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Charity is a terrible model

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CriticalThought

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I absolutely refuse to give money to charitable organizations. I think that it is a generational thing and most baby boomers I share that sentiment with actually seem offended by it. If I do give money to people I prefer to do it directly or donate time or goods instead. The overhead costs of modern charities are absurd. The Children's Charity Fund, for example, spends 93 cents of every dollar donated on administrative costs, which does not seem very helpful for children. That isn't even unusual! And I hear far right conservatives and libertarians harking on charity as a great free market alternative to government welfare. :roll:

A lot of nonprofits do not even disclose their CEO's pay or how much money donated actually goes to their cause, and even when they do, people do not seem to care enough to research it before donating. Don't get me wrong, I believe in social entrepreneurs and if you can get rich helping others then more power to you. However, the goal in such an organization should be to squeeze as much as possible out of every penny to serve the cause and high overhead and administrative costs indicate a poor CEO who should not be taking home absurd sums of money. And yet, that is what happens. Plenty of people in the top 1% are executives of charities and that is a sad state of affairs for anyone who thinks their money is going to help others rather than pay for some CEO's yacht.

Does anyone know of a viable nonpartisan ranking system for charities?
 
Cant go wrong with a Charity like the Shiners Hospital for kids.
 
Perhaps this link, and others like it, will help:

Executive Salaries in Charities : snopes.com

Some of the least likely charities, like your local motorcycle club's toy run, often have no paid staff and give all donations to those in need. I prefer direct giving as well, but that is not always practical.
 
this is what i have used for years

called the four star rating

puts out a new list every year

some of the same ones stay on the list every year....that tells me something

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.detail&listid=100#.VmW3l7grKUk

Charities tackle some of society’s most complex and intractable issues --- such as combating hunger, preserving the environment, curing diseases and changing people’s perceptions. These are long-term objectives. To be successful, organizations must be high performers consistently, year after year. These ten charities have earned the most consecutive 4-star ratings demonstrating an ongoing fiscal excellence. They are well-positioned to pursue and achieve long-term change.

Rank Charity Overall Score Consecutive
1 Carnegie Mellon University 96.65 15
2 Rochester Institute of Technology 91.17 15
3 The Children's Aid Society 90.15 15
4 Institute for Justice 96.91 14
5 Compassion International 95.33 14
6 Emory University 95.30 14
7 Energy Outreach Colorado 94.11 14
8 National Education for Assistance Dog Services 91.91 14
9 Goodwill Southern California 91.26 14
10 American Kidney Fund 90.84 14
 
I think Charity is way better than government programs. And the great part about it is that if you do not like how they allocate their funds... you don't have to donate... put it towards one that does do good work..
 
long with my local shelter, where we donate time and money

here are two that we give to every year

ALSAC - St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (three stars)

Fundraising for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

LOCATION: Memphis, TN
CATEGORY: Community Development
CAUSE: Fundraising

Ronald McDonald House Charities of Memphis (four stars)

A "home-away-from-home" for St. Jude families and their children

LOCATION: Memphis, TN
CATEGORY: Health
CAUSE: Patient and Family Support
 
Disagree with the OP, you simply need to be cautious about giving to charity organizations. There are plenty where the overwhelming amount they take in goes to the intention, but there are others that have become (or always were) a profitable business model with very little going to the listed intention.

If I am offended by anything, it is organizations that fall into the latter.

Like the Kids Wish Network, who tends to pay almost 85% of their income to solicitors and less than 3% on the actual listed intention. Or the Cancer Fund of America, who tends to pay almost 87% of their income to solicitors and less than 2% on the actual listed intention.

You just need to be investigative in whom you give money to.

As for a ranking system, most of the media sources have their own for whatever story from the past several years. Best I can tell there is no one single best "nonpartisan" list of the best and worst Charities in terms of money going to the listed cause.
 
OrphanSlug said:
Disagree with the OP, you simply need to be cautious about giving to charity organizations. There are plenty where the overwhelming amount they take in goes to the intention, but there are others that have become (or always were) a profitable business model with very little going to the listed intention.

If I am offended by anything, it is organizations that fall into the latter.

Like the Kids Wish Network, who tends to pay almost 85% of their income to solicitors and less than 3% on the actual listed intention. Or the Cancer Fund of America, who tends to pay almost 87% of their income to solicitors and less than 2% on the actual listed intention.

You just need to be investigative in whom you give money to.

