Quote:
Originally Posted by pig4bill
Look up a big name charities' statement sometime. It's staggering how much they spend on advertising and solicitations.
I figure pig4bill has me blocked at this point so this reply is mostly so this sort of stupidity doesn't spread.
1. Of course a lot of charities spend a lot on overhead. Some charities are outright scams, spending 100% of their money on CEO salaries.
2. But just as bad companies don't make you decide to stop investing, neither should the existence of bad charities stop you from donating. There are sites dedicated to screening charities, and not surprisingly, just like investing, a cursory amount of research goes a long way.
3. There's nothing that stops you from locating local charities that don't spend money advertising. But because they don't ... drum roll ... they're hard to find.
4. A large overhead doesn't necessarily mean a charity is bad. Let's say you run a charity taking donated food and delivering it to a war zone. What percentage of your monetary budget do you think would constitute overhead - collecting donated food, packing it into an airplane, negotiating permission, etc?
5. Instead, look at what a charity does and first ask whether it's something worth doing. Then counterscreen by asking whether anyone else is doing it. Does SOMEONE need to solicit, collect, screen, and deliver blood? Yes. Aside from the Red Cross, is anyone else doing it? No. So you should donate until your blood donation charity (you know, the one you're going to start and run and not spend a cent on yourself on) is up and running.
6. As a side note, I am not a huge fan of supporting charities that fund curing diseases. There's a lot of money floating around. If you don't think Alzheimer's research is going fast enough, the shortage is in ideas. All the good ones get funded from the corporate world.
7. Out of ideas?
- find a local battered women's shelter, they don't advertise
- Red Cross or Medicins Sans Frontieres
- children's cancer
If you don't have a lot of money, here are two where you can make a little money go a long way.
- make a brown bag lunch before you go into the city. Find an amputee and give it to him when he asks for money.
- knit or sew hats and blankets for the NICU in a local hospital