Still feel like giving to charity...?

[2011G6E]

Shocking news story out today...
http://www.news.com.au/money/the-tri...-1226288397035

CHARITIES are pressuring vulnerable, elderly and dying Australians with highly emotive tactics, psychological profiling and death-bed visits from lawyers to bequeath their estates.
"Greedy" families must be frozen out of wills, Australia's major charitable organisations were told last week at a confidential convention.
Hundreds of representatives from almost every prominent Australian charity - including Amnesty International, World Vision, Mission Australia, the Heart Foundation, Guide Dogs, Ronald McDonald House and ChildFund - spent up to $3000 per delegate to attend.
The convention included "masterclasses" on extracting money from frail, ill and wealthy benefactors.
Read the conference programme here

A journalist from The Sunday Telegraph registered as a delegate at the four-day event on Queensland's Gold Coast - hosted by the Fundraising Institute of Australia (FIA) - which focused on "death-activated" bequests and legacy giving.
Last month, the paper revealed that offensive training practices were being taught by one charity fundraising company. And today's investigation reveals:
Charities are transporting the elderly to see lawyers and paying fees for drafting wills;
At least one hospital passed confidential patient records to fundraisers;
Charities contact donors on birthdays and at Christmas to make them feel "special";
Volunteers assisting charities are being targeted to leave a bequest in their will;
Australian billionaires are on a hit-list drawn up for charities who want a chunk of their estates;
Charities build relationships with lawyers - known as "influencers" - who encourage charity bequests;
Conference delegates roared with laughter when it was jokingly suggested "pre-death parties" could be held to sell people into leaving a bequest and a "one-on-one (meeting) with a gun" might be useful;

...cont'd...

The shocking part is the list of large, world wide, and supposedly reputable and trustworthy charities that attended, and presumably had a good old chuckle.

Charity begins at home...and for a lot of people it will now stay at home. To hell with passing money over to parasites and vultures who treat the vulnerable like this...
At the very minimum, i'd be asking any charity asking for dough if their reps attended this conference...

The part that sickens me the most was the "expert" they brought in from England to give advice on how to efficiently squeeze the elderly and dying and what he said...

The Sunday Telegraph sat in on the conference's "bequest masterclass", which cost an extra $595 on top of the $2430 registration fee, taught by renowned UK bequest expert Richard Radcliffe.
Mr Radcliffe's six-hour seminar was littered with tongue-in-cheek lines about how charities could benefit from death.
After the forum Mr Radcliffe said he had tried to inject some "light-hearted humour" and "would not have made any of the remarks I did - or hold the class - if I had known a journalist was in the room".

Heaven forbid the gullible public should find out how you blood suckers behave behind closed doors when discussing how to increase your profits...

and this:

He said there was a need "to take the misery out of asking for money".
Mr Radcliffe said in Australia "there is one death every three minutes and 42 seconds, that's what we're about really".
Mr Radcliffe prompted laughter by saying the falling death rate, the lowest in 80 years, was "really depressing" for charities.

Hear that Radcliffe...? That's the sound of hundreds of thousands of people snapping their purses and wallets shut...