How inefficient is it to give to telephone or door-to-door fundraisers?

[fivemack]

Someone phoned me 'from {name inaudible} on behalf of Christian Aid' this evening, and informed me that there were many orphans in Zambia as a result of the HIV epidemic, that the cost of sending one of them to school was £86 a year, and that it might be nice to give Christian Aid seven pounds a month to this aim.

My naive assumption is that the right answer is 'yes, that would be nice, I'll send Christian Aid a cheque for n*£86, n depending on how rich I'm feeling, at Christmas', on the grounds that a telephone fundraiser might well take a cut of any donations to cover their running costs; does anyone know how much of my seven pounds a month would actually get to Christian Aid?

(I have a fiver-a-month standing order on behalf of a charity working for blind people, which I made as a result of a door-to-door fund-raiser, and I fear there's a rather larger cut being taken out of that; I should probably kill the standing order and make one directly to the charity)

Comments

[meirion.livejournal.com]

If you're seriously interested in giving money to AIDS orphans in Zambia, might I suggest teaming up with a few like-minded friends to donate to the Makeni Ecumenical Centre? They're actively looking for new sponsors of AIDS orphans right now (and reckon it's the best way to donate to help them) and we have personal contact with the Centre organiser, so are about as sure as we can be that the money's actually getting to help them rather than being wasted on administration costs/fat cats' trips/ whatever ...