h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the admin girls in the office was chatting to a few of us in the office today. She was in some sort of mild distress. She'd agreed to do a company event - a cycle ride between London and Manchester this weekend, and it had dawned on her at this late stage how unfit she was. She had serious doubts whether she could complete it, but then she could see worse consequences in pulling out.

I know there are a lot of kind-hearted and well-meaning people out there who raise money for charities. Not having a lot of spare cash myself, I tend to give my time instead, but I recognise that fundraising is for some a worthy alternative.

What really irks me is corporate fundraising. Rich kids working in the city who feel obliged to join in company fundraising events. Hardly a week goes by without reading e-mails about mass cycle rides between various places.

There are lots of reasons they do it, but pretty much all of them are far removed from charitable work. The only thing that's important is that the word 'charity' appears somewhere in the event description. It looks good on their CV; it gives them a feeling of superiority in their peer community; sometimes it's stated as a pre-requisite for their career progression (yes, really!).

This time-poor generation don't even have to lift a finger to collect the money, having completed their stunt. Well, maybe not true, they lift that finger after clicking a mouse, having set up their online money-collecting page, and linked it to their social media profiles. Even those that donate don't even need to dig deep into their pockets and purses - they themselves click to pay, and click to "like" it all. No more stomping the streets with collecting tins in the pouring rain, knocking doors and cajoling people.

And when that finger has clicked, it's done. Ticked off. Gone. Forgotten.

No need to think about what happens next, about who actually gets helped by it all. Who takes the money out of that online account, and who do they give it to? What do they then do with the money? What things do they buy with it, and who receives them? How are people's lives made better as a result? How does it help them improve so they can be more healthy, or safe, or self-reliant? How many people does it help?

How much of it gets taken by the technology hosts and suppliers, by the buyers, vendors and distributors, by the taxman, by the company shareholders and corporate sponsors, by corrupt officials and black-marketeers?

It's a lot to comprehend. It's easier to hold that TV image of the celebrity aid worker visiting the African village and holding the malnourished child, and to think that your effort made it all possible.

Or should you hold that image of the pin-striped middle-aged man driving his Jaguar to his mock-tudor edifice in the Surrey Hills where he greets his children Yasmin and Toby on holiday from boarding school? Did you make that possible too?

Crazy fund-raising ideas never really caught on in Germany. There is the occasional charity walk, or an event in aid of a charity - usually involving food, less often entertainment; the donors get something for their money and the food/entertainment and all the work involved is done free of charge by people, like you, who are prepared to give their time.

Of course, the ice bucket challenge drew some attention but I don't remember hearing about many people actually doing it here.

Germany is no less generous for this; people just donate their money without someone having to make a fool of themselves/get a heart attack to remind them to do it. I don't have the statistics to hand to back that up, but I think I heard it somewhere.

I think this is the first posting where I have needed two semi-colons. Serious subject! (Or I'm using the semi-colons wrong....)

Thanks TC,

No wonder all the migrants are flocking to Germany. I'll be on my way there myself, at this rate.

(And your punctuation is perfect)

I agree with both of you. I'd begun to notice that trend, too...

I doubt there are many fundraising bike-rides/walking events from November through March, though. May, June, and September are popular months because they're relatively temperate, with little risk of heat stroke or frostbite. So, it may *seem* like a huge thing, but if these events had been spaced evenly through the year, they might not have looked so popular.

My tenants' organization had a meeting at a BPOE hall last night, and we were preceded in the room by a group of lycra-clad guys who had just finished a bike ride from Maryland to Boston on behalf of a charity event for the bereaved families of cops and firefighters.

Some of that goes on here in the States, but it's nowhere near as prevalent as it seems to be in the UK. Recently, they tried to spread Red Nose Day over here, but it didn't really take. Basically, they were selling noses at one of our larger pharmacy retail chains and tying it to an evening broadcast on CBS television.

As far as walks and rides, they often have these sorts of things, but still it's just not as prevalent here it seems. Personally, no one has ever hit me up to sponsor them on any walks, runs or rides. The biggest thing like that we have here is the MS150 bike ride from Houston to Austin. It takes two days. Most people who participate in that though do it because of the ride, rather than the charity, or at least it seems so to me.


As far as knowing where the money goes, I always check a site like http://www.charitynavigator.org before donating. They break down the charity spending, showing how much the CEO earns and comparing how much goes to program expenses (the actual mission of the charity) against how much goes to administration costs. They give them a grade on a scale of 100. They also note transparency.

A trend here is asking people to donate instead of giving presents. For my birthday last year, I didn't want or need anything and asked people to donate the money to a charity of their choice instead. I was so shocked when they had all put money in the birthday cards and was worried that people had thought that "charity of your choice" was a euphemism for "just give me money".

However, I saved the money and rounded it up to €100 and asked my daughter-in-law to give me the account number for her aunt's charity which works with children who live on the streets in Brazil. My son and daughter-in-law spent some time working out there on the project, so I felt it made sense to donate to them. What with having a small baby and moving to the States, she never really managed to do that, so I eventually gave the money to a similar project within a reknowned organisation. My husband, ever the Scrooge, said that that way I would be the one who could claim the tax reduction on the donation.

His cousin asked for a similar "donations instead of presents" for his 65th birthday recently, and another friend who has invited us to his 80th next week asked for people to donate to Amnesty International instead of presents. Both of them stipulated the charity they wanted to give to (something that didn't occur to me).

The cousin was given the cash directly and wrote round afterwards thanking everyone, saying that, after he had rounded it up, he was able to donate 1500 Euros for the survivors of the Nepal earthquake.

No noses were reddened, no bicycle chains strained to their limits, and no one had to wash their hair with ice cubes.

In Ireland the tax reduction goes to the recipient, not the donor, but you have to give €250 in one year before it applies. Makes sense.