Give as you live.
This is a good idea: if you sign up to this scheme, and do a bit of easy ‘mouse clicking’ when you spend money on the internet then your chosen charity (mine is…. wait for it…..the RSPB) gets some money from the people to whom you are giving your money. So far I have raised £4.18 in the last few days through spending money with Premier Inn, East Midlands Trains and Vistaprint. I’m not quite sure why I haven’t been told that I have earned some money for the RSPB through my use of Betfair too – but maybe it’s because they have been paying me recently.
Fighting for Birds for Christmas.
You can’t get a copy of Fighting for Birds from Amazon in time for Christmas anymore but you can, up until midday on Thursday, from NHBS – so why don’t you do that? A friend said he saw a copy in Waterstones in Piccadilly last week but I expect it’s gone by now…
BBC Wildlife podcast
If you’d like to hear me talking about ruddy ducks, white-tailed eagles, hen harriers and roseate terns – and more – then click here.
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Or you could sign up for the RSPB credit card – for every £100 spent, 25p goes to the RSPB – that’s about 3p if you bought Fighting for Birds on it!
Regrettably, my spending on it on the basis that ‘its good for charity’ is wearing a bit thin with my wife.
Gert – or both! buy online with your RSPB credit card! And buy multiple copies of Fighting for BIrds!
Much better to get a card with cashback – Amex amongst others do one I think and then donate the money to your choice of charity. Mine does about 1% – a lot better than Gert’s RSPB card (sorry!). If you are fortunate enough to be a higher rate taxpayer you can also claim tax relief from HMRC when you fill in your tax return and then donate that too!
I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Fighting for Birds for my Birthday at the weekend (alas, not a signed copy). Will be reading it on a very long plane journey starting Friday!
Burhinus – I hope you enjoy it. I see from your email address that there might be a possibility I could sign it for you some time…
research shows that close association between consuming and charitable work is likely to negatively impact on people values and behaviours in the long term – making them less likely to support the causes in the long term. The argument is that if you are going to by anyway why not make sure a charity is getting some money for it? But the benefit to the charity may be outweighed by the long term impact of this association – you are making a subconscious association and this reinforces the feeling that it is OK to buy stuff and that you are actually doing good by doing so.
I am not saying we should buy stuff (well maybe a bit less of it), I just think we should be really careful about the long term impacts of these associations. Short term economic gain is not the only way to measure charitable success especially if by doing so you undermine the values that make people want to support charities…