Does anyone else find this selfish and annoying?
For instance I was once approached in my local pub by a group of "firefighters" who were going to walk the Great Wall of China for charity. They wanted me to sponsor them, i.e., give them money. When I enquired further I found out that the sponsorship money would pay all their airfares, hotel fees etc and any money LEFT OVER would go to charity.
I think this pattern of behaviour is fairly common, i.e., people doing fairly selfish activities but tying it in with "charity work" in order to get finance. Why don’ they do something nearer home, for instance pick up all the needles in the public park "for charity" or something LESS selfish that would benefit the community?
I guess the basic answer is: because it works. A lot of people do give, especially if you can get children, cancer or heart disease in the title of your project.
There is a more serious point that often if you want to raise money on a big scale you have to come up with a big project that will attract publicity, that might attract corporate sponsors (who can get their own publicity from it) etc. Part of the event is often to raise awareness of the charity and its concerns.
If people approve of the cause but don’t want to pay for the holiday they can simply respond by saying that they’d give the money directly to the charity and cut out the irrelevant overhead. However the dismal truth is that more money tends to be raised even when you’ve taken off the expenses by sponsored events than by just asking people to give.
They expect the public to sponsor, because on the whole the public doesn’t question very much when you bandy about the phrase ’sick children’ .