English love charity - there is little questioning this, when you hear the sheer volume the topic occupies in general conversation. But just how far does this love extend? Doing a little digging - according to the charity commission there are 162,119 registered charities in Just England and Wales at the time of writing. That is quite substantial for a population just shy of 60 million. Thats more than one charity per 400 people!
By contrast in Australia there are something like 10,200 registered in a population of 23 million (thats about one charity per 2300 people then). Interestingly the figures I have obtained for Australia were part of an article in The Age on the very crux of this post - surely there is a butt load of duplication going on if there are this many charities - surely there cannot be THAT many endemic causes out there? Happily the article also mentions the role of government - particularly that in many of the model societies of Northern Europe it is seen as the role of government to assume many of the roles typically catered for by charity elsewhere.
Sticking with the two nations above, it is interesting to read at The Guardian that Australia actually donates MORE to charity. Clearly then, there must something going on with competition for awareness and donations between charities in Britain - potentially casuing people to donate smaller amounts when they do donate. With the national profile that charity holds among the people, It would nearly be inconceivable for a person NOT to donate to a charity when asked. I hypothesise then that the typical UK citizen donates to charity in the same manner one should eat when dieting 'often, but small'. Why the small donations then? Charity is ingrained nature in the culture. Saying no to charity is one of the biggest faux pas on this tiny island.
I was recently asked at work to donate 10 pounds to sponsor a colleague - the majority of the other people in the office made rubbish excuses or donated pitiful amounts. Perhaps it is my Australian heritage, but i'd rather be honest, so i told the guy upfront that I simply didn't want to sponsor him. I think the whole office stopped and stared, you would have heard a pin drop. But that is the crux of it - with loads of charities floating about, there are far too many impromptu collections, which the population somewhat begrudgingly deposits pitiful amounts into.
Think you can get away from these in an anonymous environment? Take a walk onto any of the UK's high streets on any given day and there will be a 95% that you will run into a chugger. These people are crazy invasive, and really begs the question - if they can pay out of work students to hassle passer by's into coughing up a monthly direct debit donation, then how much money are charities which support these practices actually spending on the cause?
Monetary matters aside, charities are also there to lobby governments and raise awareness of issues. This is usually a fair point, but picture the thousands of charities jockeying for awareness among 162k of them. Sure raising awareness is always a good thing, but this could be achieved so much more efficiently if the interested parties did a simple search and found an existing, related charity to support. But then again, as mentioned in The Age article above, there usually are some pretty big egos involved! Namely the kind that feels obliged to dedicate a charity to someone they know who died of x,y,z illness. If only these people would stick to dedicating park benches!
So not only is charity questionably ineffective (in terms of awareness and finances) when their number per cause is proliferated, but there are other inefficiencies in the system. Namely gap years. Ask any English person who has attended university, and chances are they took one of these. Moreover, unlike their Australian counterparts, they probably took it in aid of charity. But is this really effective? I recently looked at joining an Engineering organisation which operated in the 3rd world with gap-year style projects - mainly from what i had seen of it's achievements through friends in Australia. It's a pity for me to say this, but my local branch in the UK looks like it offers far less in real projects and looks more like a CV builder under the guise of a charity. From speaking with many of my peers it would seem this is normal - that there are indeed many charities like this that exist just for building CV's and for facilitating a year away from organised society under the guise of doing something positive.
Further to charity projects providing an opportunity for lost university age students to pilfer a year abroad, yet still build their cv, is the culture of volunteering in corporations. With corporate culture it seems short of having children, there is little lenience to those who have ambitions of additional time away from the desk. That is unless you do it for charity. It all makes sense to me now - hearing of how the English have conquered the outdoors, how people have rowed across oceans cycled the world or similar schemes on a much smaller scale - all in the aid of charity. Perhaps this is me being cynical, but i reckon a fair load of them are doing this as an excuse to get out of work. I mean really, the majority would probably be able to donate more cash if they stayed at work and donated the proceeds from the same time period. Perhaps it's also that British people feel social guilt for just doing an adventure for adventures sake?
So there is a take home message at the end of this one - if I die of mysterious causes please do not start a charity in my name, and should I ever decide to pack it in and go walkabout - I'll be doing it off my own batt. You might say i'm a scrooge, but one day, when i'm earning more, i might just donate a massive chunk of cash to a deserving mob - that ought cut through all the pesky admin costs!
