Overkill

This is going to be quite a cynical post, so please excuse me before I start. I’ve caught the train to Epping from Central for about a year and a half now, and during this time I’ve noticed something funny about Fridays. Well it’s not so much funny, but more alarming. Every Friday (perhaps that is an exaggeration) there are school kids in front of the ticket machines selling badges/bears/pens/ribbons for charity. No really, think about it - How many charities have ‘push’ days? I’d say most. How valuable are the causes? All of them are valuable. How much noise is in this space then? Too much.

I know it’s a horrible attitude, but the complete inundation of charities pushing donations via gimmicks at the station has pushed me to ignore most of them. Simply, you cannot keep up with them. That’s one half…

By the same token, every time someone enters any sort of jog/ride/ultra marathon, it’s for a cause. After signing up for a run with work in September, it automates a fundraising page for the entrant. Whilst I can understand (to an end) supporting someone to run a marathon, I find it a bit rich to sponsor someone to run 9km. It’s not that far. Even by the same token, running a marathon is a slightly selfish thing – the training required to run it necessitates quite a deal of sacrifice and selfishness. I find the same with triathlon, where most people are a bit mad anyway…

So what to make of all this? Well I think that it demonstrates a few things:
- Are charities getting the required support to drive their causes? I’d say probably not – this probably should be looked at. Obviously the Government can’t support everything, but it would be interesting to see where the key gaps are
- Do we need to look fresh new ways of engaging the public to support causes? There is a lot of noise about donating cash, but buggered if it’s easy to find ways to volunteer. Need to look at other creative ways too.
- Is there a need to combined causes? I know that sounds terrible, but perhaps one large bang is better than twenty scattered pops.

A little negative, but I thought it might pose an interesting question