Model Boat Mayhem
Mess Deck: General Section => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: Colin Bishop on September 23, 2021, 06:59:53 pm
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Is anyone else experiencing this?
Mrs B and I have a joint 'Offshore' RNLI membership which we have kept on despite giving up full time boating many years ago. We absolutely admire the efforts of the RNLI crews and are very happy to support them with a pretty substantial lump sum each year.
But more recently we seem to be the target of additional requests for more money, usually in the form of pleas from named coxswains with associated photos. Today we both got separate letters from the RNLI asking us to remember them in our wills and not for the first time. No doubt they have latched on to our early 70s age. (thanks very much!)
I'm afraid that our legacies will be to our daughters who are both struggling to fund a home of their own. I don't mind the occasional request for a bit extra but the constant emails and letters are beginning to get a bit irritating. The 'Wills' request went straight into the bin. The RNLI used to be a bit more subtle in asking for a litle extra but now they seem to be full on.
Colin
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I agree with you Colin. I have made a monthly donation for many years but find the increasing amount of extra requests somewhat annoying. As with many organisations these days once they have your address or Email details it is non stop.
John
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Yes, made a donation the other year and have in the last few months received letters about every two weeks, I return them gone away etc etc but still they come, must cost a fortune. %%
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Their upper management is now "professional" rather than retired businessmen etc.
This has brought a commercial aspect to everything and is not popular.
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Regardless of who or what organisation approaches never consider Leaving a percentage in a will by all means a fixed amount should you wish but never the former. My neighbour made that mistake. Within days of his exit the charity was straight in insisting on an inventory of his assets 3 valuations of the property and that had to be done they weren't asking.
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Colin, I have found the same situation with a number of charitable organisations over here, too. We make a monthly automatic donation to Red Cross, yet we frequently get letters asking us to increase the amount, as well as numerous phone calls. The calls became so frequent that I had to block the number. A similar situation arose with the Salvation Army, and the RSPCA, both very worthy causes, but they were persistent, bordering on badgering. It seems that once a charity identifies a willing donor they regard that donor as an easy target. I often wonder how much money is wasted in asking for more money.
Peter.
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My wife, on our behalf, gives to a few charities but it is the unsolicited ones that we get in the mail, often with a "gift" that are most annoying. "Return to Sender" does not seem to work. >:-o We refuse to give to phone callers and our answering machine cuts out a lot of fake calls
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For Peter & BrianB6
......some years ago I made a small donation to a Registered Charitable organisation [@ a biggest morning tea]
Within a month, I was hounded by Surf Life Saving of Australia, NSW Blackdog Foundation, the RFDS and few more
It became obvious my donor details has been sold to other Telemarketing Companies with the Telephone callers employed on a commission basis
I questioned one Chap "calling on behalf of the Royal Flying Doctor Service', if he could find me on the RFDS database as a Donor?.........he could not, nor did he :embarrassed: know any detail of some of the Principal RFDS sponsors
Derek
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We used to have 'Chuggers' on the street trying to get donations and an investigation revealed that a monthly donation did not start to get to the Charity until halfway through the second year.
They have started coming around on house calls now. I was asked last week by a girl caller if I had heard of the Red Cross!!!
I do contribute to a minor charity and as has been said the letters and emails have been increasing of late. It is symptomatic of the times less people out and about and the reduced usage of coins.
I was prepared to contribute to a charity a few weeks ago and said that I had no coins. I was offered a contactless payment option, minimum amount £5.00!!!!! What do they expect?
Regards
Roy
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I made a donation to a cancer charity and in two weeks they wrote to me. Asking if I would like
to set up a direct debit donation account, barefaced cheek.
Didn’t the RNLI give £160,000 to other countries not long ago?
John
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Regardless of who or what organisation approaches never consider Leaving a percentage in a will by all means a fixed amount should you wish but never the former. My neighbour made that mistake. Within days of his exit the charity was straight in insisting on an inventory of his assets 3 valuations of the property and that had to be done they weren't asking.
Jaymac is quite right. Leaving a percentage to charity is an Executor's nightmare. Never, ever, do this.
Colin
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Hi All
My wife(HANDBRAKE) is in a small group of Care Quilters which they make quilts from donated material and they make the quilts.
These are pass out to a number of charities and to date have donated 1000 quilts !!!!
So she has a hobby and charity all in one.
