its financing people who take advantage of human generosity.
give £1 to the average charity and less than 25p makes to the 'cause'.
i once had a job which involved collecting charity donations, it was door to door cold calling. the british heart foundation were our main sponsor. you were trained to use guilt trip tactics on pensioners to get them to pay, and even worse things i'd rather not mention. it was all about targeting the weak and vulnerable to "milk them dry" as my trainer used to say.
i calculated how much money would actually go to the charity, it was less than a quarter of what i collected. we made excellent money in that job. you then have to remove the charity's own admin costs and the actual sum going to the cause is even less that 25%.
charity is a con.