CHARITY- EXPENSES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3643, 26 May 1927, Page 4

CHARITY- EXPENSES

THE COST OF MEETINGS. SCHEME FOR REDUCTION. COMMUNITY CHEST IN SYDNEY. A community chest for the collection and distribution of donations for hospitals and charities has been inaugurated by the Sydney Chamber of Commerce. It is not desired that members of the chamber should cut down their charitable donations. The object is that these donations should reach the institutions without the heavy deductions for expenses to which they are in many instances unavoidably subjected under the present method of unorganised giving, and at the same time free merchants from numerous, and sometimes harassing, applications. It is not intended to confine the chest to subscriptions from members of the chamber only. Other people may avail themselvps of the opportunity to have their donations handled through it. The chamber has already received donations totalling £325. A committee of officers of the chamber has been formed, and donors will have the choice of their gifts being distributed at the committee’s discretion, allocating them to specific hospitals or charities, and part at the discretion, of the committee.

Mr W. P. Dunlop, who initiated the scheme, said recently that citizens would be invited to hand over to the trustees of the community chest every year a lump sum representing what they were willing to give for the ensuing twelve months towards New South Wales charity. The main allocation of the funds would be done by the donors, and it would lie in almost every instance based on the distribution'which they had been accustomed to make formerly plus a sum for contingencies. “Many business men now when appealed to for any deserving object,” said Mr Dunlop, “are in such an harassed state of mind owing to the continuous calls upon them that a wrong atmosphere is created, and they do not give as generously as in their hearts they would wish to do. Only those who know something intimately of hospital finance have any id#a how large a proportion of the takings of the hospitals are absorbed by the cost of collecting the money. All such institutions shortly after the inauguration of the community chest could afford to skeletonise their collecting sfaff. Even where moneys reach the hospitals by means of efforts where the actual collectors have not been at work the result to the institutions is just as poor. “Take, for instance, the dances which are held annually by most of the warehouses and large business places of this city in aid of the hospitals. A tremendous effort is made by all concerned, and in most instances all suppliers of the firm having the dance are asked to buy tic*lets, so that one firm in addition to any direct giving to a favourite charity will buy in the course of the year £3O or £4O worth of dance tickets from other houses. “I saw the balance-sheet of one of these functions recently, and it was run by people with a whole-hearted desire to help the charity concerned. Everything was done in the most business-like way, and all waste eliminated. The takings were about £BO, and the net profit handed over to the charity £43. This was an exceptionally good effort, but even then the expenses were 50 per cent.”