Has racing been hijacked by charities?

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Comments

  • Perhaps a donation of some tuppenny rice and some treacle might be a good idea.

     

  • We once convinced my sister to feed her tadpoles semolina. They made a hell of a mess
  • I think potto has some valid points. People aren't raising the amounts that are expected. Is this unrealistic expectation on behalf of the charity?



    I think if the charities started charging an 'administration fee' of ??400 for the VLM that would be a slippery slope. I think people might just pay the ??400 and leave it at that, although many would try to raise that ??400 back I suppose. Certainly an interesting concept. Don't know if that would be good or bad?
  • Charities have hi-jacked the bigger events but then half the publicity that has made them that large is the stuff the charities have done.

    No-one is forced into these events, run a quiet local / far marathon just pay your entry fee and run, then you don't have to worry.

    I do like the idea of paying say £5 more to enter and that goes to a specific charity, if you don't like it don't enter... I also wonder if more events cannot have tick here if you want to make a £5 donation to our charity of choice for this year when you pay your entrance fee?

  • I think i'll run for Cancer research next year and take my pay out of my fund raising, since i'll be working a damn sight harder for 4 months than the CEO, what do you think would be fair cut, 20%?, 40%? ...After all, apparently £100k for sitting on your arse is fine.

  • Snap!Snap! ✭✭✭

    I ran the London Marathon in 2000 and pledged to raise £1700 for a charity that i'd never heard of. It was my 3rd application and I had never been accepted on ballot (despite the promise taht you would always get throught the second time). The charity was Ugandan Society for Sick Children. I'm lazy, and while I raised a little money, I had to pay well over a £1000 from my own pocket.

    I haven't done the London Marathon since - partly because it left a bad impression, and partly because I think teh whole things way too commercial now.

    I run for fun, and I don't do any running for charity anymore. You must have noticed that as soon as someone start srunning, when they take part in their first race there seems to be a pathological need to be sponsored by everyone they've ever met! Drives me crazy!

    Smaller organisers with whom I run regualrly, like Trionium and Raw Energy, generally donate a proportion of entry fees to smaller local charities. I'm much more comfortable with this.

    Unfortunately it's a sign of the times - charity money is harder to come by so all big charities employ quite unfair and in some cases dishonest practices. 

    Rant over - in essence, I agree with the opening question, but sadly some people don't care enough to vote with their feet.

  • lardarse wrote (see)

    I think i'll run for Cancer research next year and take my pay out of my fund raising, since i'll be working a damn sight harder for 4 months than the CEO, what do you think would be fair cut, 20%?, 40%? ...After all, apparently £100k for sitting on your arse is fine.

    How do you know how hard the CEO of Cancer Research UK works? Have you shadowed them? You're talking a lot of rubbish today Lardarse.

  • 100k is around 0.025% of their 400m uk income so if you raise 2k you could legitimately claim 50p.
  • WombleWomble ✭✭✭
    Potto, if you have gold bond places at VLM then they are carried over automatically if your runner doesn't show up on the day. It's annoying as the income is deferred a year but you don't lose the place. Perhaps you have places through the silver bond scheme and the rules are slightly different? Really difficult for any charity now to get gold bonds for London.



    My earlier comment about trolls refers to this constant carping on about charity fat-cats. As has been said above, people do work for charities and need to be paid at a rate to get the right person for the job. It is generally accepted that salaries are lower in the sector than might be the case elsewhere.
  • WilkieWilkie ✭✭✭
    LIVERBIRD wrote (see)
    lardarse wrote (see)

    I think i'll run for Cancer research next year and take my pay out of my fund raising, since i'll be working a damn sight harder for 4 months than the CEO, what do you think would be fair cut, 20%?, 40%? ...After all, apparently £100k for sitting on your arse is fine.

    How do you know how hard the CEO of Cancer Research UK works? Have you shadowed them? You're talking a lot of rubbish today Lardarse.

     

    I was going to ask that, LB.

    It is probably that he/she spends a lot of time sitting his (it probably is a him) arse - but then so do most people who work in offices.  It doesn;t mean they don't work hard.

    Since Cancer Research UK (if that's who you mean) has an income of £492.6 million in 2011/12, I guess he's doing something right.

  • I wish it were a her, Wilkie. We need more female CEO's but that's another debate!

  • WombleWomble ✭✭✭
    We have a female CEO where I work and the one before that was female too. But then females are the carers in society, that's why we work for peanuts for charitiesimage
  • Hi all, is it a fact then that if you don't raise what you pledge to on a charity place you are liable for the amount?

