JournalLive – News – Todays News – Auctioneer charged over wild birds egg sale

I have no problem with Mr Nighy sharing his economic illiteracy with the nation on morning telly, what I do object to is the range of charities who appear to be supporting and funding this campaign.

Having looked at their website all the usual suspects are listed as supporters (Oxfam, Action Aid, Christian Aid). There are also a few surprises to me – the Salvation Army, and the RSPB!.

Not sure when the RSPB felt its role went beyond looking after wildlife and extended to offering economic advice. My long standing monthly direct debit will be cancelled this afternoon.

Like most who have seen the news reports of the Haitian catastrophe, my instinctive reaction was to reach for the mouse with payment card to hand.

Over the past few years – the Tsunmai, Darfur atc. I have gone straight to the DEC site and offered up some money. However this time my approach was a little different.

I have been frustrated by DEC’s habit of sending worthless mail in the past acknowledging past donations. See previous posts on this subject, I want my money to work for the people on the ground not be consumed by worthless administration.

I am also unconvinced by charities that seem to spend a large proportion of their income on activities that are variously described as campaigning, advocacy and education. Some of the leading culprits – Oxfam, Action Aid and Christian Aid are all members of the DEC.

To ensure none of my money is wasted by these organisations I have chosen to donate directly to Merlin who from past communication appear to concentrate their income where it matters.

Rather late in the programme she mentioned that Liberty was a charity, which had never really ocurred to me. I suppose I assumed it was some sort of pressure group with a paid up membership. Having checked their website, I now know there are both paid members and a charitable arm which seems a reasonable approach. I made a donation via my CAF card and then had some doubts – not about the purpose and value of my contribution, but whether this was something that I wanted to come out of my charitable giving.

I normally like my giving to be targeted at specific projects and to think that it leads to tangible items being delivered to people in need. I have a innate distrust of charities who appear on the news just a little too often, usually commenting on news stories that appear to have been generated by their own PR. Although Liberty, in shape of Chakrabarti never appears to be off our screens I hadn’t thought of them in this way. I want Liberty to be effective and support them but don’t want this to be at the expense of my donations to “real” charities.

So the upshot of all this personal confusion on my part is that I have just topped up my CAF account to the value of the earlier donation to Liberty. Sorry if this post doesn’t make sense, I am not sure if it does to me either.

 Last week I received the latter from Merlin, a medical charity working in the developing world. The appeal sought my support for their work in promoting Womens’ health and in particular training midwives and birth attendants in Afghanistan. I thought this was an extremely well prepared campaign, it included an A3 colour sheet identifying the need and the work currently underway and a fascinating A4 page showing sample training material which brought home to me a little of the difficulty in training students who have not had the benefit of a comprehensive education.

More about this campaign

http://www.merlin.org.uk/Where-we-work/Afghanistan.aspx

I seem to receive as many glossies these days from my regular charities as I do from those institutions supposedly looking after my finances. I have a random sample in front of me and thought I would share my thoughts on these;

Village Aid – a small local charity to which I have contributed for a number of years. The mailshot consists of four separate documents, a covering letter with an A4 invitation to the AGM, an A5 return slip advertising the AGM, an a5 flyer with ideas of fundraising initiatives I could organise for the charity and finally an eight page colour report highlighting the charity’s work over the past 15 months.

Working in five sub Saharan countries the charity is involved in a very broad range of empowerment activity, including credit and enterprise development, para-leagl work, women empowerment, literacy circles and enterprise groups all being mentioned.  Although all of this seems worthy it appears to be  an awful lot of competing demands for the limited funds available. I am left with no clear understanding of where the charity is intending to concentrate in the future. Past reports appeared to concentrate on the micro loan schemes, now there appears to be more reference to “empowerment” but I’m not entirely clear what this involves and where my future donations will be used.

As an accountant I like figures and expect to see proper financial statements, here they are reduced to two pye charts highlighting sources of income and expenditure. I would have liked a comparison with the previous year ( we are told income is down but not by how much or reasons why this may have occurred). Similarly listing the number of literarcy circles supported is only interesting if we know how many people this involves and how this compares with previous years.

Overall the paperwork is bright, colourful but rather uninformative. I am left with some concerns that the charity has a scattergun approach to its activities and based on the information I have received I am not not sure if I have a real understanding of where it is heading.

