could you give up 10% of your earnings?

[marley2580]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11950843

This guy is giving to charity everything he earns over £18,000 and is urging people to donate 10% of their earnings to charity.

Toby Ord, 31, has in the past year given more than a third of his earnings, £10,000, to charities working in the poorest countries. He also gave away £15,000 of savings, as the start of his pledge to give away £1m over his lifetime.

Giving away a tenth of one's earnings is something most people in the UK can achieve without having to make much of a sacrifice, says Ord, who was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia.

So, could you do it?

 

[lulu61388]

i could, and i do give part of my earnings to charity each month but i also think it is more valuable to give my time. anybody can write a check, it takes a lot to go and volunteer your time to a cause.

 

[andbabymakes3]

I give on average approx 2.5% of my earnings each month which, when written as a percentage, doesn't seem that much.

However, I agree with the above poster - it is just as valuable to give your time/expertise/knowledge than money.

I used to work for a company which had a compulsory £25 per month donation to the charity of their choice, taken directly from your wages. That to me is very wrong.

 

[PeanutBean]

I give regularly to charity and would love to give more. I have some direct debits and I will give to one-off appeals if it is something I care about. If I could afford to give 10% of my earnings (or more) I certainly would! Hopefully after we have kids in school and can don't pay childcare anymore we'll be able to give more. If I was a millionaire I would delight in giving loads!

ETA: I started my main direct debit to Oxfam in my final year at uni (or maybe 2nd). Most people can give a little however little they earn (not all though).

 

[Midnight_Fairy]

It depends how much I earnt. I do give time though, which IMO is priceless x

 

[ChloesMummy]

Money is taken from my pay Before I see it every month and everyone has 1 days pay taken every year for a charity, I don't notice it but I don't think it's quite as much as 10%

 

[SKATERBUN]

so thats £140 a month for me, well when I go back to work thats only going to cover 2 1/2 days childcare, do you think the tax credit office will care.

If I want to give to charity then I'll set up a standing order of a £5 a month, thats enough IMO if everyone did that it would suffice, I think 10% is ok if youre rich.

Like Midnight fairy said time is more important than money, money gets swallowed up in administration needlessly sometimes

 

[PeanutBean]

You can request how your charitable contributions are used if you wish to.

I agree 10% is not possible for your average family. I also agree that if everyone did a little it'd make a big difference.

 

[Tegans Mama]

I think in some circumstances money is more important than time - we donate to Sheffield Childrens Hospital and no amount of time I spent volunteering there would pay for the revolutionary equipment they buy which has saved my daughters life and the lives of many, many other children in the North. Many members of my family donate to them. Granted, NONE of them would if Tegan hadn't arrived with the problems she has - which I think is unfortunate.

10% of anyone who is on a "low" to medium income is too much IMO. If every household donated just 1% the world would be a better place.

 

[jenstar]

I do give to charity (includes my church) around 10% of what I get in my hand every month (net wages minus various things that come directly out of wages like childcare vouchers, savings plan, an insurance policy linked to my employer, a few other things) and I suppose I could increase that to 10% gross if I wanted to. Tithing (giving 10% to the church) was very common until the early 2oth C and a lot of people I know still do it.

While I do agree that it is very valuable to donate your time for free, charities do need hard cash as well so imo time should be an added extra and not instead of money.

 

[PeanutBean]

Depends on the charity and what it does. Ours very much needs money rather than volunteers. We have quite a few volunteers and they enable us to nationalise our work more but money is an absolute necessity. Other charities might utterly depend on their volunteers and run on a shoe string with very few paid staff. Depends what sort of service they provide.

 

[aob1013]

Nope i wouldnt. I would rather give my time, as i know exactly what my time will be spent on. My money could go anywhere! Probably admin fees!

