You'd have thought companies would fall over themselves to help a kid's charity...

Apparently not! Link in my IT blog to another blog...

Nope they definitely arent. Im doing a charity event that benefits children and i am really struggling to get financial support even tho they would get advertising space in return. Its very difficult!

It's tough all round at the moment and many of the smaller businesses, which are usually the ones that help out on a local basis, simply don't have the spare cash.
Becky

Sure, cash is tight but there are more ways of contributing rather than just throwing money around, as I know from being a supporter of Free and Open Source Software. The original article is about a big company being unwilling to provide one off support unless the non profit organisation paid them $100 which could obviously be spent on something that would directly benefit children.

I've refurbished an old PC and passed it on to a nursery myself before, fortunately with no issues. If I came across this kind of issue, I'd be SORELY tempted to destroy the offending company's product and post a video of it on Youtube! Obviously Ken Starks of the Helios project is at this point above that & hoping for a successful outcome...

Ah now you see the reason big companies are big and make lots of money is because they don't give to anyone other than themselves!
Becky

I can't see the link to the article, so can't really comment on that.

But my Dad own's his one man business and is struggling to cover bills. He is constantly getting calls from charities looking for him to donate money for various things. Clearly he cannot commit to them all.

As for big companies... You don't get rich by giving money away.

Yeah, it's not super clear where I put the link. Here's the original blog: http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2009/0...p-or-shut.html

As you can see, it's not about money but probably about 10 minutes of their time!

I own a small business (very small!), and get multiple calls a day from people asking for donations, and when I say i'm sorry, I can't, they slam the phone down on me!

I'm a student and have ZERO money right now. I get lots of calls at home from various charities asking for money and people coming to the door asking for donations.

I volunteer at a hospice in town and I think that giving my time to help others is better than just giving money. It would be better if more charities actively sought out volunteers to do things rather than just fundraising.

Makes you wonder where all the money actually goes?

We have volunteers at the hospice for all kinds of things: day care, reception staff, office staff, kitchen staff, inpatient unit, family support, groundskeepers, shop staff, drivers for guests, hospice at home, dog walkers, art room volunteers.

Out of all the charities I've had asking me for money, never once have any asked if I could spare some time to volunteer for them.

Yeah, exactly! If the right cause came along, I'd be more than willing to contribute something other than money but that'd possibly save them £...

As I touched on earlier, I don't contribute much in the way of cash to FOSS organisations, but I do what I can to promote the use of FOSS. After all, the bigger the user base, the more likely it is that there will be people who can/want to donate money. (To find out more about FOSS, have a browse around my web pages for starters. Link in my profile. )