The charity dollar.

Your sit down to your evening meal - and the phone rings !
It's those pesky Indians - flogging mobile phones or time share holidays !
You give a terse " no " - and hangup !
You barely mop up the gravy - and the phone rings again !
This time it's a long spiel on a subject for which you feel sympathy - so your reach for your wallet, extract a credit card - and go back to the cold remains of your dinner feeling good - having made a twenty dollar donation.

Unfortunately that twenty dollars has just shrunk to a mere twelve dollars. The person you have been talking to on the phone is a professional funds raiser working for the charity - and that fund raising organization has been contracted to claim forty percent commission for it's success.

Welcome to the real world ! The days of charities attracting an army of volunteers to go door knocking or sit at the phone and ask for donations is fast dwindling.
In this commercial world raising money is big business and like all successful business it requires specialists to achieve success.
The state government is aware that unregulated fund raising could lead to rorts and for that reason it created the New South Wales Charitable Fundraising Act - which limits such commissions to forty percent of money pledged.

Unfortunately there are still gray areas once that money finally reaches the charity involved. It is said that " the devil is in the detail " and the " detail " is often in what is termed " expenses ".
There are some very well run charities who proudly advertise that their overheads and running expenses are a mere few cents in the dollar - but there are also others who seem to absorb the majority of the money they attract in expensive motor vehicles and salaries for corporate officers.
The next time someone asks you for money it might be a good idea to ask two questions early in the conversation.
Such as : " Are you a paid donation canvasser ? "
And : " What percentage in the dollar is spent on overheads ? "
You will probably get some interesting and enlightening answers !