MONEY FOR CHARITIES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 306, 29 November 1927, Page 5

MONEY FOR CHARITIES.

COST OF COLLECTION. NEW SOUTH WALES COMPLAINT. SYDNEY, Nov. 17. Apart from money given by the Government, people of this State subscribed roughly £10,000,000 for hospitals, special appeals, and other charitable objects during the past ten years, but nearly half this amount was eaten up iii collecting expenses. In some cases, the proportion of the latter to the amount actually handed to the various institutions was enormous, reaching nearly as high as 80 per cent. The trouble is that while the Government can control such things as bazaars and art unions and can insist that overhead expenses shall be kept in check, and that a reasonable proportion of the proceeds is handed over to the institutions for whose benefit the effort was instituted, it does not seem to be able to control the indiscriminate efforts of collectors who go about with collecting lists or boxes. Anybody can start a fund and say it is for a given purpose, and nobody knows whether the given purpose gets a fair share of the proceeds or not.