Posted by: fraser in Untagged on Mar 9, 2010
I have to pass on this blog by a British 'social investor'
I admit it, I'm guilty of wasting charitable fundsBy Martin Brookes
I need to confess to a misallocation of charitable funds, as well as a flouting of my own personal rules. In short, I gave some money to an animal charity.
Recently, I wrote a blog post about why I don't give to animal charities. This argued, in essence, that giving money to (say) donkey sanctuaries rather than domestic violence charities represented a misallocation of charitable funds, and that this is wrong.
On holiday in Cyprus last week, my five year-old daughter Alice asked to go to the local donkey sanctuary. I couldn't resist and she ended up having a fine time walking and grooming Popeye and Lorraine, (Alice and Popeye are pictured), two aged and well looked after donkeys. She then asked to adopt Lorraine, which we duly did, handed over more money by way of donation and bought several gifts.
This broke all my rules about charities. The only compensation is that it makes me feel like a better dad. But it was charitable giving to make me feel good, not charitable giving for public benefit.
To make matters worse for me, the donkey sanctuary in Cyprus is funded by The Donkey Sanctuary here in the UK, the very charity NPC used for the comparison with domestic violence charities. The most recent published figures show The Donkey Sanctuary had an annual expenditure of £19.6 million in the year to September 2008. Reserves were £37.1 million. That is, to put it mildly, rather a lot. After my visit, that reserves figure is now a tiny bit higher.
After my visit to the donkey sanctuary, I felt good as a parent, but bad as a donor. Alice feels marvelous and is inseparable from her picture of Lorraine, but that is not a sensible charitable objective...