Money for Charities

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16509, 29 November 1927, Page 7

Money for Charities

.Does it cost as much in New Zealand to raise money from the public for charitable purposes ns it does in New South Wales? Apart from money given by the Government, people of the State subscribed roughly £10,000,000 for hospitals, special appeals, and other charitable objects during the past 10 years, luft nearly half this amount is eaten up in 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 New South Wales Government can control such things as bazaars and art unions and can insist that overhead expenses shall bo 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.