  • Did you imagine they were joking Robert? They're very serious!

  • WombleWomble ✭✭✭
    Not it is not a fact. It's a pledge not a contract. However, they may hound you for a while. They get particularly pissed off if you seem to have made little or no effort to raise the money. In the case of VLM, there used to be a blacklist where charities could put your name if you were deemed to have abused a gold band place and other charities would be able to withdraw a gb place given to you if you were found on the list.



    Contrary to popular belief, charities are trying to raise money for their cause, not provide an alternative means of entry to certain events.
  • I thought that blacklist still existed. You can understand it in the sense of people pledging to raise money then not even attempting to. I can understand it from the other side too. In answer to the original question....No.

  • Quote: "I'm quite happy for a race like the Belvoir Challenge to make money for the local school. But these big corporate charities are no better than the bankers. They pay themselves big salaries on the back of the scmhucks who run for them and the schmucks who sponsor them. After the fat cats have taken their money there is little left for the people who need it. It's a scandal that survives because no-one wants to criticise a "good cause"."   I'm afraid that's just not true. Nearly all charities will give you a breakdown of what percentage goes to the cause - and it's much more than most people would guess. The idea that charity leaders generally pay themselves so much that there's nothing left for the cause is ridiculous. Charities have to justify their public benefit, even the big ones, and if they existed mainly to pay huge salaries to chief executives and other staff, they would soon have their charitable status taken away from them by the Charity Commission.    
  • As an example, here is Cancer Research UK's explanation on its website...

    http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/frequently-asked-questions/our-finances/

  • Sorry to bang on, but I would add that (apart from a few 'excepted' organisations) charities have to supply an annual report and accounts to both the Charity Commission AND to Companies House (although the latter might change), so you can always forget about the rumour and supposition and check them out. 

  • LIVERBIRD wrote (see)
    lardarse wrote (see)

    I think i'll run for Cancer research next year and take my pay out of my fund raising, since i'll be working a damn sight harder for 4 months than the CEO, what do you think would be fair cut, 20%?, 40%? ...After all, apparently £100k for sitting on your arse is fine.

    How do you know how hard the CEO of Cancer Research UK works? Have you shadowed them? You're talking a lot of rubbish today Lardarse.


    I don't think anyones worth £100k a year, what ever they do. It's far more than anyone needs a year to live on.

  • "You're talking a lot of rubbish today Lardarse."

    Just today? I'm flattered! lol image

  • I'd agree with your 100k point, lardy, but that's a wider social question. I don't think there are many charity chiefs earning that much anyway, given that most charities come under the heading 'small' (about 85 per cent according to the Charity Commission, and often defined as having income of under £0.5m - although the Small Charities Coalition defines it as under £1m). A great many charities are the proverbial one person and his or her dog, struggling to keep going with a motley crew of part-timers and/or volunteers.

  • My mates who play football don't seem to need to get themselves sponsored for £300 a pop each time they play a match. Then again, there are plenty of local races that aren't hijacked by charities either.

    My local race is the Great North Run. I live and work about a mile from the start and have never needed a charity place. I get fed up being told that I 'should' do it for charity at the same time that I'm asked by about 25 people at work to sponsor them to do it. I always give at least a fiver to each one. Costs me a bloody fortune every year.

  • When I started at my last place everyone was amazed that I ran just for the sake of running, seemed to be a begging bowl round every week
  • Well I know plenty of people who are worth 100K a year. I hope you never need a heart/lung transplant and you're lying on the table and there's no surgeon available because they've all pissed off abroad to earn better pay because we've capped it.

    Perhaps we mix in different circles. I think if you work hard, train in a very demanding role and add value to a company that justifies your salary, you are worth whatever the market will pay for you.

  • MuttleyMuttley ✭✭✭

    Actually, what they're worth is what their mates on the remuneration committee say.

    As for the OP - yes, the charities are hijacking races and I don't like it.  Too much already. Like others, I've been asked who I'm running for and been greeted with bemusement when replying that I actually do this for fun.

    I'm perfectly happy for races to contribute the profits to charity and ditto if they add a quid or so to the entry fee. But I avoid events that require sponsorship. Each to their own.

  • I'll start asking the guys from my office who play a weekly 5-a-side match who they're playing it for? image

  • The CEO of Cancer Research is Sit Paul Nurse - Nobel prize-winning scientist among the best the UK has ever produced. So his salary of £140k seems like good value to me! Looking at the table that someone linked to, I'd have thought CRUK would think him good value too - they're only paying him 46p for every £1000 income...

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