The Trussell Trust

[CabalofBolorneaise]

It costs a foodbank £1,500 to join TT and £360 a year every year thereafter. in poorer communities without pockets of affluence, many foodbanks can’t afford that.

TT makes £500k a year from foodbanks plus all the donations. I’m really shocked than none of the donations go on food

This comes with the disclaimer that this was all a couple of years ago so perhaps they have lightened the criteria, but it wasn’t just paying either.

Obviously they need to do diligence before having their name attached to a local service and I totally get that, so some vetting has to take place but the gentle thanks but no thanks case very much seemed to be that their “faces didn’t fit” for the lack of a better term.

The service was successful before them and is still running now.

 

[Bwidge]

I've just realised that the poor saps who bought JM's 'this shirt provided three days emergency food' bollocks merchandise were properly had over. I wonder if that's what the TT objected to.

 

[StatusWoe]

I've just realised that the poor saps who bought JM's 'this shirt provided three days emergency food' bollocks merchandise were properly had over. I wonder if that's what the TT objected to.

You mean she kept the money from the merch rather than donating to TT?

 

[Bwidge]

You mean she kept the money from the merch rather than donating to TT?

No, the money that went to the TT never went on food.

 

[StatusWoe]

No, the money that went to the TT never went on food.

Oh sorry I get what you mean now.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

Start a Food bank - The Trussell Trust

We'll provide you with all the tools, training & know-how that you need to start a foodbank, so that people in crisis in your town don't have to go hungry.

www.trusselltrust.org

Where I live we have a very successful food bank which provides food and cooking lessons and signposts users to other services. We also have a thing where you pay a tenner for lifetime membership and get heavily discounted food, cooking lessons, free holiday clubs, food deliveries etc.

Not attached to any religious organisation either, unlike TT.

TTs mission is to end food banks. They assume that that all people can be trained to get out of poverty. It’s a middle class patronising POV

 

[Merpedy]

Our financial information is all available online and our most recent annual report is for the year to March 2021. In it you can see £4.36 million went out directly to food banks in grants and £6.61 million was spent on food bank network costs and benefits. In total, 66% of our expenditure went to funding support for the food bank network, 17% went to pushing for long-lasting change, 11% went towards fundraising costs and 6% was used to run charity shops and other social enterprise projects which you can read more about here.

Does anyone know more about this grant stuff? I quickly looked at the grants available in my area using their website and a lot of them were very very specific and I doubt many people would qualify for them. Though it's worth noting I looked at ones available to people in their mid-20s so that might just be part of the limitation, though it's slightly concerning if certain age groups are being left behind

There's also this story: https://www.trusselltrust.org/2020/...t-money-into-pockets-of-people-at-food-banks/

Anyway, a lot of their explanation is just really vague to me and really could mean anything imo. What is 'food bank network costs and benefits'? Is it actually helping any one or is it just them looking at finances?


I always feel like once you get to big charities it's really dodgy and shady behaviour with money, even if they are doing a genuinely good thing for some people. Physical donations are always the best imo

 

[Lazarus]

This comes with the disclaimer that this was all a couple of years ago so perhaps they have lightened the criteria, but it wasn’t just paying either.

Obviously they need to do diligence before having their name attached to a local service and I totally get that, so some vetting has to take place but the gentle thanks but no thanks case very much seemed to be that their “faces didn’t fit” for the lack of a better term.

The service was successful before them and is still running now.

The thing is though, most independent food banks don’t work on a referral basis and the TT do. They also want to pray for people which I personally find patronising.

 

[candyland_]

This is why I’m wary to give money to anything. I would always rather donate a physical thing.

 

[CabalofBolorneaise]

The thing is though, most independent food banks don’t work on a referral basis and the TT do. They also want to pray for people which I personally find patronising.

They’re basically if Jack Monroe was a charity. All the right words on the surface but nothing to back it up when you dig a bit deeper. Held up by middle class people who genuinely mean well but don’t want to spend time investigating anything for themselves.

 

[lilyannrose]

There seems to be so much corruption and greed in the charity sector. I won't donate to any big name charities because of how much of the money doesn't go directly to the cause.

I also exhaust of the amount of disturbingly graphic adverts full of emotional blackmail these charities churn out. It's important to get people's attention but I would rather they show the positive side more often. I think people would be more inspired to donate if they weren't being clobbered by the aforementioned emotional blackmail in the process.

 

[Nordic]

A large proportion of big charities are campaigning and policy driven.
Shelter for example don’t run shelters.
if the Trussel Trust are a registered charity they will be subject to the Charity Commission regulation. It sounds to me like they enable the creation and development of food banks through advice and support rather than run their own.
it’s an individual choice as to whether you are interested in funding campaign work or direct support.

