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Authenticity of International Help Organizations?
UlfJack wonders: "I've been thinking about donating money, especially to organizations like Plan USA, who are doing what they can to help people in Third World countries. However I found it very difficult to check the authenticity of these organizations, so I'm trying to cross-check multiple independent sources. Has anyone figured out an easy way to do this?"
Is anyone else having problems with the front page? I had to go to 'old stories' just to see this article...
I only donate to whom the BBC recommend.
PHP
Of course giving money can make a difference.
But there are other ways to help (specially if you are an american citzen).
One great way is to make sure you vote / pressure you legislators / presidents towards broader / better foreing policy. For example, Brazil has held long disputes with the wto for the usa to stop anti competitive measures, such as heavy agricultural subsidies. There is much talk about open economies, but many developed countries put a lot of barries for third world countries to make a fair competition.
Go to av.com, google.com, amazon.com and look for the organisation that they recommend.
Basically, trust comes not through computing, but through inplied trust.
You trust google to know which companies to link to.
Of course, a centralised website should exist that gives an easy API for charities to take donations, give feedback, be accountable and of course, this should be government run, and be worldwide, and have the IRS (the only people you can really trust when it comes ot money, and by IRS I mean the inland revenue of your country) poking at it with a big stick.
that is my opinion. for now, look at av.com and donate to thier link button.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
living in germany, i always check back websites of popular newsservices or tv-stations to see if they are listed (e.g. at the horrible tsunami disaster)
A donation has been made in your name to The Human Fund.
/ "The Human Fund. Money for people."
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
In the Netherlands we have the CBF certificate program_ doelen/m et_cbf-keur.php
http://www.cbf.nl/ (in dutch)
http://www.cbf.nl/pages/cbf-erkende_goede
gives a list in Dutch of certified organisations.
One of their criteria is that overhead costs for advertizing, organisation, etcetera should be less that 25% of the average last 3 years collected funds. I think this limit is a little high, but it gives a valid criterium.
A lot of USA based organisations fail this test. Certified organisations are Amnesty Internantional, Greenpeace, Medecins sans Frontieres (Artsen zonder grenzen), OXFAM (NOVIB), UNICEF, WarChild, WWF (WNF), Red Cross.
Furthermore you could look at how and who forms the board of directors, income of the director, publicly available financial information. Stuff that can give you cues about accountability.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
You know, as an American I am sick to death of all these charities that help people in third world countries. Sure, I understand that they need the help, but god damnit, there are people in the good 'ol US of A that need help equally as much, sure they might not be as bad off as those in these third world countries, but goddamn, whatever happened to making sure your own people are doing fine before helping out someone living god-knows-where?? I hate all those late night commercials. Help the kids in CountryX, little Abigiabauia lives on these dirty streets...Oh yeah, well Little Abigail that lives in [insert slum area of big US city here] has a mom that is a crack whore and lives in a roach infested barely habitable by anyones standards apartment in a neighborhood in which crime is rampant and they have to have 8 different locks on the doors just to feel marginally safe. Some of you will mark this troll, or flamebait, but kiss my ass. Donate to a charity that helps out your fellow Americans (or insert your own country here). Make a difference in a life that is in your own country. Only after we have eliminated poverty in THIS country, should we be helping OTHER countries. Ya, I am an asshole, I say fuck Tsunami relief funds, let's make a goddamned American relief fund and help our own goddamn people!!!
On their web site, if they thank L. Ron Hubbard for something, then they are not a charity! (Although they can apparently fix shattered arms in 45 minutes and raise the dead, their help is usually handing out other people's supplies, Scientology leaflets, "pull my finger" healing, and getting in the way.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
is how much of the money you give actually gets to the intended cause, my guess for a standard high profile charity (oxfam et al) would be somewhere between 40% - 60% (although this may be well off). As for those people who just walk upto you in the street for some random charity i've never heard of, i'd never give to those.
Really I think charities should be made to publish this information, it surely could be a charity and pay its President most of the contributions, providing the "charity" didn't make money
Plan USA got 2 out of 4 stars from CharityNavigator.org http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/sear ch.summary/orgid/4337.htm
A charity must be registered somewhere. The registrar should have a website with a list of real registered charities. That should be checked.
A search on the net is also useful to pull out any press records, both good and bad about them. Banks do this too, to ascertain whether the charity is genuine or not.
See my journal, I write things there
If you're specifically interested in donating to help tsunami victims, former Presidents Bush I and Clinton have been appearing in a commercial soliciting donations for that cause. They cite a web site that lists legitimate charities that are helping with this disaster. Check it out.
