Which absolutely should not be needed at all. If the NHS relies on charity to fund ancillary services then that is as comprehensive a failing of state support for healthcare as you could ever see.

It’s probably more nuanced than that. Providing safety equipment for emergency response vehicles absolutely should be an element of healthcare funding and not the responsibility of charity, but building community gardens (while obviously something lg should do) is something that isn’t as problematic to be funded by voluntary contributions. Elements like supplementary career guidance for staff too. There’s a core service funded directly by the NHS, and additional support from NHSCT.

It’s not just NHSCT, I’d wager most charity donors have a hard time articulating what the organisations they give to actually spend money on. Pretty normal, just scary when Wes Streeting might become health secretary and start selling off services.

I literally gave the ice bucket challenge as an example.

It isn’t an example though, because the organisation spent their money in an effective and impactful way.

And it's a massive assumption that those trustees have the skills and experience to handle suddenly running a multi-million pound organisation overnight. Most of them will be volunteers who attend a handful of meetings a year and suddenly their organisation has to become a full time operation.

But they don’t need to handle a multi-million pound organisation overnight because the framework of the charity system in the UK removes certain decisions from their remit that they would have to make were they running a for profit company. It is literally easier to handle unexpected income as a charity.

I never said that the money donated didn't do some good. My point is that it could have done far more good if it had been received over a longer period of manageable and sustainable growth instead of a sudden influx of revenue followed by a sharp decline.

Obviously sustainable growth is the most desirable, but we aren’t talking about a scenario where there was a choice, are we? They couldn’t refuse the money, and while it might have been a pain in the hole for the finance team to handle, it ultimately was a net positive for the organisation.

You also could not have found a more biased report that one from the actual ALS Association who were the main recipients of the donations. They are not exactly going to publish a report admitting how much of the money didn't go where it was intended.

Why don’t you post the published reports stating how much of the money didn’t go where intended then?

In the UK having a surplus of donations usually means dealing with the charity commission and can often cause huge PR headaches for charities.

I can think of RNLI getting a bit of grief 20 years ago, but can you point to others who’ve had issues because of a surplus of donations?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-fundraising-appeals-for-specific-purposes/charity-fundraising-appeals-using-donations-when-youve-raised-more-than-you-need

This is about restricted income.

https://actionplanning.co.uk/insights/when-the-problem-is-having-too-much-money

This is sensible advice to spend more and invest in long term gain.

https://ciof.org.uk/IoF/media/IOF/Policy/iof-acceptance-refusal-and-return-a-practical-guide-to-dealing-with-donations-(5).pdf?ext=.pdf

Did you read this one before posting? It’s guidance for returning gifts based on repetitional risk, or under performance of restricted appeals. It has nothing to do with having too much money from a viral campaign.