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Ask Slashdot: Making Donations Count
An anonymous reader writes: As a recent college graduate I now have a job and enough money to actually buy things and donate to causes. Up until now I really haven't been paying attention to which groups are best to donate and which are scams. For example, Goodwill seems like a great organization until you dig deeper and discover they hire under privileged and disabled people only to exploit the related government handouts instead of doing it to benefit those people. What are some quality organizations to donate to? Who do you donate to and why? I'm looking for improving the poor, supporting constitutional rights, and supporting issues many Slashdotters can agree on such as net neutrality and anything against the media companies. I don't care what political group the money ends up going to. The specific case is more important than some arbitrary label. I'm also in the USA, so foreign recommendations are probably less helpful.
Showoff.
Since it's Slashdot:
Free Software Foundation http://fsf.org/
Electronic Freedom Foundation http://eff.org/
American Civil Liberties Union http://aclu.org/
Make sure they are registered as a 501(c)(3) so your donations are tax-deducible.
I'd skip sending money to ISIS or the Taliban. It's probably not tax-deductible and may result in unpleasant imprisonment.
Don't donate to any organized cause. Even the best run, most efficient ones still have part of your dollar go to administrative or marketing costs.
As you move through life, you will meet plenty of people that need help. Give that pan handler on the side of the road a hamburger. Help your single-working-mother neighbor by paying for a baby sitter so she can have a night out. Buy groceries for the person in line at the store behind you that is using food stamps.
Or, donate your time. Join Habitat for Humanity and build a house for someone.
While all these options take more time/effort than just entering your credit card into a website, those donations of money/time will be completely dedicated to the person in need.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
thats always the best bet. keep it local
other than that, id say EFF is a good one
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Unless you want to spend several months a year of your life auditing inefficient "charity" organizations and trying to make judgments about whether they're doing it right and spending your dollars wisely...and hey if you think you're good at that you should probably start your own charity. But if you do, everyone will expect you to work for free. It's a viscous circle.
Donate your time, you'll meet people too.
Unless you're a multi-billionaire, then start a foundation and direct where the money goes.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Before donating to any charity, you want to be sure that the lion's share of the money will go where it's needed. Every charity has different overhead costs. You can research you favorite charities -- learning how much of your donation will go to the intended purpose (vs. how much will go to overhead) at Give.org, CharityWatch.org and CharityNavigator.org. ( Info from http://www.clarkhoward.com )
I know it sounds selfish, but put away a few percent ASAP. Then, the EFF is a good bet, unless you work in government and want them to flag you as a possible terrorist. Then, pick one that has a decent return. http://www.charitynavigator.or...
Also the NRA since he wants to protect constitutional rights and the ACLU has a few embarrassing gaps in that regard.
It's not on your list of causes, so perhaps you won't care, but the crew running Child's Play have been up front on where the money goes: it is spent on nothing but toys. None of the staff, such as it is, get paid out of your donations; they all work for Penny Arcade, who run Child's Play on the side.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
There are undoubtedly small, local, homeless shelters that need clothing, toiletries, various consumables. Those things will go directly to those who need them.
Is there a local group who recycles/reuses electronics? (maybe turning old PC's into Linux boxen, to be given to low-income families) Donate a couple items and drop off $20.
There are very small, not well known women's/family shelters that are always desperate for anything from socks, underwear, blankets, toys, to dishes, cleaning supplies, etc. Sometimes not easy to find these - they tend to keep a low profile, but their services are vital for people who find themselves in a very difficult situation.
Check the websites of local charities - they usually list the specific things they are most in need of.
I donate stuff to Goodwill... after I have offered it to groups like the ones listed above, but they don't have an immediate need.
I'd recommend reading _When Helping Hurts_ by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. I think this book addresses some of the concerns you intuitively have about selecting a worthwhile charity.
They're effective, efficient (per dollar), and badly needed. I spent some time looking for something I could be comfortable donating to monthly, and this is the one I concentrated all my charitable donations to (aside from my own volunteering in an unrelated area). http://www.msf.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
he just gave them (most likely) 100+ thousand dollars... and you want him to KEEP paying them????
no, donate to your college after you have made it, not while you are still paying for it!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You bet. EFF and the Chicago Food Depository are two at the top of my list, but we've also made a sizable donation to http://www.law-arts.org/ because they helped me out a lot on several occasions when I was just starting out. Also, the Chicago Justice Project, http://chicagojustice.org/ gets some dough because they're actually trying to do some good here. They're data wonks who are fighting to get more transparency in Chicago policing and the data that Chicago policing generates. Tracy Siska is a good dude that has been a constant source of aggravation for the past few Chicago mayors and police chiefs, and I like that.