The Woodland Trust – I have been fairly critical of this lot in the past, becoming increasingly fed up with the cold-calling and over regular mailshots but I have to say this is an exemplary annual report. A 24 page colour booklet, a flyer advertising availability of the report online ( I like the idea of the competition to encourage online registration) and a 20 page book listing the wide range of corporate sponsors .

I like this report because the waffle is fairly limited. At the start there is a clear list of quantifiable  objectives set out for the next three years (e.g establish 12000 acres of new native woods, record 100,00 ancient trees). I can identify with this and feel I know where my money will be spent. The financial statements offer reasonable detail with a number of useful graphs for key performance indicators (membership growth, numbers of trees planted over the past six years) and a link to the website for those of us who want to look at the full accounts.

 So depite recent grumbles this is a good reminder of why this charity deserves my continued support.

Tools for Self Reliance – I was surprised to hear from this small charity as I have only made one small financial donation and offered some garden tools for refurbishment. The novelty here is that the mailing including an informative  DVD highlighting the charity’s work.This seemed a little excessive until I read in the covering letter that it had been funded by a grant from the National Lottery.

The actual report runs to  16 A4 colour pages, perhaps more than necessary, but it gives a sense of a charity with focus and clear objectives. The financial statements are clear and include the  year on year comparatives not shown by the others. Overall this report will have achieved its aim as it has made me want to give future donations towards its work.

Finally there is an excellent statement that I see far too rarely outlining the charity’s commitment to donors;

www.tfsr.org/our_promise_to_you/

Many others in the sector could learn from it.

“

Over the past two weeks I have received three separate calls asking whether I would consider increasing the small monthly donation that I have been making for a number of years. Clearly my initial answer of “No thanks” has not been noted. I have therefore promised myself that if I get any further such calls then the monthly donation will be terminated.

 From a quick perusal of the cards  around me it would appear that charity cards now dominate, I may be wrong but I don’t think that would have been the case say five years ago.

It is interesting to see the charities supported. Older relatives/friends appear to go for heritage and animal charities, whereas younger folk of my acquaintance tend to concentrate on development and conservation. This information has been gleaned from looking at the back of each of the cards as it is rarely apparent from the picture. With the exception of some rather nice cards from the Woodland Trust all of the others are pretty bland and give little indication of the charity being supported.

I appreciate that the cards will normally have a Christian or Winter theme, but surely the charities could something more to highlight their work? e.g the Save the Children cards could possibly involve artwork from some of the children being supported by their programmes, cards from some of the third world development charities could perhaps use photos of Christmas at some of their projects.

I think there might be a market for charities that produce cards that produce something a little different from the norm.

Happy Christmas

A minnow by comparison with the British Legion it also has been running an extremely effective campaign. In Warchild’s case to support its ongoing work in Iraq, where it is the only child protection agency working in Southern Iraq. The charity relies on the music industry for much of its support, fundraising through a number of recent concerts and the sale of music downloads. This has enabled the charity to get its message across to an audience and into many publications that perhaps fall outside the norm. One recent feature in FHM looked at the training of Warchild’s staff to respond to threats to their personal safety in the event of kidnap. The video produced was both entertaining, informative and I would have thought hit a target market, readers of a Lads mag, who are missed by more established charities.

 http://www.guerrilla.uk.com/clients/emap/FHM_WARCHILD_OLD.mov

Warchild has been quick to embrace many of the opportunites that the net provides with use of Myspace, Flickr, blogging etc. The website is excellent and sets a standard that many more high profile charities fail to achieve;

http://www.warchild.org.uk/

I have never received a mailshot from Warchild, they have earned my support through effective online communication and most importantly doing work that really matters.

The poster campaign and the involvement in the press launch of a young war widow and the 22 year old vetran blinded in Iraq gave this campaign (for me at least)an immediacy  that others may have lacked. It felt that an important shift has started, as the service men from WW2 are now passing on in large numbers, the Legion has perhaps decided to place greater emphasis on its work with those involved in more recent campaigns. The next few years will be a critical time for the Legion with many of its most active supporters no longer available and the decline of the World Wars in the national consciousness.

There is no doubt in mind so long as our politicians send our countrymen to do dirty work around the globe that it should continue to play an important role in this country.