Cattle Airlines

There's a legitimate Philadelphia charity that helps foster children. There are volunteers that do much of the legwork but for every 20 volunteers, they must pay a social worker to supervise. Each volunteer is tasked to try to raise donations to pay for their supervising social worker's salary.

Anybody interested in giving a few dollars? For each FT that does, I'll give some, too. I'll still give if no FTers do but your enthusiasm will make me try to dig deeper. PM me if you are interested.

cynicAAl

I don't choose my religion based on door to door missionaries, and I don't give to charities that are solicited anonomously on the internet, but that's just me. If you'd like to post the name/link to this legitimate charity, people can decide for themselves if they'd like to donate.

pittpanther

What legitimate charity asks its volunteers to also canvas and raise funds? I would expect a legitimate charity to be happy to have volunteers, and to handle fundraising through a separate branch, staffed with people that are professional fundraisers.

My mom volunteers at Salvation Army - they don't ask her to beg for money from her friends. They don't even ask her to stand with a kettle and bell at Christmastime. If you want to volunteer to raise money, that's one thing. But if you volunteer to work with foster children, a charity should be happy to have the help, and not be asking you to also raise money.

I notice the original posting didn't even bother to name the charity (which would allow us to look it up, warts and all). Until proven otherwise, sounds like a scam to me.

chgoeditor

Not commenting on the contents of the OP's plea, but...almost every non-profit I'm aware of has a board of directors give or get policy. In many instances, the junior/associates board, women's board, etc., have a similar policy. In other words, there is an explicit expectation that volunteers at the leadership level will solicit a specific amount donations or simply write a check themselves.

So, in answer to your question: Many, many, many non-profits ask their volunteers to canvas their contacts and do fundraising.

Cattle Airlines

http://www.casaphiladelphia.org/

The mission of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Philadelphia is to train and support community volunteers to advocate for the health, safety, stability and well-being of abused and neglected children.
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CASA also has individual webpages for each of the volunteer counselors. I am not a counselor but one of them asked if I knew anyone who can donate. This is certainly not a scam. If people PM'ed me, I would have given you this same info and the link to the particular volunteer counselor's CASA webpage.

pittpanther

By giving more information up-front, you keep from scaring away people who assume it's a scam. All this info should have been in your first post.

SkeptiCallie

Well, you're right. I was initially dubious of the post too. However, now that the OP has explained, I wouldn't be too harsh. The OP, judging from post count, hasn't been here long enough to have a sense of how much needs to be posted initially. I had almost posted a critical post myself but had been too hesitant that I might inadvertently be criticizing someone who means well.

redreeper

Ehhh...depends on the size of the charity and what the mission of the charity is. Our group (animal rescue) is rather large but not national, we do expect our Board members to be heavily involved in fund raising since without funding we can't do a darn thing. Some people can only donate time, resources, or professional services - it's all appreciated and works out great in the end.

The Red Cross asks its volunteers to get involved in fundraising events on a regular basis.

As for the OPs charity, if they need to pay someone to keep the good going (we have plenty of vet bills....) then I hope OP has great luck with it! I will tell you, a nice fundraising idea is a charity garage sale, I do one every year and its a lot of fun and people really, really enjoy it. Plus, you don't have to invest much to get it going. Hit Craigs list to ask for donation drop off on a certain day, put flyers up and in your neighbors mail boxes, you'll get a ton of stuff. I even get my grill out and sell hotdogs for 1.00 donation and people just drive by and get hot dogs sometimes. Win/win - no begging, just fundraising