As a rule, I give money to any charity which makes the effort to ask me - be it people knocking on the door for the local Rotary Society or work colleagues asking for sponsorship for hospices. The only constraints I make are that I try and steer my donations towards people-oriented charities (rather than animal ones - I've collected for charities in the past and know how much more money cute puppies get than starving children), I have to broadly agree with the aims of the charity, and if you're asking for sponsorship, it has to be an effort rather than a holiday that I am funding.
Has anyone else noticed a tailing-off of requests for money over the last year? I have money going directly from my gross salary into a ring-fenced account (so that the charities get the tax, plus a top-up from my employer), and normally the balance fluctuates between £50 and £100. At the beginning of this month I had nearly £600 in there!
I've since cleared £450 of it into Shelter, Rape Crisis and a few other refuges, since the money's doing no-one any good in the bank, but I'm wondering why I'm asked less for money these days. Do people have less time to spare volunteering for bucket-rattling these days, or have a lot of charities gone out of business in the last couple of years?
