Why you should avoid donating to @Pennyappeal; a thread:

This Ramadan, my friends and I fundraised for 6 orphans for the Pennyappeal- Orphankind sponsorship programme. Although the donation was made in the last 10 days of Ramadan, we did not receive any welcome packs (which acts as a form of evidence of where the money has gone to).

Every call I made, I was told "sorry sister, this is our busiest time please bear with us." I patiently waited, but after my 3rd attempt of contacting them over the course of 2 months, something didn't sit right with me.

The final employee I spoke to was honest, unlike the others who left me on the dark side. I was told that my donation has gone through as 'where most needed', rather than to the ACTUAL sponsorship.

If anyone is wondering, 'where most needed' usually goes to emergency reliefs or towards the marketing campaigns for the charity.

Although this is ultimately still charity, the sponsorship is where we PERSONALLY chose to donate; the charity does not decide this for us.

Overall, I had to make a few calls to get this changed to the way I wanted it and I was guaranteed that I would now receive my welcome pack. But what if I never contacted them about this? What if I had not been informed at the end about where my money was actually going?

Companies like Pennyappeal are hard to call out due to their sly nature which makes it hard as it is not explicitly a 'fraud' or 'scam'.

There are other issues that the company has faced accusations of, such as not donating 100% of the donations to the cause, as well as the recent accusations it faced in Gambia.

Although I will not completely withdraw the donations I've made to this charity on this occasion, I highly recommend that you thoroughly check the charity you donate to, there's plenty of others!

DO NOT just take the word of influencers on where to donate; majority of the time they will put their promotional payments over honesty and truth.

It's sad that issues like this exist when you're just trying to make a simple donation, but remember that what matters the most is the purity of your intentions