 

[Hayley90]

No definately not! I wouldnt even if i was a millionaire. I prefer to know exactly where every last penny was going, instead of wondering if it paid some receptionist or number cruncher for the week.

x

 

[PeanutBean]

Being a staff member in a charity I'm curious why some of you think money that pays for admin (ie. staff) is wasted money.

 

[Hayley90]

Because id rather my money went to the cause advertised ... eg... starving children getting food/water/clothes/medicine/equipment.... as applicable for the charity. Personally, i dont think charities should pay wages... if you rely on donated funds to run in the first place, i think it should run on donated time too. x

 

[PeanutBean]

But someone has to provide that service. If it's volunteer led who will coordinate the volunteers? Who will train them and supervise them and accredit them for their work? Volunteers don't have the same motivations as paid staff, they can come and go as they please. They can do a bad job or worse. They will leave if they have a bad experience due to lack of support and will tell everyone so fewer volunteers go to that organisation. There has to be paid staff at every charity of any size in order for it to achieve its aims.

 

[Hayley90]

You cant expect everyone to know the intricate details of how a charity works, who manages who or who trains who... micro-management is not, and will not be something i donate to! If i wanted to pay someone's wages, id start my own company and hire them myself.

Charities shouldn't turn into big corporate organisations with management structures... that defeats the point of using time and resources effectively. Years ago charities would have been run by volunteers from the word go. The people that founded them would never have expected a salary, I don't see why the staff should

Volunteering should be just that... volunteering to give your time up for a charity for free.

I dont believe people's goodwill should be used to pay someone's wages, when it could pay for a lot MORE food/water etc as mentioned in my previous post.

Sorry, just the way i see it.

 

[marley2580]

See I think that for a lot of the massive charities like the NSPCC etc, they have far too many staff and not enough volunteers. But for a small charity such as the one I work for, the work simply wouldn't happen without paid staff. Volunteers want to work with the 'clients' (in our case abused kids, and school children), but they don't want to spend days writing a funding application, creating a resource, doing the accounts, going to boring meetings etc etc. Any time our organisation gets a good volunteer trained up, they go and get a job with their new found skills. Most of our staff began with us as volunteers and then applied for one of our posts.

 

[PeanutBean]

I think you don't understand the scope of the third sector. Charities are hugely diverse and perform many services and functions in society not just delivery of aid. The most effective charities, Oxfam and the Cancer charities for example really couldn't function without staff overseeing their work, determining priorities and ensuring donated money is appropriately apportioned to different programmes. These are skills that volunteers don't have or if they did they'd be putting to use in employment, not full rime volunteering.

All charitable status means is not for profit. I don't think there will be a single charity that is entirely volunteer led or if there is it will be an extremely small one at a totally local level. Charities have to perform certain functions and compile reports to go back to the Charity Comission which is includes accounts and short and long term business plans. It doesn't make them corporate but like any organisation of size there has to a structure in place of suitably qualified people to make the business plan happen.

Charities have a board of trustees who direct the overall aims and programmes the charity should be focusing on and these are all volunteers. Even if a small charity were all volunteers there would still need to be money to lay their expenses and cover the cost of any consumables, all of which would still be classed as admin.

I'm not having a go at anyone, just trying to highlight that admin is part of the process if a charity's work and extremely important in enabling it to do its role. If it bothers people that much they can still request that any donations go to a specific cause - it's your right as a donor - and that request will be honoured. I can see why people might begrudge their money going on tv advertising or pens in the post (though these things will be cost/benefit analysed for overall financial gain) but staff make it all happen.

 

[PeanutBean]

Yes Marley fundraising bids is a very good point! That's also a skill that's hard to learn. Our charity has about 35 staff. We're national and in total use about 6000 volunteers though we don't manage about 5000 of those as they are managed through regional partners delivery our school scheme.

Our best volunteers are all well qualified scientists with academic careers. They wouldn't (and shouldn't) be giving up their jobs in a hurry.

I have no idea what number of staff the NSPCC would employ.