 

[Merpedy]

It sounds to me like they enable the creation and development of food banks through advice and support rather than run their own

It sounds to me like this is really expensive to the local organisations/people who want to start their own food banks though

I think campaigning and policy stuff is fine if it's useful. TT apparently provide a lot of data to inform debates/MPs which is great, but is it actually achieving anything? I'm sure MPs will throw out the numbers and something about the issues faced in their local area and that will basically be that

 

[CabalofBolorneaise]

There seems to be so much corruption and greed in the charity sector. I won't donate to any big name charities because of how much of the money doesn't go directly to the cause.

I also exhaust of the amount of disturbingly graphic adverts full of emotional blackmail these charities churn out. It's important to get people's attention but I would rather they show the positive side more often. I think people would be more inspired to donate if they weren't being clobbered by the aforementioned emotional blackmail in the process.

I try not to give to any of the ones who do chugging (not including the buckets, I’m fine with those, I mean the people who want you to sign up to a DD in the street) and door knocking as those are basically ways in which they target the vulnerable to line their own pockets.

For example, how many of us would give our bank details to a random stranger in the street or at the door? But a vulnerable adult or elderly adult might.

There’s also a real issue with many of the big names targeting elderly and vulnerable people to get them to up their donations by piling on the guilt. Someone I knew through the food bank (fellow volunteer) found out their 85 year old gran with dementia was getting numerous calls a week from cancer research and others pressuring her to donate more and even after the family stepped in, cut off the donations and told the charities about the dementia, cancer research kept ringing to try to get her gran to restart the DD. Of course the charities directly say it’s third parties on their behalf but they KNOW this is happening.

ETA: and they absolutely rely on the fact people won’t want to be seen to be slagging off a charity to get to away with the behaviour.

 

[lilyannrose]

I try not to give to any of the ones who do chugging

My mum was literally chased up the street by a chugger once. They are vile.

 

[Whatspopping]

Fundraising and Charity Work are completely different things, but somehow always find themselves lumped together. Fundraising is always the one that makes me most uneasy, as it is always so ripe for fraudulent activity.

It's also very interesting when you work for a charity to see lots of money going in, and seemingly becoming unaccounted for. I remember working for Mind and most of the workers contracts were the result of bidding for work that was being outsourced by councils, community schemes etc. The salary the workers got paid was often skimmed, so mind always got a direct cut. Then after all that you had the fundraising money. It was often difficult to see where that all went.

 

[Lico]

I'm in Ireland, and spent a few hours googling charity accounts. All the big Irish charities have accounts published, and I am disgusted how little of the money goes to the coal face. A lot of them have CEOs on big money, and then the advertising takes up a big part of the budget, usually over half of their income. Plus there are way too many of them. Mostly ego boosting ventures.

 

[mince]

There seems to be so much corruption and greed in the charity sector. I won't donate to any big name charities because of how much of the money doesn't go directly to the cause.

I also exhaust of the amount of disturbingly graphic adverts full of emotional blackmail these charities churn out. It's important to get people's attention but I would rather they show the positive side more often. I think people would be more inspired to donate if they weren't being clobbered by the aforementioned emotional blackmail in the process.

We call these ads ‘or the puppy gets it’. Vile, exploitative, and yes, exhausting.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

There seems to be so much corruption and greed in the charity sector. I won't donate to any big name charities because of how much of the money doesn't go directly to the cause.

I also exhaust of the amount of disturbingly graphic adverts full of emotional blackmail these charities churn out. It's important to get people's attention but I would rather they show the positive side more often. I think people would be more inspired to donate if they weren't being clobbered by the aforementioned emotional blackmail in the process.

Re emotional blackmail it’s funny you say this - I got a rare physical letter through the other day and it had red capitals over the front and my heart sunk thinking duck I’ve obviously forgotten to move a bill over or pay a new bill here (I’ve never had a letter with red writing on before!) and it was from a bleeping charity saying some dumb tit like help us winter crisis? duck the duck off why on earth would you send anyone something like that that’ll make their heart fall and then expect paying from it too?! Went straight in the recycling unopened.

 

[Potatopotaato]

Fundraising and Charity Work are completely different things, but somehow always find themselves lumped together. Fundraising is always the one that makes me most uneasy, as it is always so ripe for fraudulent activity.

It's also very interesting when you work for a charity to see lots of money going in, and seemingly becoming unaccounted for. I remember working for Mind and most of the workers contracts were the result of bidding for work that was being outsourced by councils, community schemes etc. The salary the workers got paid was often skimmed, so mind always got a direct cut. Then after all that you had the fundraising money. It was often difficult to see where that all went.

This really annoys me, as I spent a few years doing the book for a small local charity and they were SO careful with volunteers expenses, grant applications, holding restricted funds appropriately even though they could have been spent elsewhere. To know now that they pretty much could have done what they liked (for the good of the service users and ease for volunteers) and not been held accountable really boils my piss!