“Be like Captain Tom”

This is the quote I often think of.

German stand-up comedian Henning Wehn:
“We don’t do charity in Germany. We pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments’ responsibilities."

Interesting point

Yeah think that was when he tried to put charity into room 101. Wasn’t the most popular choice but what he said made sense

Doug Stanhope also has a canny routine on charity.

 


I can and I will.
For example, say you have a child who dies of cancer (best not to think about it but just as an example), rather than setting up a new charity to fund research into the cancer they died from, you could instead go to an existing childhood cancer research charity and say "I'd like to raise funds for childhood cancer research" which could cover all bases of it. Or you could say "I'd like to fund research into this specific cancer" - That may be tricky depending on whether said charity is looking into that particular strain at that point. However, it could ringfence the funding until someone began researching into cures/treatments etc.
The idea being that a charity like that would already be set up and have everything (virtually) they would need to conduct research into childhood cancers/specific cancer.

Another example could be that if your relative died and received hospice care before their death, rather than setting up "Doris McCracken's Fund" for palliative care for people who live in Washington, you could instead set up a tribute fund to the hospice which provided care for them. You could say that you'd like the funds to be spent on or around the Washington area or something that would benefit people from Washington, but others may benefit from it to. Say you funded a Community Specialist Nurse who covered Washington and surrounding area, you wouldn't pull funding if she went outside of Washington. There has to be some give/take on it.

Again, people like to fund "things" rather than people. So for example, you could set up a tribute fund to fund a new piece of equipment or pieces of equipment.
It's up to you how long you want to fundraise for too obviously, but it would be easier for you to set up a tribute fund to a hospice in order to buy a new riser recliner chair or whatnot than you try and set it all up yourself just to buy that.

There are loads of people out there who want to help and have good ideas, but I think they need steering in the right direction in order to maximise their potential and best outcomes for everyone.


This is the thing. Does bring back our rather troubling obsession with the war in this country. Taking absolutely nothing away from him and his efforts mind you but in terms of coverage, there was an extremely elderly muslim chap who did a similar challenge inspired by Captain Tom but did it during Ramadan so he must have been knackered.
Some coverage, but nowhere near as much.

Thanks, appreciate the explanation.
 
Yeah think that was when he tried to put charity into room 101. Wasn’t the most popular choice but what he said made sense

Doug Stanhope also has a canny routine on charity.


I think he did one on population control or something which was brilliant
 
Exactly this. Whether or not the government were in cohoots with the media on this is open for debate but it the promotion of the whole thing by the media was aimed at deflecting from the bleakness of the lockdown situation and you could argue the incompetence from the government at the time. As you say it could have been anyone but it was always going to be someone.
I’m also not overly keen on the way the family have grown this foundation etc. I am willing to bet they will be taking a reasonably healthy salary from it all.
No open for debate about it. The three main bbc political faces are Tory party members as is the head of news. Labour wadve done the same if they’d been in power and had insiders at the bbc.
 
Absolutely no slight on the man or what he achieved at all. Clearly a top bloke

But what frustrates me is that we shouldn’t need this kind of thing to raise money for the NHS, that’s why we pay tax. It’s just a shame that it’s diverted into Tory donors’ pockets.
Seems to be lost on a fair few from what I’ve seen.
 
There’s a scale effect with the bigger ones though.

Ok, you could do a lot of good helping a local cause which helps a child afford life changing treatment.

You could also donate to fund research which will find the life changing treatment for another rare disease, or make the existing treatment cheaper.

Definitely unhelpful to make people think they’re funding some corporate machine, when in reality to find good people to run these large organisations you do actually need to pay them accordingly.

I’ve worked in big national and small local organisations and I can safely say if you’re going to find inefficiency, it’ll be in a small local charity. Sometimes it’s because they can’t afford better systems, but usually it’s because small charities know the cost of everything and the value of nowt.

The charity I’m in at the moment have always done everything in the longest, most inefficient way because a) they’re scared of technology and b) it’s cheap.

People always moan about the cost of the likes of justgiving, but think nowt of paying a staff member to drive to pick up a collection tin, count it, record it, drive to bank it and pay the bank charges to deposit cash. That’s all “cheap” apparently.
 
I’ve worked in big national and small local organisations and I can safely say if you’re going to find inefficiency, it’ll be in a small local charity. Sometimes it’s because they can’t afford better systems, but usually it’s because small charities know the cost of everything and the value of nowt.

The charity I’m in at the moment have always done everything in the longest, most inefficient way because a) they’re scared of technology and b) it’s cheap.

People always moan about the cost of the likes of justgiving, but think nowt of paying a staff member to drive to pick up a collection tin, count it, record it, drive to bank it and pay the bank charges to deposit cash. That’s all “cheap” apparently.

How many volunteers does your organisation have/claim to have. I think ours has something like 800+ on our annual report
 
totally disagree

does not matter who you work for, there is always limitations on funds. we cannot expect there to be limitless funds.

No one is saying there should be.

But it shouldn’t be up to people donating to give staff these things to make their lives easier.
 
And it wouldn't have altered the good work he did it would just have benefitted whoever social media picked instead of him. All charity fundraisers are good people wh deserve praise.

Fair enough.

I just reject the idea that praise for an owld soldier doing his bit and thinking that the government are shithouses relying on public donations to fund those in need are mutually exclusive.
 
Absolutely no slight on the man or what he achieved at all. Clearly a top bloke

But what frustrates me is that we shouldn’t need this kind of thing to raise money for the NHS, that’s why we pay tax. It’s just a shame that it’s diverted into Tory donors’ pockets.
An unpopular opinion perhaps but it’s frankly appalling that people in this country even became aware of the existence of Captain Tom, because a man of his age felt compelled to walk lengths of his garden to raise money for the health service which is very much not a charity.

The fact people came to know him should be an indictment on the present government and a point of total shame.
 
Haway captain sir lord his majesty tom Moore, rip, kpmg, pwc, iirc
GOAT
An unpopular opinion perhaps but it’s frankly appalling that people in this country even became aware of the existence of Captain Tom, because a man of his age felt compelled to walk lengths of his garden to raise money for the health service which is very much not a charity.

The fact people came to know him should be an indictment on the present government and a point of total shame.
He was raising monies for health service charities not the actual NHS.
 
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People love to use it as an excuse not to donate money to worthy causes.
Some charities do seem to spend a bit too much on administration but not all of them and it seems a bit too much of a convenient excuse not to bother. If you can't afford it then that's fine but, like it or not, we need charities and therefore we need people to give.
 

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