Five tweets for fundraisers on 20 May 2021

Flagging up a small charity, what leads to ineffective giving, what should we call the people we used to call ‘beneficiaries’, fundraising from the pleasure and the pain of Eurovision, and what if the characters in Friends were fundraisers?

Here’s another in our occasional collection of inspirational, amusing or just plain unusual tweets about fundraising.

1. Flying the flag for small charities

Courtesy of the Queen’s Speech announcing government policy for the next year, we now know that we have a national flag charity, The Flag Institute. It is “a forum to research and inform about the study of flags” and it is a tiny charity, with annual income (March 2020) of £10,072 and expenditure of £11,136. You might say it is flagging.

CHARITIES AND QUEENS SPEACH BREAKING NEWS: We have a national flag charity. pic.twitter.com/iwr1hoDrJ9
— Thomas Collinge (@ThomasCollinge) May 11, 2021

2. Ineffective giving

If we want to make giving more effective we need to think what contributes to ineffective giving. Here’s the research paper to help us.

The most effective charities are hundreds of times more effective than the rest, yet people rarely prioritize effectiveness when choosing where to donate. This fascinating paper looks at the causes of ineffective giving, and ways to encourage the opposite. https://t.co/9OzF61ywR8 pic.twitter.com/faK5HK7mcS
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) May 5, 2021

3. Who do you help?

Martha Awojobi isn’t the first to ask this question, but she has inspired 78 answers and responses. There’s never a single ideal response but the replies show the variety of approaches that are used by many.