The nfpSynergy Blog

Money in account – check; credit card in front of me – check; computer up and running – check; internet connection working – check; relevant website on my browser – check. I think I’m ready to make a couple of dozen online donations to a couple of dozen different charities.

“Generous one, that Andrea,” you say. In fact I do it twice a year. At the end of our Charity Media Monitor (CMM) survey, participating journalists can either claim an incentive or donate it to charity. It’s my job to make any donations on their behalf. Charities clearly need all the funds they can get, so why do some make it so difficult to give?

Last month I opened my first pay check of the new fiscal year and it raised a few questions for me. It showed that the amount of money due to arrive in my bank account has gone up because the tax-free allowance has increased from £8,101 to £9,440.

I’d heard a lot about this tax cut over the past few months and every time a politician of Liberal Democrat or Tory persuasion mentioned it, they said they wanted to lift minimum and low wage earners out of the burden of income tax. Having given my best years to nfpSynergy, I was a little surprised to find myself benefitting from it and there could be many more people out there sharing my surprise. This money that they were not expecting to get is the very definition of expendable income, so should charities be looking to benefit from it?

There is a cold war in the charity world.

On one side are the public and the vast majority of donors. The public don’t like admin costs, overheads and waste and they don’t like to think of their money going to anything but the charity’s cause. Our research at nfpSynergy shows this antipathy to costs and overheads very clearly. People typically think about 10% of their donation at most should go on admin and around 20% be spent on fundraising.

Before this, I wrote a piece on why it's important to blog. Although I meant it as a few quick notes, it actually turned into a blog of its own and inexplicably mentioned sky diving. Hopefully, it also explained a few reasons why blogging is beneficial and how it’s really easy to get started. So, eager with endeavour and sufficiently seized of blogging’s benefits, you’ll no doubt be chomping at the bit to get some ideas down on paper. So, what's the best way to get started?