charity views

[daz h]

okay londons on and more and more charity organisations are takin places, i know fellrunners have mixed and varied views on charity but its clear nowadays to get in some of these races your gonna have to go down the charity route

i would like to hear your views on a argument our club had the other night.
our new annual race, this year is its third running has decided to give to charity some of the proceeds, straight away lots voted for the usual big organisations
so i said look there is a local lad who needs to go to america for an operation to save his life ( i think he needs £ 20,000 or sommert )
I got some funny looks
i really think local small charities need more, why do people think these large charities need so much.
i said at the meetin we may as well time our race with comic relief

i once raised £1000 for NSPCC and didnt get a letter of thanks

[Phil_N]

so i said look there is a local lad who needs to go to america for an operation to save his life ( i think he needs £ 20,000 or sommert )
I got some funny looks

I can't understand why people would give you funny looks

I would have thought it would have been better to do something closer to home especially a worthy cause such as this. It does seem the case these days that smaller charities are often over looked in favour of the more well known charities.

[daz h]

someone at the meetin told me that with local charities your money can get squandered
i just laughed

[XRunner]

A full-time director of a major charity fund raising company can expect to earn over £50,000.

This money has to be paid from your hard-run sponsorship.

In my opinion I would not like giving money to professional charity fund raising organisations and have serious doubts about the many major charity organisations.

How much of the money raised for these charity is used to fund the organisation?

[london exile]

Daz, you're spot on - giving the money to a local charity will help them much more than the big boys and may help raise their profile in the community. I've got no problem with the big charities using running to raise money (though there should be more places for club runners in some of these races) but local events should think local. God bless fell running which is especially good at this.

[AllanT]

That's a point actually, someone who is a club runner might want to enter a race such as London to raise money for a smaller lesser known charity (like the one Daz detailed above).

However if the smaller charity doesn't have a reserved place in the race & the club runner doesn't qualify for the time standard(as I would imagine must occur in some cases), then they would miss out. Hardly fair really. Their only other option would be to run for a larger charity, give them a section of the sponsorship, and anything that was left over would go to the smaller charity. However it would be unlikely that there was much left over after they'd met the large charities entry standards!!!

Mind you I think the 'madder' races are the way to go if you want to win sponsorship for a smaller local charity - sell the ordeal bit - eg "I'm going to sail Barmouth to Corpach, running up the highest mountains in Britain + sailing a yacht, getting little sleep, going up no matter what the conditions. Will you sponsor me for Fred Blogs operation fund??" That should make a bit more impression on the 'mere mortals' you are trying to win sponsorship from!!

[DanAzz]

I feel people are getting more and more fed up with the major charities.
I am not saying what they do isn't worthwhile, far from it, but you get their TV adverts and promotions all the time, the smaller charities must suffer from this bombardment.
I personally would support a local charity like Daz's over a major one any day.

[daz h]

Daz, you're spot on - giving the money to a local charity will help them much more than the big boys and may help raise their profile in the community. I've got no problem with the big charities using running to raise money (though there should be more places for club runners in some of these races) but local events should think local. God bless fell running which is especially good at this.

yes this is true
i feel fell running gives to some excellent causes with virtually no admin costs at all
more and more of these big events feel like a charity fun run

[Graeme]

I have an issue with events such as FLM and gnr, now I don't mind people being given places to raise money for charity, what I do have a problem with is people raising money for charity and then walking the bloody thing.

As these events are promoted as races, surely they should be running.

And one last thing totally off topic, why on earth do 'celebrities' get to start with the elite runners, what a load of horsesh*te. Is this just to make it easier for the TV to cover the event.
And how do they suss out who's a celebrity anyway?

[Margarine]

I'm a celebrity.