Charity Navigator [charitynavigator.org]

I read recently that the American Red Cross is one of several charities that "carefully walk the line" of being a nonprofit organization, and that 49% of their take goes to "administrative costs". (their "administrative staff" are very well-paid) Can anyone confirm or deny this?

What I like about the Salvation Army is they operate under the principle that people will always donate and they spend the money as it is donated.

The Red Cross and others seem to want to build a war chest so that when a big disaster hits they will be prepared. They take money from big events and hold some of it over for other operations. What bothers me about this is it seems like they don't trust people to donate when something happens.

Confirm. My uncle retired from the ARC with a *very* good pension. I'd never give a dime to ARC.

More like 3.9% [charitynavigator.org].

If you're just wanting to make a difference to someone, and not the tax write-off, find a family struggling to make ends meet and be their holiday benefactor, or give out sack lunches to the homeless, or volunteer at a soup kitchen. No better way to make sure your kindness does the most good than to do it yourself.

If only they did not have an anti-gay agenda, I would concur.

Surely you are trolling: http://www.google.org/ [google.org]

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

All donations go to children's hospitals around the world. You can even donate toys instead of money if you don't trust how your donation will be spent.

One of the best places to bring your money to if you want to help people: http://www.kiva.org/.

Microfinance where you can decide yourself which enterpreneur you loan money to. I can heartily recommend it :).

Living in the US, I think it's a gross injustice that people in my immediate area don't have enough food to eat. As such, I have decided most of my charity contributions will go to the local community food bank. It's super easy to see how the money is being used (volunteer and meet the people involved, go down and talk to the admins), it improves the lives of people who live near you, and you get a tax deduction.

National and international organizations are nice, especially for medical causes, but for me local food bank seemed best.

It should be obvious to someone who posts here. Think about it.

During WWII, ARC would give away free coffee and doughnuts to officers, and that was well-publicized. What wasn't publicized was the fact that ARC would charge enlisted men a dime for the same thing. When my father learned of this (he was an officer), he demanded that his men be given the same deal. When ARC refused, he gave them their doughnuts and coffee back, and spread the story among the other officers.

I can confirm this, even on the "local" level charities. I have worked with several "charity" groups doing IT work (NO - I won't name them). Several times it was recovering their financial data files after being corrupted for various reasons. Every time, I about shit myself when I looked at the actual data (had to confirm the data was valid with accountants). The worst I saw was one group that used 5% of their donations for actual recipients, the rest went to "administrative" costs (salaries in the 6 figure range, pension, rent, etc.).

I've since quit taking any work from charity organizations, and I refuse to donate any money to them.

The Salvation Army is not anti-gay. Sure, they are not pro-gay, but that doesn't make the anti-gay.

It charged because the Army told it to. C'mon, a 5-digit Slashdotter should know about Snopes [snopes.com].

Unfortunately, the Salvation Army has a documented history of refusing to provide shelter to gay couples and families unless the couple first separates. They once threatened to close all their NYC soup kitchens over the city requiring charities to adhere to all their civil rights laws.

Pretty much as efficient as you can get: 100% of the proceeds go to help those in need. The LDS Church doesn't even deduct the cost of administering the donations, so literally *everything* you donate ends up helping the needy.

http://www.ldsphilanthropies.org/ldsp/about/ [ldsphilanthropies.org]

If you donate online, just enter the amount in the "humanitarian services" field - that goes to disaster relief and other efforts. If you call them you can have it applied more specifically. For example there is a program they are doing to supply wheelchairs to those in need, to help dig water wells to villages in Africa, etc. and you can ask that your money go specifically to one of those programs if you want.

What would that even have to do with the issue at hand? I was just purely stating facts - when you search on Bing you get rewards which you can then use for charity. Fanboyism needs an opinion, that is just an easily verifiable fact.

It's fundamentally no different than doing it to Jews or black people, there's no genetic sequence to identify those people either.

I don't know about Jews, because that's sort of a complex label. But you can absolutely tell ancestry from a genetic sample. "African descent" (what most people in the U.S. would call "black") is easy to discern from a DNA sample.

Law enforcement agencies have been slower to adopt using this capability because it's considered a political landmine to say (for example) that they know that a murdering rapist is black with only DNA evidence to go by. But it can be done, and it has been done. Here's an example:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-16-dna_x.htm [usatoday.com]

You can get eye color, hair color, and other traits too. The science is getting better.

That said:

Just because you disagree with something, doesn't make it the same as something else that you disagree with.

Eugenics is selecting based on inherited traits. You can object to both practices without them being the same thing. This organization is doing something that you may object to. But it's distinct from eugenics. That doesn't make it right (or wrong), just different.

An interesting primer on the subject:
http://www.radiolab.org/2008/dec/15/race-doesnt-exist-or-does-it/ [radiolab.org]

I know podcasts can be a PITA because it's slower than reading, but it's worth a listen if you're at all interested in the subject.

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2011/12/the-salvation-army-ringing-anti-gay-bells-this-holiday-season/

They won't provide services to gay & lesbian families, and have tried to force gay & lesbian couples to break up before helping them. That's pretty anti-gay.