Beckhams Donate Their Money! (Well, Okay, Maybe Not)

By: Laurie | March 11th, 2007

As always, the headline says it all: Beckhams’ £600k to charities

Wow! £600k!! How incredibly generous! Right?

Uh…not so fast. Let’s read the article, shall we?

DAVID and Victoria Beckham have given £600,000 to kids’ charities in four years, latest accounts show. Figures for the 12 months ending April 2006 show they donated £140,000 that year.

Oh! £600,000 in FOUR years. Okay. Still, that’s…well…generous isn’t exactly the word for people who make as much as the Beckhams, but money going to children’s charites is always a good thing.

Except that when you check sources, you find that most of the money didn’t seem to come from David and Posh at all. It was money they “raised” (which to me says: strong-armed others into donating) at gala events they held for “The Victoria and David Beckham Children’s Charity.”

So let’s see… You hold a fancy party, giving you an excuse to spend megabucks on clothing and accessories. You make sure the press and paparazzi know about it so they can give you lots of photos and publicity. You make everybody who attends donate money. And then YOU get all the credit!

As Posh says, “Both David and I love children and we love to help.”

Uh…yeah. Help who, exactly, Posh?

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Diane

oops, typo: I meant "The can't very well auction off a car, put the money in their checking account and send donations off from there..."
Diane

OK, everybody BREATH...although I always think everyone should give away more of their money, the Beckham Family Fund or Trust, which these articles refer to, is not for the Beckham's personal giving. It is for raising tax-deductible money to be given to various charities. They can't very well auction off a car, put the money in from there...imagine the press we would be reading then.
Don't know how much they give to charity on their own, but people say they do, and he did get an OBE from The Queen for charity work, so who knows...
And yes, I remember this much trivia about any number of Premiership and European players--it just sticks. By the way, Kuyt newly of Liverpool is the sweetest charity giver of all...if you like reading that kind of thing.
Robert

Hey, as bad as the currency exchange is, that 600K pounds is like a billion dollars, so nothing to sneeze at. ;)
Howard

Laurie, I enjoy reading your blog and agree with you on a lot of topics, especially your remakes regarding how impossible it is to get information from the Galaxy. However, I totally disagree with you on this issue. I think it’s too cynical of you to say that the Beckhams are raising money for children via their charity in order to gain attention for themselves. If I want to read comments like this I would pick up any of the multitude of trashy magazines that cater to this type of journalism. I know it’s hard to come up with articles to write about when the Galaxy only gives you scraps of information, but Laurie you're better than this. Keep the great soccer info coming and leave the smack talking to all those other Beckham haters.