so I see locally where I am (Edmonton) that there are a lot of charities who are saying that they're way below their goals they want to achieve and they seem to be trying to make people feel guillty and donate to them.
I wonder to myself, are there too many?
like I first off cannot afford to donate to all these charities, so in order not to feel guilty I don't donate to anyone, that way there isn't one left out.
heck these days, a lot of people aren't exactly able to afford to give money to everyone!
I don't appreciate the way they do it though as well. talking and writing like "you need to donate or we're gonna starve!!"
let's not have 100 charities who all demand your buck..
I never have such problems. I give to one charity regularly, and one other I might give to on occasion. Besides those two, I never give money to any charity. That said, I might give of my time and direct resources to a particular third charity on the rare occasion.
Besides that, I never give money or any other resource to any other charity or beggar.
Just today I saw one woman give a cigarette to a man sitting on the street. I wanted to slap her. If he's addicted to cigarettes and can't afford housing, helping him to maintain his addiction is not exactly the way to help him.
I might sound cold-hearted here, but the thing is, I want to make sure all my money goes towards helping people and not hindering them. Giving an addict money is not the same as helping him. Helping him means giving to a charity you have researched well and know you can trust, for it to provide help to the poor in a planned and systematic manner that assures that the money actually goes towards helping and not hindering the poor.
If we eached researched a particular charity well and then, once we'd established that it's a reliable charity, made a habit of contributing to it regularly, then other charitie would quickly realise that their efforts to try to get our money is pointless.
I never get too bothered by so many charities. If you are, it may be that you gave to all of them indiscriminately in the past and are now on everyone's sucker list.
That should pretty well cover it, maybe World Vision for the kids overseas...
And needy TV advertisers at home.
None of the charities I give to spend much on advertizing. My primary and regular charity doesn't at all, and its leadership itself is unpaid, plus it's a totally grass-roots endeavour. My secondary charity that I may give to on occasion is UNICEF. Though it does spend some money on advertizing on its products such as UNICEF card shops, UNICEF Hallow'een boxes, etc. It's still better than most. But any charity that advertizes as much a World Vision should be a right off. Clearly half of their money is just going to TV advertizing. Besides, World Vision is a Christian charity; do you not have a more efficient grassroots charity you can give to to your Church? Most religious charities I'd come across, regardless of religion, do tend to be quite grassroots and efficient. World Vision bucks the rule big time. It's probably more inefficient than even most secular charities. Heck, UNICEF is secular and even it is more efficient than World Vision owing to less advertizing overhead. World Vision is what we might call a commercial charity.