Dragons Dinner vs Effective Giving

As you might know a few months ago we bid to have dinner with the dragons, Deborah Meaden, Theo Pathitis, Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones in aid of the Make a Wish Charity. I wasn’t there myself at the bidding since I was MC at the Robert Kiyosaki event so I did it over the telephone.

Yes, I was one of those telephone bidders you see at art auctions! There is a drawback to not being there – I thought I was bidding for separate dinners where we could really get to know them individually.

When we had won 3 of the dragons, we found out that it was an evening with all 4 dragons at the same time – bummer.

We had invited a few people, like Mark Homer from Progressive Property and some of his guests, Collie Callaghan who had won our trading competition, Avi our top forex trader, Nick Griffith and some friends and family.

It all started off swimmingly with Deborah entertaining our party with stories of the chickens she keeps, and then Theo arrived so we were set to go. It was going to be a great evening. The highlights of the evening were:

• One of our guests getting so drunk he fell of his chair
• Theo playing with his iPhone throughout the evening
• Exchanging heated words with the other host about who was going to have pictures taken with which dragon
• Peter Jones not turning up due to a last minute emergency. We later found out he was in the Caribbean

I did however have a great chat with Deborah who was fantastic – she knew everyone’s name off by heart and a little something about each of them. She took an interest and I have to say I was very impressed with her. A charming lady.

Giving what we can

Let me tell you why this was so interesting – at our graduate meeting we had an Oxford Don who explained that the best way to think of giving to charity was the number of years of quality of life we could give to the recipient of our charity. For example, while we could prolong someone’s life by a few years by giving to a charity like Aids or Cancer, if we gave to other charities our money would have 100 times the effectiveness and still others more than 1000 times more effective.

Apparently buying the cure for worm infections, which is a horrible parasitic condition which is as debilitating as HIV or cancer, but which can be cured for as little as 25 pence, whereas HIV or Aids might take £20,000 a year to combat.

So the upshot of all this is that our money can do so much more if we think about Effective Giving. I found the talk very thought provoking. We had pledged £6,000 for a dinner with the dragons for Make a Wish, which grants terminally ill children their ‘dying wish’. A noble cause.

Had we given this same amount to one of the Charities Toby Org recommended through his research, we would have prolonged the lives of 24,000 people. Thinking about it in those terms really made me think about what is the best use of my money. Toby gives 40% of his salary to these charities.

He encouraged us to give 10% a year, every year. This is something we encourage at our Wealth Workout programme. You can then join an exclusive club who over their lives will donate £27 million. And he is just starting. If you want to find out more go to www.givingwhatwecan.org. Fascinating.

Please do take a look at the site – your money can be used VERY effectively indeed.

Mudrika much better

Thank you to all well-wishers, Mudrika is now on the mend and mummy and children are doing well. It is a bit noisy in the de Maria household. You can hear 2 children crying and if you listen real hard, the sound of daddy with both his hands over his ears wondering what the hell is going on.