Sponsored Walking

[quelquod]

A pet hate of mine, I was accosted at the golf club this morning by someone wanting me to sign up to sponsor him at so much per mile for a charity walk he was planning. Really? Pay someone to go for a walk? I have to pay the club for _my_ walks!

I offered to pay him to wash my car or cut my lawn instead but he declined. Why don't people do something useful for their sponsorship or even just do nothing and ask for money? Bring back 'bob a job'.

[Lootman]

Totally agree. This has become an epidemic. And I hate the "but it's for charity" refrain when you refuse.

There is only one sane and sensible strategy to adopt. NEVER sponsor anyone for anything. Rather, pick your good causes, contribute to them freely, and screw the self-absorbed crowd who want to be "sponsored" for doing what they wanted to do anyway.

[didds]

There's another side to all of this, but coming from the same premise.

For a few years I ran and did triathlon, then after a hip replacement did endurance/long distance swimming. It wasn't uncommon for people, when they heard I was doing an event/race etc to ask "Oh, what charity are you doing it for". They were totally amazed when told that the vast majority of entrants in the vast majority of events/races did it because they enjoyed it, not for some charitable affair.

The latest example of the original post is the facebook birthday pledge thing? Somebody whose birthday it is can choose to have FB plaster their FB wall with an invite to their friends to donate to a charitable cause. Now - allegedly FB make/take nothing from it. But its the same thing really... _I_ am perfectly capable of identifying what charitable causes I identify with and with to donate to (whether that be money, goods, services or time etc)

didds

[bungeejumper]

The latest example of the original post is the facebook birthday pledge thing? Somebody whose birthday it is can choose to have FB plaster their FB wall with an invite to their friends to donate to a charitable cause.

I tend to part company with the idea when I'm asked to sponsor Justin's 15 mile school hike in the Peruvian Andes, which will be preceded by two weeks in Barbados. Or maybe Arabella's five miles along the Great Wall of China. It's a bit scary how far this sponsorship idea has travelled since my schooldays, when we would walk 25 miles around the Birmingham Ring Road in aid of something a bit more obviously deserving than Henry's gap year.

BJ

[UncleIan]

Bring back 'bob a job'.

Please don't.

As a scout I was at the tail end of bob-a-job, or rather "Scout Job Week" as it'd been renamed (not rebranded, it was the 80s, rebranding hadn't been invented). Me and a mate spent an hour or so cleaning a curmudgeonly old woman's car. When we were given one bucket of cold water, and no hose, on the grounds that "I'm not heating water just for you to throw it over my car", the warning bells should have rung, when we wanted another bucket to rinse the soap of, she was taken aback by our profligate extravagance. When we were done she wanted to pay us 5p each "well that's a bob isn't it?", we haggled her up to 10p each. Both parties parted thinking they'd been robbed.

Nope, not sorry when that was consigned to history.

[bungeejumper]

Me and a mate spent an hour or so cleaning a curmudgeonly old woman's car. When we were given one bucket of cold water, and no hose, on the grounds that "I'm not heating water just for you to throw it over my car", the warning bells should have rung, when we wanted another bucket to rinse the soap of, she was taken aback by our profligate extravagance. When we were done she wanted to pay us 5p each "well that's a bob isn't it?", we haggled her up to 10p each. Both parties parted thinking they'd been robbed.

Oh god, yes. Our school arranged that we'd do a freebie job for a deserving old lady who lived near us, but who we didn't actually know. So we turned up on the day, and there was her son standing beside her with a brand new Bentley and a bucket of water, and would we wash it for him? We were too confused by the situation to tell him where to stick his sponge. We washed it. Oh, what I'd have given for a pan scourer.

BJ