As for all the other charities it's NO and/or I block their call numbers.
Canabus
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I had the same from the RNLI, I donate a small amount each month by direct debit.. About 4 months ago I had numerous calls & letters asking to increase my monthly donation. It got to the stage that I considered it harassment so I cancelled the DD. Since cancelling I had 1 more call asking why the DD was cancelled so I told them, I then followed up telling them to remove my tel no. from their system advising them I had signed up for the TPS service & fair play to them the calls did stop, although the letters still arrive regularly which are filed (unopened) in the recycling bin. I haven't renewed it & I probably won't..
Paul..
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Personally, this kind of aggressive revenue collection (call it what it is) takes the little warm glow out of planned charitable giving. I will put money in a box, but I am no longer willing to sign up for anything charity related. Call me an old curmudgeon.
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I was a member of the RNLI for 30 plus years. For 20 years I was a scuba diver (now retired after the onset of bouts of stress/anxiety)
A few years ago I became aware of their funding distribution policy and as I strongly disagreed with this, along with other decisions which I considered to be "PC madness" or in a more modern term "wokeness gone mad", I decided to cancel my membership.
One quick phone call was all it took, with no questions as to why I was doing it.
For some time afterwards I still received a copy of their magazine and some mail shots asking for bequests or donations but these have now thankfully stopped.
It's only my personal opinion but, I have been getting increasingly disillusioned over the years upon hearing of the giant salaries that this and other charities pay their top dogs.
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I wonder if there is an easy way of finding out if a charity you are thinking of donating to does its fundraising by supporters and committed volunteers' or employs a firm of Fundraising Consultants who do it for them and take a slice of your contribution ? ( http://afc.org.uk/our-members/ ).
I have long supported the K&S Air Ambulance and have always hoped it is the former but not so sure now as of late I am getting a lot of bumph and things like books of raffle tickets .
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We support a few charities via DD, small amounts to a few rather than a lot to one. And yes we get phone calls, emails and letters asking for more. The phone calls are politely answered with "We're paying you as much as we can, please don't ask again or we'll give to a different charity instead of you." Some get the message, some don't and they lose out. Any emails and letters get blasted into the next universe! :)
RNLI gets money in the collection boxes from my wife and me, and the historical group that I run always has a stall at the annual Lifeboat Summer Fayre, for which we pay a pitch fee. We happily take that 'loss' from our funds on the chin, as all our members have some connection to the RNLI. Newhaven is proud of its lifeboat and is always supportive! :)
But I won't make DD payments to the organisation as a whole.
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Did hear that at one stage RNLI were sponsoring swimming lessons in Kenya & Bangladesh which seems unacceptable to me - know that my old club (an honorary member now) SRCMBC donate at least 50% of the money raised by shows to the RNLI and the balance to another charity.
Totally disagree with the huge salaries paid to some people in the RNLI - the lifeboat crew receive nothing except their training...............and they are the ones that do the real dangerous work
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did the RNLI ever settle their differences of a few years back?
Roy
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It's a great shame that we're having this discussion, because most charities do a wonderful job. I don't know about the RNLI, but many charities here receive no government funding, and rely almost entirely on donations. Some have major corporate sponsors, one such being our Westpac Lifesaver Rescue Helicopter Service whose major sponsor is the Westpac Bank, as the name implies. It does have other sponsors too, but it also relies heavily on public donations. The organisations concerned then have to actively seek donations, with the result that some become quite persistent, which has a negative effect on their efforts.
It's a difficult situation but, rightly or wrongly, I tend to support the local branches of my chosen charity, rather than donate direct to the head office. Hopefully this approach ensures that the money stays in our area.
Regarding salaries, many of the charities are quite big organisations, far too big to be run by volunteers. They also handle large sums of money, and need qualified people to oversee the running of the organisation. To hire a suitable person it's necessary to offer a salary package commensurate with what's offered in the private sector. It may seem to be a waste of money, but it's an inescapable fact of life.
Peter.
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It's a difficult situation but, rightly or wrongly, I tend to support the local branches of my chosen charity, rather than donate direct to the head office. Hopefully this approach ensures that the money stays in our area.
All donations at local RNLI stations must be forwarded to RNLI HQ.
Some stations have an unofficial "Crew Comfort Fund" that supports crew expenses not met by the RNLI, donations made specifically to that fund are not donations to the RNLI and so stays local. That is were my Direct Debit goes.
