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

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

You would? I figure if it's actually a good cause, the hookers and cocaine are a very mild evil if they stop people dying of AIDs, etc.

But then, I give to chuggers if I'm in a good mood and they're attractive. I could say I'll give when I get home, but I know it's a lie; I'm not really a good person, despite feeling bad about people dying of malaria for want of a 50p mosquito net at the time. I figure there are other people like me, and so chuggers probably are diverting money which would otherwise be spent on beer and Eurostar tickets to helping the needy.

I don't do religious ones, but only because I hate religion.