Rnli Slammed For Spending Millions On Foreign Aid

[naomi24]

//Bosses last week warned the lifeboat charity is facing “some major challenges” after making losses of £6.3million last year. But donations to the service are being spent on creches in Bangladesh and swimsuits for Muslim women in Tanzania.

Tory MP Nigel Evans, who sits on the Commons International Development Committee, said the charity is putting its reputation at risk.

He added: “I would say 99 per cent of the British public giving them money do not have the faintest idea it’s diverted to projects overseas.”//

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9934323/rnli-slammed-foreign-aid-slashing-jobs/

This is one charity I thought was struggling and really needed the money to continue its excellent work around our shores. I certainly wasn’t aware that a proportion of my donations are going overseas. Will this information put this charity’s reputation at risk?

[hc4361]

I have found out that Hally Hansen, a Norwegian company, provides clothing at a preferential rate for both crew and ground staff.

[vulcan42]

I think the RNLI should quickly realise that funding overseas projects will alienate the donors in this country and their funding will drop quite drastically, to the detriment of all in trouble. Is it not sufficient they are helping other countries when they rescue foreigners in trouble around our coasts without donating directly to those countries?

[Togo]

Hally Hansen......hmm not exactly Asia and the lands of the blazing sunshine is it. Are they offering free ski equipment to the Norwegians or providing sauna baths for them in exchange for a bit of discount then?

[hc4361]

Nope, they are giving HH free advertising.

I won't stop supporting the RNLI, drowning must be a horrible way to die.
Maybe it should come under government control paid for by our taxes.

[naomi24]

Up until now most of us have donated assuming that we are funding lifeboats. If this organisation wants to filter some of that money out to other countries it should make that absolutely clear and, as someone else said, perhaps form a sub-group to deal with that – thereby allowing supporters to choose where their money is spent.

[hc4361]

Withdrawing funding won't punish the RNLI, but more people will drown at sea.

[hereIam]

No they won't -people will still donate. Stop scaremongering !

[Togo]

If all funding, every penny of it, ceased forthwith the unpaid volunteers would still turn out......they always have. The ones who would bail out would be the lavishly and undeservedly paid self righteous chancers.

[hc4361]

And how would they maintain the lifeboats and equipment? Pay for the fuel?

[naomi24]

The same way as they do now.... with donations. If people KNEW the money was going where it was intended to go, they would support it.

[hc4361]

Volunteers do get around £20 per call plus expenses (including expenses for required training and exercises), and rightly so.
Naomi, I know people will still donate - I'm one of them. But many on this thread are withdrawing their funding and they are representative of the general public.

[Togo]

The parasites who exist by following the money...it's what they do... would soon leave if we strangle them of funds to throw funds at skewed "on message" schemes without having to be responsible, and to push a political agenda without mandate. Creeps all.

[hc4361]

An just who would do those jobs, Togo?

[Ellipsis]

> I'm not saying I don't sympathise with the reaction that money donated to a UK charity shouldn't be spent abroad, but to respond by cutting off donations seems extremely irrational.

The rationality of that is they clearly have more than enough money if they can spend some of it abroad when they are the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. This is what Nigel Evans was getting at, I think.

The sad thing is that they don't have more than enough money, they're making a loss despite all the volunteers that work for them ...

[naomi24]

I will donate to individual lifeboat stations - even if my money just keeps the crews in tea and biscuits - or pays for a lick of paint on the woodwork - but I won't donate to the organisation again. I absolutely refuse to help to fund the overseas projects the RNLI is involved in. I regard this as misappropriation of funds and as such, utterly wrong.

[hc4361]

The current Chief Executive, Mark Dowie, was a RNLI volunteer before he accepted the post and no way can be described as a creep

https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/mark-dowie-appointed-chief-executive-rnli/management/article/1578135

[brainiac]

He might not be a creep, but he is grossly overpaid. £189,000 a year - are you kidding?

[naomi24]

As with all major charities – and I speak from experience – those who make the decisions often lose sight of purpose and in so doing, discover it’s very easy to spend other people’s money.

[Togo]

//An just who would do those jobs, Togo?//

What? You mean the non jobs.....the positions created to make a safe space for the hangers on. Tea cup inspectors, magazine scrutineers in the mess, so shall meedya spies checking for the wrong sort of banter, Public Relations "officers"? Don't make me laugh. The RNLI and it's true meaning will outlast all the diversity tub thumpers when we take the control of it away from them.

[Togo]

//The current Chief Executive, Mark Dowie, was a RNLI volunteer before he accepted the post//

He has been placed in the wrong position then, another trait that the luvvies are famous for. We have lost a good crew member and gained a crap chief executive. Put him back in the Helly Hansen kit and out of the Hugo Boss suit. Pronto.