Still feel like giving to charity...?

[aussiblue]

Recently, one of the papers published a list of what percentage of donations actually gets to the end user. And of the money donated, to Lifesavers and some other well known organisations, over 60% is swallowed up by administration.

So is that really so shocking?

In our association it's also the administration costs that absorb most of our donations. For example, one of our biggest expenses is insurance. Fishing is a dangerous sport and when you involve the disabled in fishing the risks are higher again and that is reflected in our annual insurance costs an administration expense. But in this litigious world our clients expect that we will be insured so they are covered if anything happens to them. Similarly our volunteers need to be covered for all sorts of risks; if we didn't have cover their personal assets and homes would be on the line and we would probably have no volunteers. So all the public liability, personal accident and directors and officers insurance etc adds up.

The direct costs of running a fishing events are minimal as someone usually donates the bait, the events are manned by volunteers and the cost of lost tackle and fuel (when we do boat workshops) is comparatively low. But without the insurance we would probably have no volunteers, no directors and few customers. I sure this is similar to most charities run by volunteers; its the insurance, audit fees and similar unavoidable administrative cost that eat up the donations as the volunteers do most of the real work for nothing. Get involved in working in or running a charity as a volunteer before jumping on the knockers bandwagon.