Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity? 570
New submitter yanom writes "I'm thinking about making a holiday donation to a charity, but I'm not sure where to give it. I've looked at organizations such as the Red Cross and Village Reach that promote disaster relief and health in the developing world. I want my money to have the biggest possible impact, so where should I send it?"
Shelterbox is a decent one... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.shelterboxusa.org/ [shelterboxusa.org]
Basically, after any kind of disaster, natural or otherwise, they deploy a team out with plastic tubs filled with just about anything a family would need to start getting back on their feet like a tent, some basic food and water purification type things, along with some tools to improve what they have available. They are also constantly tweaking the box as better items become available, or in some instances they tailor the contents to where the boxes are being sent.
Decent charity that I found out from a friend. I've started to donate to them yearly now, along with some other charities for more personal reasons.
Re:Charity Navigator (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:American Red Cross - worst? (Score:4, Interesting)
+4 insightful?
It must be the Christmas eggnog.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3277 [charitynavigator.org]
*shakes head sadly*
An alternative (Score:5, Interesting)
If I may suggest an alternative, give micro loans through kiva.org instead. You can just keep recycling the money into new loans as you get paid back. The good gets multiplied many times over and communities get built up.
Re:Your time is not valuable - your money is (Score:4, Interesting)
helping people on how to work with a computer might like learning them to fish.
Except computers are significantly less nutritious. The basic necessities for quality of life (food, medicine, clothes, shelter) are still much more about money than time.
Using your time to teach (or volunteer in so many other ways) is admirable, but you do also have to look at the opportunity cost. For someone who makes $100+ an hour (or equivalent) working a demanding job and then donating to a charity might be more effective overall than volunteering their time.
Anyway, you make a good point, not disputing it (the OP saying "your time is not valuable" is just incorrect) - but in many cases you time *is* less valuable than your money...
Re:Your time is not valuable - your money is (Score:4, Interesting)
If I give $10 they will spend that same money trying to solicit me for more. It's impossible to get them to stop. They can't spend my time.
Re:Salvation Army (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, its the whole anti-gay agenda that bothers rational people about the SA as well as they're close relations to their own evangelical arm and partners.
I give to secular charities, thank you very much.
Re:Your time is not valuable - your money is (Score:4, Interesting)
They largely do it because it works, unfortunately.
If you send then a note saying something like "take me off your list" or "do not send me anything more than one solicitation per year" it seems likely they would comply. Certainly the small local charities I have been involved in would be happy to not waste their fundraising resources on people unlikely to donate.
I just recently heard on Freakonomics that an effective tool in fund raising was to include a checkbox on your money request saying "don't contact me again" - it addresses the issue that dargaud has encountered and supposedly also makes the donor feel more in control, more likely to donate, and actually few people actually check the box.
Rant: The Horror of Administrative Costs (Score:4, Interesting)
I've spent the better part of my career as a nonprofit tech warrior, from serving in the Peace Corps to a variety of domestic and internationally focused NGOs and non-profits, small and large, contract, full-time and pro-bono.
I hate the constant drive that non-profits feel towards minimizing anything that could be counted as "overhead." It's misleading, and eventually kills efficiency. Not having someone to answer phones, not having a budget to roll out a website, penny-pinching on every single thing that's not directly program-related does a variety of things. It burns staff out at an alarming rate, as they spend their often-unreported and uncompensated overtime to balance the lack of budget to hire additional staff or contractors. Second, it causes cost-cutting in ways that often lead to waste or additional in the long run. It suppresses wages and pushes good staff out of the sector entirely. Finally, it causes a donor-driven view of accounting, where every dollar must be accountable to some chunk of some program, instead of being broadly useful to the health of the organization and its mission.
This hurts the organizations, obviously - but as a donor, that's less important - you (like those working at the organization) care about the cause. And year-end campaigns are a huge benefit to organizations - providing them with unrestricted funds that they can use for the health of the organization, instead of funds driven by grant projects.
So give - as others have noted, find a local cause you're familiar with. Use CharityNavigator to weed out suspicious/dubious causes, but please - do not be turned off by high overheads. They're healthy. They mean the organization has a longer-term view on its role in making change.
Even better - find a social enterprise - an organization that has a double or triple bottom line, creating a profit or self-sustaining funding situation by selling products or services which also help them lift up a community through employment, skills training, and so on.
