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Good

Smaller charities are increasingly benefiting from money left in wills after a series of scandals at large organisations, new figures show.

Some 10,428 charities were named in wills in 2018, with people “beginning to question more who they are giving their money to,” according to experts.

Last year, £3 billion was donated via gifts in wills, an increase of 50 per cent over the last decade, but despite the record figure, nine of the 25 highest earning organisations earned less than in the year before.

People should be more selective.

22 thoughts on “Good”

  1. Even the RNLI has been Leftised. Someone here told me that I was being naif in assuming that the Salvation Army was free of the buggers.

    If only there were a charity dedicated to finding ex-SAS men with terminal cancer who were prepared to go out and cull the bastards, in return for a trust being set up for their (ex-SAS) family.

  2. Expect the smaller charities to expand in useless, politically active areas instead, and the same people taking over.

  3. I have wound down my donations to national and international “charities” over the last several years until the only large charity in receipt of my money was the RNLI… Not any more since it’s dive into “woke” politics and managerialism.

    Now I only give to a few small, local charities – ones where I actually know the people running them and thus am certain about how they operate and where the money goes.

  4. I’d given to charities all my life, BJ, but like you have given up entirely on large national charities. The bastards! The utter bloody bastards!!

  5. Stopped my regular NSPCC donation when they went political about grammar schools wrote telling them why – stick to protecting children from harm- got a smug self righteous response

  6. Thank you JuliaM. I had missed that and will now write to cancel my m/ship as a governor @ £100 pa unless Bossier be sacked (apt name) £163 k pa! And no doubt gets sea sick looking at a lifeboat.

  7. Ah – need to get up to speed
    I see Bossier went in May and replaced by ex naval officer but have those 2 sacked crew men been reinstated.?

  8. Baron Jackfield,

    “Now I only give to a few small, local charities – ones where I actually know the people running them and thus am certain about how they operate and where the money goes.”

    These are wise words.

    I’m not sure that there’s much operational benefit to most charities being large. Like, there’s some business organisations that work at scale (like Google) and some that don’t (like hairdressers). A lot of charity projects, like building a school in an African village, just don’t need scale. Or running an animal sanctuary.

    And the benefit of small charities is focus, transparency and clarity of mission. A lot of these big charities are now dinosaurs in terms of mission. Either we got richer and fixed the problem, or decided we’d get government to do the thing instead. We have a whole load of charities that exist because of starving African children, like Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, Christian Aid and Comic Relief. But there’s a lot less starving children and government has taken over a lot of their role. If there’s a Tsunami, we send the navy in to help. So, they just go looking for other shit to do that’s vague, like women’s rights and the environment.

    And I still keep wondering what the Royal British Legion does with £150m/year.

  9. @ dearieme & Baron Jackfield etc
    After my local church, and a missionary couple I met while they were doing some advance training within walking distance thereof, my largest regular donations are to my old college to subsidise poor students and a charity where my little sister used to be a Trustee – so I can trust it. I’ve also donated useful sums to a charity that my wife’s best friend (she’s known her longer than me) has personally visited.
    I used to actively support Christian Aid before the lefties took over (and modestly helped to repel their first attempt).
    OTOH some smaller charities are redundant – I was briefly Hon Treasurer of a Charity whose original purpose was to provide coal to poor people in an area in the City of London – the first clean area zone to ban the burning of coal.

  10. @BoM4

    I wonder if ANY of the larger charities derive NONE of their revenue from government? There is now a thoroughly unhealthy relationship between these organisations, the source of a slab of their funding and the political lobbying they undertake.

    When it comes to smaller NGOs in the public health business, climate alarmism and doubtless other areas too, the situation is even more pernicious because skewed “studies” and political lobbying are their only discernible activities.

    The best axiom is that if you’ve heard of a national charity, it’s not worthy of support.

  11. Bloke in North Dorset

    For those who want to make donations whenever there’s been a natural disaster overseas but don’t want to support the usual suspects can I put a plea in for these guys:

    Using a military approach, we create order in the chaos caused by disaster, deploying teams of highly skilled volunteers to provide life-saving aid to those who need it most.

    Whether on UK soil or at the other side of the world, our objective is the same – to provide hope to those who have survived disaster, going where the need is greatest.

    Life in the armed forces is truly unique. Military skills and experience cannot be replicated in the civilian world. We repurpose those skills to the benefit of others.

    You can hear the UK founder discuss what they do here: https://declassifiedpodcast.com/2018/10/31/team-rubicon-special-richard-sharp/

  12. John77,

    One of the main benefits of a small charity is that when they become redundant they shut up shop. I’ve been aware of a number of charities that have helpfully plodded on for a decade or so doing their little bit of good, till they realised that their time was up. Closing down is a much easier decision when it’s all volunteers and nobody’s income depends on things being strung out.

  13. Bloke in Aberdeen,

    Absolutely. The charity sector used to be mostly about volunteers and people taking a financial hit to work in it.You aren’t going to give up your time and make yourself poorer if you don’t think it’s worthwhile.

    The “third sector” has careers, though. People who depend on problems existing. People who are mostly considered a success for how they contribute to raising funds, rather than how any help is given. It’s led to a ballooning of the fundraising side, because there’s an arms race between charities for money, with more and more money going on marketing to get people’s money.

  14. @ Bloke in Aberdeen
    Unless they have an Endowment – in which case they have t apply to the Charity Commission to use their income for another Charitable Purpose as closely aligned as practicable to their original purpose. IIRC the charity I mentioned was changed to relief of poverty in an area expanded to include some houses (its original area having been bombed and the houses replaced with offices). Your comment is near enough correct to be valid.

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