Charity Fatigue II

I wrote a few days ago about the number of advertisements on satellite television channels for various charities. They caused me to wonder if the television companies were using them as ‘fillers’ when there were no paying advertisements to broadcast.

Since then I have noted half a dozen more charity commercials which have joined the others at a time of year when many of us are thinking of making donations to worthy causes. Some of these would seem to be fairly small charities and some appear at first sight to duplicate the work of larger and better known charities.

I’ve so far counted a dozen charities appealing for funds in the last couple of weeks and it has struck me that some of them appear to duplicate the work of others, some better known. I wonder what benefit arises when a small charity makes a similar appeal to a larger one?

As I said before, we have made our annual Christmas donation and the spate of charity commercials do not affect us. Except to make me wonder what overheads some of these charities incur before they actually do their advertised work.
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Charity Fatigue

I don’t think I’m a mean man and, when I can, I try to help out local and other charities.

The number of television advertisements for various charities seen in the last few days make me wonder whether the satellite television companies are using them as ‘fillers’ when they have no paying advertisements to broadcast. If so, I think they do the charities a disservice.

In the last few days I have been invited to subscribe £2 per month to St. Dunstans, £3 pm to adopt a tiger, £3 pm to adopt a polar bear, £30 per annum to adopt a lion, £2 pm for the WeCare charity, an unspecified amount to the RSPCA and £19 to the Salvation Army. There were also a couple of others.

All these are worthy charities and I have selected the one that I shall donate to this Christmas. But I do wonder whether the number of these sort of advertisements is one reason why most of the charities themselves admit that Britain suffers from ‘charity fatigue’.

If that is right, then might fewer advertisements than at present help?
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