On 14/10/06 09:55, in article , "K"
wrote:

The Invalid writes
On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:19:15 +0200, "JennyC"
wrote:

Came across this by accident...........
http://savethechildren.sandbag.uk.co...8--seeds+.html

Seems like a good idea !

How much of the £10 you give will actually be used to buy seeds?
£1? £2?

And how are you going to get your £1 or £2 worth of seeds to the right
place any cheaper? Or are you saying that it's better not to give at all
just in case some of the money is not used as wisely as you hope.

There is a web (sorry, have lost the url) which summarises for all the
major charities the proportion of donations that go to administration
costs.

This 'what proportion' thing is always difficult. On the one hand a
charity does have admin costs and some would say that professional fund
raisers justify their salaries because of the contacts and professional
approach they bring to such things. I used to be the local chairman of the
Leukaemia Research Fund, which used to give a high proportion of each £1 to
the charity, from what I remember.
In the end, I think people tend to give to the charity that most affects
them or someone they know, or which appeals to their personal interest and
imagination. For example, Ian Botham is a strong supporter of the LRF and I
was chairman when he first became involved. That was not because members of
his family had leukaemia but was because he had seen children with it and
had become so emotionally involved that he felt he must do what he could to
help. He did one of his famous walks for us, round the 12 parishes and if it
wasn't the first, it was certainly one of the earliest ones. He's gone on
to give great publicity ever since.
The RNLI gets my whole-hearted support because they do an immensely
dangerous job, entirely as volunteers, except for the engineers who are, I
think, retained on a full time basis for obvious reasons. What it would
cost for a government funded service on the same basis and how it would be
run isn't something I care to think about! This breakdown from their own
site speaks for itself:
"Our running costs averaged around £330,000 (€484,510) per day in 2005. For
every £1 raised, 78p was spent on operations, 3p was spent on support and
19p was spent on fundraising."
There's another excellent charity called Intermediate Technology which also
gives simple tools and seeds to third world countries so that they can feed
themselves without the cost of oil, petrol and repairs to machinery. I see
that they're now called Practical Action: http://www.itdg.org.uk/
The awful thing in terms of decisions is how many charities there are
needing and deserving support - the leaflets just pour into the mail at this
time of year.

--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/