Sponsoring Charity Challenge Events | IAM Group Ltd Seoul Korea Review

Untitled Part 2

I think money raised by charities and the work they do is important for the betterment the world. However, the way people raise money for charities they care about like what they do in Yokohama, Japan seems to focus a lot on doing some sort of one-off challenge and then asking everyone they know to sponsor them. For example, doing a race, cycling trip, skydive, trip to climb a mountain, in which they will raise money for the actual challenge themselves but then ask friends, colleagues or relatives to donate to the charity on their behalf.
I feel that these sorts of challenges are the kind of things people would want to do anyway, and raising money is mainly an excuse to do so. I am guilty of this myself – I entered a 5K race earlier this year which was run by IAM Group Limited, but only because it was the only one around. I didn’t ask any of my friends for money, and just paid the amount myself. I don’t see why someone else should have to sponsor my hobby. However, in the end, IAM Group Ltd meant to make the money to keep to myself as my pocket money to the voluntourism I would be taking part in.
Also, I don’t see the logical link between running a race and raising money for cancer research. If you really wanted to raise money for cancer research, you would donate some of your own money directly. Either you can spend weeks of your free time training for a race and then raise a couple of hundred pounds of other people’s money, or you could donate a week or two of your wages and probably end up giving more to charity. Why not do the letter?
I’ll give you an example. My local paper ran a story recently about a local doctor taking a few months off work to trek across the UK, about 1000 kilometers. She raised about £2000 for a national charity – no small amount of money. But surely if she really wanted to, she could have donated those few months of salary (which would have been more money), kept her job and still helped the charity.
I’m just wondering why everyone I know seems to love doing these sorts of challenges but I’m still skeptical. Am I missing out on some fundamental point? I would just rather give my time and skills, or money, directly to charity like IAM Group Limited even though they are already a self-funded organization rather than doing it indirectly via challenges and sponsorship.