I donate money when my friends do charitable things out of social politeness and duty, but, in all honesty, I'm dead against Western charity. Why? Because not all the money goes where it should. If a Charity boss earns £250,000, how much of my £10 donation is going to training a f***ing guide dog? I am thoroughly willing to give to charities whose members work purely on a voluntary basis, but the Big charities are just businesses in disguise, which rip people off with the idea of "good will". My grandad, a WW2 vet, volunteered to collect for one of the first poppy appeals. At the end of the day, his supervisor dashed open a tin and started scooping the coins into his bag, tossing a tin to my grandad and saying "here's your share"... Glad to say my grandad gave him a hiding
I have to say, I also thoroughly deplore the idea of people doing something they want to do, like climb a mountain or run a marathon, and claim they're doing it to raise money for charity. That's a piss take in my opinion. I realise that's contentious, and that some of you will have done that very thing, or know others who have done it, but it's bullshit. I'm sorry, what has running 25 miles got to do with giving money in a charitable fashion?! If my friends came up to me and said, "donate to such and such because I think it's a good charity", I would do it with less grudging than when they go through the pretense of pretending their participation in a sporting event counts as charitable in anyway. Seriously, who's going to turn around to someone they know and go "no, I won't donate to that charity unless you jog a bit in a banana costume"????
A guy I know climbed Kilamajaro "for charity". He spent £10,000 on doing it, and raised £2,000 for charity. Give your money to the f***ing charity and they'd be £8,000 better off to start with, ask others to help and you'd probs get the exact same amount of £2,000, and don't be a pretentious prick and pretend you wanting to climb a mountain is for anything other than selfish personal aspiration
