A sucker for a good cause

THE ART OF BEING CHARITABLE

I’VE always believed you should give what you can to charity. It’s good for the soul. It’s about helping others and sacrificing some of your own comfort or pleasure for the benefit of those in need.

You can donate money, time or whatever you’ve got handy. The other day I saw someone collecting for Guide Dogs for the Blind so I gave him my labrador.

Charity is big business these days. If it’s not young attractive people shaking buckets in shopping centres, it’s relentless targeted marketing arriving through the post. “Look at this poor donkey. Look at him! The poor little donkey.” or “Akeyo walks nine miles every day to get water. Moving closer to the well isn’t really an option.”

I’m a real sucker for it all and was sending so much money to build orphanages that we couldn’t afford to pay our mortgage. My wife reminded me that charity begins at home. I said, “Get yourself an advert on the telly and I’ll see what I can do.”

Charity shops do a sterling job for their cause. Some people get their entire wardrobe from them while others just look like they have. You can discover some real bargains although it’s not unheard of to find yourself buying back your own things which your partner has secretly donated. I should have known that finding a second Chesney Hawkes sticker album was too good to be true.

Raising money by taking on a challenge can be pretty rewarding. Once you could sit in beans or shave your moustache and the sponsorship would roll in but now there’s so much competition it needs to be something pretty spectacular, like abseiling down Kilimanjaro in a panda suit. Having said that, lots of people do quite well out of 5K runs where they really just walk.

A great tip here is to invent the first 10 people on your form and have them all sponsor you £10. Then it will be a pretty shameless person who’s willing to buck the trend and sponsor you for less.

There are those out there who don’t believe in charity. They argue that however much money you give a homeless person for a cup of tea, they never get one. I have to admit it’s a fair point.

However tight they are though, nobody can resist the old classic fundraiser of Mufty Day. It’s when you can wear whatever you want at school or work for a small fee.

I’ve not had the chance to do it for years but bizarrely, people often think I have. Only the other day a woman looked me up and down and said, “Have you paid a pound to dress like that?”

Now that wasn’t very charitable was it?


Next week… The art of photography