Why I’m giving up donating to charity

ACCORDING to a recent report by the Charities Aid Foundation, older females in higher socio-economic grades are the people who are most likely to give money to charity. hey! That’s me in a wrinkled nutshell. Ageing crone still in gainful employ, able to afford the occasional scrap of cheap cashmere, sentimental verging on going soft in the head? Tick, tick and triple tick.

Yet when it comes to charity, it is so not me any more. sad to say, i have changed — and not for the better.

in the past, like millions of my fellow Brits, i have given willingly and sometimes even generously to assorted charities. i had standing orders, i sponsored friends and strangers, i did my bit, i welcomed the rattling tin.

now, some of that philanthropy has gone for ever — and i am not particularly proud of that fact. i still contribute, of course, but only to a few tried-and-trusted good causes — preferably local ones.

The RNLI, always. The RSPCA? no — not since it became so ardently politicised.

however, my decreasing generosity is not just because i object to funds being used to stop fox-hunting instead of saving stray mongrels, but because, in general, i just do not trust Big Charity any more. Who does?

Over the past few years, charities and those who collect on their behalf have become the subject of a great deal of suspicion.

And no wonder, for there seems to have been one torrid scandal after another; incidents both big and small, which have begun to corrode the fragile relationship between the public and the great charity behemoth.

There are aggressive high street chuggers who take most of your money for themselves and unscrupulous charity cold-callers who hound old people to death. There is the ongoing Kids Company fiasco, the bosses who see charity as a lucrative career. They earn six-figure salaries, fly business class and drive lovely BMWs — all on your dollar.

And now this.

This newspaper’s revelations this week about Didier Drogba’s charity captures my worst fears about the high-profile, bling-a-ding-ding end of the charity market. stars, members of the Royal Family and well-meaning businesses contributed £1.7 million to the former Chelsea FC footballer’s foundation. supporters were told the cash would build a hospital and help educate impoverished children in Drogba’s ivory Coast homeland.

Little-ickle sick kiddies running around barefoot in the West African dust? What better cause could there be? Everyone dug deep.

Yet accounts show that just £14,115 of their thousands and thousands of generous donations actually went to help these children.

Perhaps it went towards the dusty, empty building in Abidjan with not so much as a roll of bandages inside.

One day, claims the Didier Drogba Foundation, it is going to be a ten-bed clinic. Ten beds! is that it? Meanwhile, Drogba’s foundation in the UK spent more than 30 times that amount on throwing lavish fundraising parties in London, where pampered guests drank the finest champagnes and were royally entertained by top pop stars. he made sure his photograph was taken with all the big names.

The rest of the money is languishing unused in a bank account. The actual work being done in Africa is instead being funded by Drogba himself, with the sponsorship money he paid into the foundation in the ivory Coast.

These types of glitzy blacktie balls — Drogba’s were attended by the likes of Princess Beatrice, David Beckham, former Chelsea star Frank Lampard and his TV presenter wife Christine Bleakley — have never made much economic sense to me.

You sit there at tables heaving with gorgeous roses and bottles of fine wine. Everyone’s glass is brimming, all the plates are full.

hundreds of guests tuck into lamb cutlets followed by passion fruit brulees before they bid in the raffle for a luxury spa break in Thailand.

What is that all about? Choking down beef wellington and claret in aid of the starving children?

Wouldn’t it be more financially advantageous and much less obscene if everyone stayed at home and cut out the middle man by donating more?

NO, BECAUSE that would defeat the object of the exercise. Celebrities cannot merely do good, they have to be seen to be doing good. For someone like Princess Beatrice — and her mad mum — attending a charity ball is a way of virtue-signalling to the public while having a great night out. For someone like Drogba, it rounds out his character and makes him look like a real good guy; it paves the way for a future beyond football.

But no one is fooled any longer. The rot set in when charities became tarnished by celebrities muscling in on the action.

some of them genuinely want to help, but too many others see it as a quick way to burnish their profiles with a gullible public. Then, of course, the royals piled in and became patrons of numerous charities, which only muddied the slurry further.

in 2014, the estimated total amount donated to charity by UK adults was £10.6 billion. Look, we are no slouches when it comes to giving, but for how much longer?

Too many instances of reckless behaviour by charity chiefs are beginning to sow doubt in the minds of donors. And David Cameron’s insistence on giving £12 billion a year in foreign aid rankles some — especially as we have no choice in giving to this particular ‘charity’.

Meanwhile, Drogba has issued a statement claiming his innocence. he may have had the best of motivations since day one.

But here — and elsewhere in the charitable world — underneath the good intentions there is a very bad smell.