No sig? Sigh...
There are stories like this and some reports from India that say that some religious organisations are trying to do conversions as part of the tsunami relief.
World Vision is a pretty good company. I do work with them professionally, and they're a straight up organization.
The opposite of progress is congress
I'm currently working for Geekcorps Mali. So I can say they're authentic :) You could donate to Geekcorps (sorry for the asp link, here in Mali proprietary software users are put away in the basement, and we're even developing a free software distro, Kunnafonix...).
I'm also setting up a side project: getting more resources in Mali's most spoken language, Bambara. So I came up with the idea to kick start the Bambara Wikipedia, with the help of gadgets you geeks forgot about long time ago (one month ago when you bought your new iPod..)
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bambara_Wikipedia_L aunch_Competition (hopefully online right now :)
I saw this site http://www.charitywatch.org/ on ABC news. They review the tax returns of charities and rank them by how efficiently they are run.
It took a real world war to end the airplane's patent wars. - Fâché Rouge -
then they should be registered with the Charity Commission, whose register of charities is searchable.
I donate through ADRA and AsianAid, since I know from being told by people who've been there, helped out and looked around that not only is 100% of your money is spent on the front lines (the cost of running these organisations is drawn from money donated by others specifically for the purpose) but the methods they use to help people lean heavily towards (re)establishing self-supporting independence.
It's not a dependency-forming handout they bring, it's a future.
If you know of others sticking to similar methods, please list them in reply.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You can specify that what you donate goes to locals, and it will - still with zero effective overheads since the organisation itself is paid for by people donating for the purpose. In Australia, the local-charity arm of the organisation is called ADCare, it may be different in the USA.
I just let them spend it where it's needed most. I think they're better judges of that than I am.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Try "less-developed countries" -- many ppl think "third-world" is just plain offensive (myself included).
^^
If you're a church-goer, check with your church to see if they support a relief organizations. I donate to United Methodist Committee On Relief, which sends services and supplies to areas stricken by natural and man-mande disasters. Their web-site, http://www.umcor.org , contains instructions for donating. If you're not comfortable sending money, send supplies. If you can't send supplies, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities, often through local churches putting together flood-buckets, health kits, and child-care supplies.
The Catholic Church and Anglican Church have similar organizations that operate under their auspices.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
It would have been far better to have simply said:
Charity begins at home.
or complaints, investigation, etc. This gives you a good idea of how much negativity they generate.
If you're US-centric, CharityNavigator usualy has some good information on pretty much everyone, including percentages of monies raised that go to Program expenses, and so on.
r ch.summary/orgid/4337.htm
For example, Plan USA has a working capital ratio of about half a year, negative reveneue growth, and positive expense growth - meaning that they're short on cash. Their overall score was a 42 out of 70. The ran a defecit of 3.4 mil last year, although they have reported assets of over 20 mil.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/sea
Cue The Sun...
I don't know how to post on slashdot, my husband usually reads it, not me. However, I'm the one with experience in development (fund-raising) and have seen places where charities are rated according to what percent of their income they spend on themselves - for fund-raising, salaries, etc. The url below lists charities that spend less than $25 for every $100, this is considered pretty good! Worth magazine puts out a rating of the top 100 charities in Dec of every year, but I was unable to access the article without subscribing to their on-line magazine, as does the Chronicle of Philanthropy - also by subscription only. These are very good sources of info on charities if you're willing to subscribe or go to the library to find a hard copy, otherwise, check out the website below. Cookie http://www.charitywatch.org/toprated.html#intrelie f
Ask a minister, priest, rabbi, or any other person in a position to know who is in need in your own community and give the money to that person or persons. Avoid the skimming to pay 'management' that charities are guilty of doing.
Charles Angelich
The combined federal campaign is the governments way of helping it's employees/soldiers donate to charities. They do all the research of the organizations and show how much of your money actually goes to the cause. This gives soldiers and the like a chance to donate some of their money, and they know where it's going. They also offer incentives and the like, and make it very easy to give a small portion of your check every month, and get credit for your contribution. They maintain a list of almost any charity you could ever want, and they are actually very non-partisan. I remember seeing several charties for gay and lesbian organizations. I found this link . That might help you out. Just google for combined federal campaign or cfc and maybe add a site: .mil or site: .gov because there are some bogus websites out there. It really is a good source of info about charities. They even list the EFF and some other YRO like groups. Well... I hope I helped.
...pay for the overhead out of separate donations earmarked for the purpose, and are pretty reasonable on overall efficiency anyway.
So your donation to the organisation is effectively 100% efficient.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing