robin hood rides again + what are your best charities?
Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is that I should give a bit more to charity.
I’m feel like I’m in a very fortunate position right now, and although I’ve worked hard to get here it would be erroneous to put that all down to my own *skillz* and not also down to a few huge lumps of luck:
- I hit the birth lottery – I was born in a prosperous and free western society
- What a lucky bugger… I also hit the birth lottery for a second time! – I have awesome parents who bought me up with good values and gave me a good start in life educationally and financially, and beyond that have a strong family support network.
It would do anyone who is against “dem damn immigants” to think about this sort of thing once in a while, but this is not about political views so we’ll move swiftly on…
There are probably loads of other smaller slices of luck that have gotten me to where I am today as well that are harder to pinpoint!
So yes, Mrs T and I had a chat and we decided that we’d start to give a bit more to charity and we’d do it in a more regular and thoughtful fashion rather than just the sporadic donations we make on a whim we do right now.
rob from the rich?
As anyone following the spattering of posts I’ve managed to write over the last few months probably knows, I’ve been devoting any spare time to matched betting. It’s a great way of making a side income and it’s relatively easy money it really is. But I have to admit, it feels slightly wrong. Here are some random thoughts on it:
- At the end of the day you are abusing an offer system in a way it was not meant to be used.
- OK, OK… these offers are designed to hook in new customers and therefore extract as much cash from those users as possible. Not exactly a worthy cause from the bookmakers side is it? So no worries if we play them at their own game?
- However, I still can’t help thinking we’re profiting off of those other customers who do get hooked in and are losing money. It is a zero sum game and if I’m winning, and the bookie is still making profits overall (and they are, believe me!) then who is the loser here?
- The bottom line here might simply just be, well if I wasn’t doing matched betting it wouldn’t stop anyone else from losing anyway, so why not just have at it. And that is a very fair point.
- But, I would still like to readdress the balance of Karma here and redistribute some of the bookies wealth to people less fortunate than myself.
So I’ve decided to give 10% of my winnings going back to the start of the year and going forward from my matched betting and SSSH 1 activities
give to the poor!
So far the figures add up like so:
| Total MB + SSSH | £4,047.00 |
| Total Charity Given | £223.25 |
| Total To Give | £404.70 |
| Total Left To Give | £181.45 |
That leaves us with a current “shortfall” of charity donations of around £180, but let’s be honest that could get snapped up by just a few half decent donations.
So the really big question remains: who to give the money to?
I’ve read through weenie’s post who has had similar thoughts recently and it mentions CAF, which I will be checking out, but apart from that I’m at a bit of a loss.
At the risk of sounding rather lazy I’m going to crowdsource this one and ask you lot!
Once the answers are in I’m going to create and maintain a “Crowd sourced best charities” page and link to it in the header, so others can find and benefit from the wisdom of the crowd 🙂
So, what are your favourite charities and why?
Thanks! 🙂
Finally I will leave you with one of my favourite quotes I’ve heard in a very long while, which I read on Tawcan’s post here, which I found via weenie’s post above, and is from the Tao Te Ching:
From frugality comes generosity
I couldn’t agree more
Notes:
- Super Secret Side Hustle – which is basically matched betting with a couple of slight spins on it to juice returns. But that is all I’m saying. Definitely. For now 🙂 ↩
Discussion (31) ¬
Hey TFS
Great post, and thanks for the shout out.
I chose the Magic Breakfast charity (http://www.magicbreakfast.com/) this month for my donation. Like you, I too hit the ‘birth lottery’ and there was always food on the table (although my parents worked damn hard to put it there!). I never suffered at school due to hunger. Magic Breakfast helps UK kids who aren’t so lucky.
Organised Redhead reminded me of charities that ran weekly lotteries, so I signed up to Age UK (might need a little helping hand in case my investments/FI plans don’t work out in my old age!) and also MacMillan Cancer (I have friends and family have been affected by the dreaded C). I don’t expect to win anything but it seemed to be an apt way for me to support these causes. I’ll probably look for another one or two to contribute to regularly in this way.
I tend to support UK charties more than overseas ones but will likely mix and match.
With regards to the CAF account, I’ve set up a direct debit and my gift aid gets paid into the account too, so it builds up (less CAF’s admin fees) like a savings account.
Good luck with choosing your charity(ies!
Hi weenie,
Thanks for all the advice. I’ll check out the breakfast one and of course MacMillan is one we can all relate to.
I’m looking forward to picking some charities and getting donating! 🙂
I like water aid as the return on investment is so huge- better safer water means more children survive & thrive
That’s a good one. Cheers Amit!
