[avatar]
Reason I ask, it is becoming more and more common for people to raise money directly for educational events or for new equipment for hospitals, donations would normally be associated with charities and research but these days we chose to step in and help out others.
You are ultimately backing a good cause of course and I have no problem with that whatsoever.
A few years back I decided to donate a small amount of money a month to some charities, I try to spread that amount of money across a few charities and change them from time to time so everyone gets a small donation. I'm no saint and I am not trying to make myself feel better, it's just a good thing to do, in my opinion. These charities do great work for many different reasons, funded by most of us and a little help from elsewhere.
The problem is when I was asked to donate to raise some money towards new hospital equipment it occurred to me that this isn't a charity, this is a hospital which I'm already funding through my taxes, or am I? Of course I didn't object and donated to this very good cause and pleased to say my friends and their children raised just over £1000!
If we the population, the “Crowd” are stepping in and helping out with the local services, are we letting the Government off the hook? We hope we have helped additionally to what the Government were going to give and not instead of.
But should we feel the need to step in, because the help is to slow to come? Are we just helping out? How many of us will additionally “Crowdfund” the system?