Though the old girl and I donate close to 10% of our annual income, the biggest donations I make are of my own time. Last Saturday, I spent the day busting sod over at the Englewood Community Garden, where students from Lindblom Academy (a public school in Chicago's inner city) have designed and built a terrific big organic community garden to address the food desert issue in that neighborhood. http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago... . I'm unskilled labor when it comes to vegetable gardens though. The wife does a lot better.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The reason the government and Goodwill "exploit" each other and the disabled people is that those disabled people really don't work efficiently enough to be worth minimum wage, and consequently without a subsidy, would be unemployable. Since the government unions won't allow the disabled to be hired directly, Goodwill is the vehicle that allows them to have a meaningful job. Sure, the CEO of Goodwill makes $850K/year, not actually that good for an organization with a $5B annual revenue. They're putting about 83 cents on the dollar into the disabled, which is a very low overhead when you realize how painfully expensive it is to deal with government contracting.
is a much better source than random shit on the internet.
There's probably a local organization that helps foster children who have aged out of the system. They really get a raw deal in life.
Local arts organizations are also good choices, especially if they have full-time local performers on staff.
And the usual biggies - the ACLU, EFF, Greenpeace, Amnesty International - and some smaller ones, like the American Friends Service Committee and Friends Committee on Legislation.
As many have mentioned, the best thing to do is to get involved with an organization or cause that you care about. If you actually work with the organization, you will a) be helping them out significantly with your time and talents, and b) have a better feel as to whether they are using the funds they receive responsibly. I am on the board of directors of a mid sized (roughly $3,000,000/year) 501(c)3, and I know precisely what our overhead is. I also volunteer heavily for said organization (primarily network design, and electrical type work), and donate when I can.
Despite what other people say, any organization that is viable will have overhead. It costs money to ensure the books are properly kept and audited, there are bills to pay, and non-profits of all organizations, should pay their employees a fair and reasonable wage. From a financial point of view, the real key is to ensure that the books are properly kept, and there are adequate controls in place to ensure that the money is spent in an appropriate manner.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
That may be the worst possible use of charity funds. University endowments do little but grow and become fiefdoms for development departments and university presidents. University of Chicago has over a billion dollars and Harvard has like twice that. They ask for money constantly (I get the mailings) but keep raising tuition, while replacing real professors with low-paid adjuncts.
Higher education in the United States has become a complete scam. When I graduated over thirty years ago, I donated to my alma mater until I spent the time to look into exactly what they were doing with the money.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Underprivileged and disabled people have a hard time getting work, so Goodwill gives them an opportunity to be a productive member of society. The fact that they get government handouts for this means that they have more money to spend on other projects.
Donate to your pension fund if you don't want to become the poor of tomorrow.
Or you can set up your own, as I and the members of the Pennsylvania Star Wars Collecting Society have done. Through our 501c3 we choose a local charity each year and conduct a fundraiser.
http://pswcs.com/charity.cfm
If you check, you will be dismayed how many people in your own hometown lack basic food and shelter. Help them.
As someone else pointed out, I significantly underestimated the size of the UofC and Harvard endownments. Rather than $1 bil and $2 bil respectively, it's more like $8 bil and $36 bil.
I suppose I was still thinking about how rich the endowments were back when I first realized the size of the scam some years ago.
It also tells you how fast these endowments are growing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Goodwill seems like a great organization until you dig deeper and discover they hire under privileged and disabled people only to exploit the related government handouts instead of doing it to benefit those people.
The summary makes an an unsupported and unclear accusation against Goodwill. If this submission is a legitimate question it should either eliminate this accusation or cite it and explain what criteria the submitter is looking for.
Submitter: What do you mean when you say they "exploit the related government handouts instead of doing it to benefit those people?" What exploitation are you talking about? My concern here is that it sounds like you would only donate to Goodwill if they refused the government handouts. But since all non-profits get handouts, in the form of tax benefits, I fear that no non-profit will meet your requirements.
American Red Cross is actually highly-efficient, but a peripheral blog called ProPublica has been twisting facts to smear them. It's all bullshit. They do things like take Red Cross's lessons learned (a document where they address everything that goes wrong with any response and plan out what actions to take to make those problems never happen again) and waving them around to show that Red Cross can't do anything right; or they claim that Red Cross pays for services from other economic suppliers (builders, distributors, etc.) and thus pays a lot more overhead because "those contractors have overhead, too".
ProPublica's last article was hyperbole, focusing on a $24 million project in Haiti where Red Cross originally was going to build houses, but instead built roads and repaired damaged schools and homes--that out of a $488 million budget with which they built hospitals, distributed food, provided cholera vaccinations (Cholera was killing thousands of people per week), trained the government in disaster response, and so forth.
I've examined Red Cross's management practices. Both from an organizational management standpoint and from an economic standpoint, the American Red Cross is a top-notch organization. They practice constant and continuous organizational process improvement: they look for things going wrong and aggressively document everything that impedes their function, and then invest a large share of their organization's overhead into ridding themselves of those problems. They also take full advantage of economic efficiency: rather than spend $100 million doing work they're not qualified for in an inefficient (and possibly dangerous) way, they'll pay a contractor $50 million--even though the contractor may absorb $20 million of that into overhead, it's still cheaper and more effective than any other option. They even push their process improvement practices outward: if the American Red Cross shows up at your locale, they're going to educate your local government on preparing for and responding to major disasters, so that the next one requires much less money and time for much better relief results.
When it comes to disaster relief, it doesn't get much better than ARC.
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