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I still support my local RSPCA centre (all my dogs have been rescues).. Once a month I take some pet food to the centre, a couple of times I have been asked why I haven't set up a DD for a regular donation, my answer to this is doing this, 100% of what I give goes to the animals!!
Paul..
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Many charities are for those in difficulty through no fault of their own. In many NLI rescues the victims contribute to their own problem . I would say a lot of people rule out the NLI due to that.
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Many charities are for those in difficulty through no fault of their own. In many NLI rescues the victims contribute to their own problem . I would say a lot of people rule out the NLI due to that.
The same could be said for most rescue organisations. People do stupid things and expect others to help them, but it in no way diminishes the great job the rescue personnel do, often at considerable risk to themselves.
Peter.
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Referencing Peter’s post #19, it is certainly the case that managing a large charity does require a high degree of professional skill which should be paid for accordingly.
I think there are two problems here. Firstly, many charities seem to have become quasi commercial organisations and act as such with outsourcing of revenue collection, ‘hard selling’etc. all of which drives a rift between those donating and the central management. They have become NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) with a life and agenda of their own and ostensibly not for profit organisations but still operating on a commercial basis when it comes to management and staffing. Many of them do excellent work but others go bad such as Oxfam in Haiti and elsewhere with local sexual exploitation. Many of their employees seem to see themselves as people just doing a job albeit helping the disadvantaged. There seems to be little charitable ethos in many cases. The line between charity and commercial activity has become very blurred.
Secondly, the comparison between charity and commercial executive pay rates has seen charity executives receiving very high remuneration rates which again is a commercial attitude.
Looking at things on a charitable basis it is evident that in the commercial world senior executive pay rates have reached levels which are hard to justify on a commercial basis. Who actually needs an income of more than £200m per year for example?
In the charitable sector, if managers really believe in what they are doing, they should be able to live comfortably on a much lower salary on the basis that they are contributing to the charity they are working for. If not then go off to investment banking where the rewards are much greater in fleecing the people they are ‘looking after’.
Somewhere Along the line we seem to have lost the plot on this.
Colin
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Somewhere Along the line we seem to have lost the plot on this.
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Perhaps it's because the world is not the same warm soft cuddly place it used to be when we only had Adolph to worry about
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Re the above posts, I have finally got totally fed up with the constant stream of 'begging' emails from the RNLI. Plus the frequent adverts for their shop.They just don't let up so I have now unsubscribed. I will still maintain our quite substantial annual membership donation but that's it I'm afraid.
Colin
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They must think money grows on trees !!!!!
But we cannot water the trees at present.
Harry
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Unfortunately, a number of well respected charities here are doing the same thing, Colin. I make monthly donations to one in particular, yet regularly receive emails asking me to increase the amount. It seems that the primary targets are existing donors, something I find rather distasteful.
Peter.
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Yes, you are right Peter, the easy option is to target those who have already shown support rather than seek out new donors. Ultimately it is counter productive though. Years ago I quite admired the RNLI's polite but effective approach to encouraging donations but the current team seems to have gone down the hard sell route like so many other charities. The management ethos appears to have changed too.
Although not applicable to the RNLI, a lot of 'charities' these days are often little more than outsourced contractors for Government work which blurs their role considerably.
Colin
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I think a lot of charities have outsourced their collection efforts. If so they will have a fixed term contract, and the collection companies, I am guessing, would also have asked for exclusive rights to collect on behalf a charity, and some charities would have given it to them. It is the over assertive collection companies that are the problem, and RNLI has no control over them, until contract renewal.
I can understand charities doing this outsourcing. The treasury side of things (counting and banking) is a huge job, with a big overhead. All electric banking is more secure, and minimal chance of 'irregularities'. I am living in China now, and even the beggars have a card with a QR code on it, because most people no longer carry cash.
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Charities these days have been re-badged as the NFP (Not For Profit) sector, and have become just another career option for middle class middle management types, who seem to think that their 'mission statement' is to 'raise awareness' as opposed to actually helping less fortunate people.
I too, as a lifelong donor to the RNLI, am becoming increasingly irritated by their pestering. This of course is justified as 'maintaining a relationship with our supporters'.
One charity, which has just celebrated it's centenary, to which I donate, is the Royal British Legion, and they behave in an exemplary manner. I receive only a nice letter of thanks for any donation.
Mike