Engineers without borders (Score:4, Interesting)
Engineers without borders might be interesting:
http://www.ewb-usa.org/ [ewb-usa.org]
I like the fact that they have established a way of dealing with their charity faliures [admittingfailure.com], which makes them a respectable charity in my book. ... And adds some credibility to the profession of engineering, imho.
My 2 cents.
Re:Charity Navigator (Score:4, Interesting)
You obviously don't understand the very conservative (not the B$ pretend conservative but actually ruthless exploiters) basis for effective social welfare nets.
First up they help to stabilise the economy ie downturns reduce demand, producing more unemployment further reducing demand, social welfare puts a direct brake on this cycle.
Next social welfare substantially reduces crime, don't accept this easy just look at the crime rate difference between countries with effective social welfare nets and those without, in fact look no further than North America ie. Canada, US, Mexico.
Of course an effective social welfare net also has a direct outcome on health, basically because it reduces stresses within that society, fears about being able to pay for health care, fears about unemployment, fears for the future of the next generation.
As for requiring a licence to be a parent, sounds like a fine idea and in fact should be part of the compact for a more complete social welfare net. You could even go the harsh route, chemically neuter everyone at birth and then make them earn their fertility.
Re:Your time is not valuable - your money is (Score:4, Interesting)
Before I go any further, I would like to admit right now that there are bad charities out there. One leaps to mind that we saw move in here about 2 years ago. It purported to be "thinking about the children", yet near as I can tell, the only charitable thing it ever did was spend about 5k to throw a christmas party for the kids (admittedly, they did that twice, bringing us to a total charitable contribution of 10k). Meanwhile, the head of this charity lived in a 750k USD house and drove a 90k USD car. Scams happen, I won't say that they don't.
Next, a bit of background: I'm a paramedic, I have lived and worked for various NPOs in Honduras for the past three years. I tend to tell people that I volunteer down here, and while in the strictest sense, that's not true, in effect, it is. I make about 1/5 of what I could earn if I were working in the states (and if you know anything about EMS payscales, that's saying something.).
So let's examine your four objections:
1) Staff Salaries: As I said above, I make about 20% of what I could reasonably expect to make if I were working in the states. Theoretically, then, I should be able to work up there 20% of the time, then volunteer down here the other 80% of the time. Realistically, though, even supposing that I could find an employer willing to do that (Highly unlikely, in my field, though not, perhaps, impossible),, there's a big difference around here between the trust you get from the community from being someone who lives here full time and someone who comes in to spend some time volunteering, and no matter how skewed the numbers as far as how much time you spend where, you'll always be seen in that light. Around here, I'm known by those I work with as "El gringo grande" (I'm 6'8), but that's a term of endearment, rather than the more common "El gringo" that I see applied to many people who come here repeatedly. with the best of intentions.
2) Travel: I've actually never been offered travel reimbursements, though I've had to turn down a couple of offers because I couldn't afford the travel costs. Now it's entirely possible that those charities found someone else to fill the role who could afford them, and could do it as well or better than I could, but frankly, and without a hint of egotism (no, really!), I'm very good at what I do, not only the actual meat and bones of responding to emergencies, but also in integrating myself into a community and educating without being patronizing. That last is a surprisingly hard task, I've met very few who can do it, and none who are better at it than me in my particular bailiwick...though I will say I've met two who are better at doing it in medicine in general.
3) Perks: Again, I've never been offered any perks (aside form the medivac service I worked with offering my free coverage should I need their services), however unlike the above, it's never prevented me from taking a position, but then I'm healthy, young (28), and single. There are, I imagine, plenty of other people who couldn't take such a position without some assurance of health coverage, some sort of retirement or education for their kids.
4) Finally, and in some ways the biggest point: "fees". First off, let's call a spade a spade, they're bribes. Having said that, though, bribes are important to actually getting shit done in most of the world. I've paid bribes, and I'll almost certainly pay more, but that's just the cost of doing business. Corruption has to be viewed with a certain amount of pragmatism. You're kidding yourself if you think that it doesn't exist in whatever (presumably, though I could be wrong) developed nation you live in, it's just that around here it's right up front where you can keep an eye on it. And really, it's cheaper and easier, too. If I want to do something around here, I slip a couple hundred bucks to someone in the health ministry, and away