[jambutty]

Originally Posted by BERNADETTE

Watching the news earlier I was totally shocked to find that Christies Hospital have lost a lot of money that people have donated for charity. Do you think the fact that they have all this money stashed away will make people reluctant to contribute? I have always tried to help in whatever way I can when people have had fund raising nights but feel that now I would hesitate. Simply because this money could have been being used for research IMO rather than be sitting in a bank. What are your thoughts?

It is one thing for a charity (or a local authority for that matter) having a bank account for the day to day running of the organisation, but quite another stashing the donations and speculating with them to gain a bit of interest. And then crying poverty to scoop more donations from the long suffering public.

Christies’ explanation was that they were saving the money up for several projects. That’s bunkum and just an excuse thought up on the spur of the moment. Other charities caught out by this financial crisis are also coming up with similar excuses.

My view is that once you have enough money to fund a project you use it to do so and not wait until there is also enough to start the next project and the one after that.

What’s the betting that the real reason for hoarding donations is to use the accrued interest to pay the salaries of the senior people running the charity so that they don’t appear to be coming out of public donations.