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Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity?
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?"
Charity Navigator
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?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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.
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.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
I give to Charity: Water. They've got a great proposition where 100% of your donations go directly to the field to fund water projects. They're also a tech saavy group of folks and try to prove that by providing GPS signals and photos of the project you funded. Administrative costs are covered separately by a group of benefactors (who understand they are solely paying for administrative costs).
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.
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/
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.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - You are a stupid fucking idiot and a Microsoft shill. I'm surprised you still have enough karma in your sockpuppet accounts to upmod your comments.
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.
1. If someone believes in their cause, but lacks the availability to participate themselves, donating is a very good way to support them. Just because *you* personally don't believe in their cause does not mean no-one else does. Most likely you misunderstand their motives; I would suggest you read/watch something other than the (corporate) main-stream media.
2. OWS applied for 501(c)(3) since October, and accepts tax-deductible donations.
AccountKiller
Child's Play seems to be a good one, they help kids with severe problems suffer less and recover faster.
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