Gambler’s Anonymous seems the obvious place to start.
+1 for CAF. The great win with them is you can donate anonymously (from the target charity’s POV) which means you don’t get hounded by junk mail, spam and soliciting phone calls
Hi ermine,
Not sure if you were kidding but yes that did cross my mind! I don’t know how much good they really do but in restoring the karmic balance it does seem like the obvious thing to do. OK I’ll make it official… It’s on the list!
Will defo check out CAF also… cheers!
I donate to the Cancer Council as my family has been touched by this disease. I donate through my work and they match 100%. I decided to do it this way so I’d make a conscious decision to go with a charity which I knew did work and had low admin costs, and I could set it up and not have to remember to do it. And bonus that work matches it.
I’ll definitely include a cancer charity but what one I’m not too sure yet. Thanks for the suggestion!
Also great point on employer matches… I’ll see if my employer offers that!
Great stuff, giving is always a good thing in my book. We’re fortunate to be where we are financially so it’s great to be able to provide a helping hand. But it can more than just giving money, it can be donating time by volunteering. You can also donate blood too, which is what I do every 2 months or so. 🙂
Hi Tawcan,
Thanks! I agree that giving time is just as if not more important. Even though I’ve bought some of my time back already I still just feel I have no time to do it. A bit of a cop out I know but we have just had a baby so I think some slack can be cut there haha. So in the meantime money it is…
Yep also donating blood, got my next appointment in a couple of weeks 🙂
Check out The Life You Can Save website. It identifies highly effective charities globally and you can select from a number of causes to see which is the most effective at what matters most to you. I like Population Services International and the One Acre Fund.
CAF is a great way to give – I’ve stopped giving to a number of charities who hassle me to give more after I’ve ticked the box to say don’t call me. It’s just so rude!
Does your work offer matching on donations?
Hey Emma, thanks for mentioning that website for me to check out charities I was unaware of previously.
You are most welcome. I was so impressed with it when a friend shared it with me and I like to play it forward. The founder has an amazing story too.
http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/ – Looks really good Emma, will have a thorough read through this website later on. I like the whole evidence based stance so you know your pounds are making the biggest impact they can.
Another plus one for checking if employers do a match. I’ll check that out now!
Thanks!
Hi TFS, nice post with a nice sentiment. I’ve been a pretty poor giver over the years, I think, relative to my income. But I tell myself I’ve paid a bundle in tax much of which goes to those less fortunate than I am in this life. Or I hope it does. Mind you, Philip Green probably tells himself the same thing and he’s a ghastly individual. So I’ll be checking out some of these links for consideration.
Hi Jim,
Yes I think I have too, trying to make small amends now.
Yes I hope the tax helps out as well but *everyone* pays that and really how effective is it and how much is just wasted, more than I would like I suspect! Sorry not having a go at you there, and again I’ve used that reasoning before as well for not giving as much as I probably should.
Another reason I’ve used before is that we don’t know how much money we give to a charity actually goes to the cause but now this sort of thing seems to be so transparent it is no excuse to do a little research into the best charities and start giving to best / most effective ones… hence the whole reason for this post 🙂
Hi there, just subscribed to your blog 🙂 Great topic – BTW I used to work in charity admin and CAF is/was an absolute nightmare! But if it works for you, then fair enough 😀
As far as I can see, Excellent Development have a better ROI than WaterAid (a one-off donation of £10 will provide one person clean water for life). I also love CamKids as it’s a cause close to my heart, and it’s run entirely by a small group of volunteers, so 100% of your donation goes to help children in Cambodia. I also like the Kiva type approach, where your money becomes a low-interest loan to help people get their small business ideas off the ground. A hand up rather than a hand out! Microloan Foundation is one of the UK charities using the same approach.
Hi Sophie,
Thanks for commenting and welcome to the blog! 🙂
That’s interesting about CAF… could I ask you to elaborate? Is it a nightmare for givers or people working there?
Thanks for the suggestions, I will do a thorough review of everything and do a round up page soon (and then actually work out how to divvy up my donations, the most important part!) 🙂
I like Kiva and have donated to them a few times, definitely one to make on the list. Also Deki which seems to be UK based but loans are to other countries. I’ll check out Microloan Foundation for sure!
Thanks again for chipping in and hope you stop by again soon 🙂
Note to self, this looks interesting:
https://www.givedirectly.org/basic-income
That is a top rated charity from Givewell, I’d suggest looking at https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ as well, another charity rater based on impact.
Hi David,
Thanks for the suggestion! I just read about that on the latest MMM post which was about the same subject as this although slightly larger on the amount of money involved… hah.
Cheers!