’t afford to let Bush wage war on Iran. For many reasons but not least that Iran may well be looking after it’s own population now but thy would sure as heck need international aid if the States get in there.

You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.