As for a ranking system, most of the media sources have their own for whatever story from the past several years. Best I can tell there is no one single best "nonpartisan" list of the best and worst Charities in terms of money going to the listed cause.
Click to expand...

I could not help but notice how stingy the OP is even in giving away "likes". Perhaps this is simply an attempt to justify not giving to charity at all by noting that some charities are, indeed, very poor choices. ;)
 
CriticalThought said:
I absolutely refuse to give money to charitable organizations. I think that it is a generational thing and most baby boomers I share that sentiment with actually seem offended by it. If I do give money to people I prefer to do it directly or donate time or goods instead. The overhead costs of modern charities are absurd. The Children's Charity Fund, for example, spends 93 cents of every dollar donated on administrative costs, which does not seem very helpful for children. That isn't even unusual! And I hear far right conservatives and libertarians harking on charity as a great free market alternative to government welfare. :roll:

A lot of nonprofits do not even disclose their CEO's pay or how much money donated actually goes to their cause, and even when they do, people do not seem to care enough to research it before donating. Don't get me wrong, I believe in social entrepreneurs and if you can get rich helping others then more power to you. However, the goal in such an organization should be to squeeze as much as possible out of every penny to serve the cause and high overhead and administrative costs indicate a poor CEO who should not be taking home absurd sums of money. And yet, that is what happens. Plenty of people in the top 1% are executives of charities and that is a sad state of affairs for anyone who thinks their money is going to help others rather than pay for some CEO's yacht.

Does anyone know of a viable nonpartisan ranking system for charities?
Click to expand...

Charity has its place. Usually it is terrible, as you say.
 
CriticalThought said:
I absolutely refuse to give money to charitable organizations. I think that it is a generational thing and most baby boomers I share that sentiment with actually seem offended by it. If I do give money to people I prefer to do it directly or donate time or goods instead. The overhead costs of modern charities are absurd. The Children's Charity Fund, for example, spends 93 cents of every dollar donated on administrative costs, which does not seem very helpful for children. That isn't even unusual! And I hear far right conservatives and libertarians harking on charity as a great free market alternative to government welfare. :roll:

A lot of nonprofits do not even disclose their CEO's pay or how much money donated actually goes to their cause, and even when they do, people do not seem to care enough to research it before donating. Don't get me wrong, I believe in social entrepreneurs and if you can get rich helping others then more power to you. However, the goal in such an organization should be to squeeze as much as possible out of every penny to serve the cause and high overhead and administrative costs indicate a poor CEO who should not be taking home absurd sums of money. And yet, that is what happens. Plenty of people in the top 1% are executives of charities and that is a sad state of affairs for anyone who thinks their money is going to help others rather than pay for some CEO's yacht.

Does anyone know of a viable nonpartisan ranking system for charities?
Click to expand...

I'm of much the same sentiment.

When they call and I actually do answer the phone, the first question from me is 'Are you a paid for solicitor or a volunteer?' - Inevitably they are paid for solicitors, to which I say I have a policy against that. When you engaged a paid for solicitor, you are running a business, not a charity. You figure with you name you can gain more donations than what the paid for solicitor is costing you, a typical business calculation.

The American Diabetes Association always has volunteer solicitors, and my wife has been given them something for years now.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
I could not help but notice how stingy the OP is even in giving away "likes". Perhaps this is simply an attempt to justify not giving to charity at all by noting that some charities are, indeed, very poor choices. ;)
Click to expand...

Is what it is. I suppose the conversation we should have is the bad charities being so numerous as they drown out the ones doing a pretty good job.
 
OrphanSlug said:
Is what it is. I suppose the conversation we should have is the bad charities being so numerous as they drown out the ones doing a pretty good job.
Click to expand...

The more that they spend to advertise then the less they have left to put to better use. That is a sad state of affairs.
 
At Charity Navigator we recognize that different types of organizations work differently. This variation isn't a bad thing. Rather, different types of charities have different resource and spending requirements. For example, our research shows that museums exhibit above-average administration costs as compared to other types of charities. We can account for this variation in the data because we know how costly it is for museums to maintain their facilities and collections. To ensure that we are taking these types of differences into account, and thereby comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges, we've developed the following ratings tables.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=48#.VmXF57grKUk

here is another site for analyzing how a charity is doing as far as spending versus expenses

and i like the way they break things down based on type of charity it is
 
CriticalThought said:
I absolutely refuse to give money to charitable organizations. I think that it is a generational thing and most baby boomers I share that sentiment with actually seem offended by it. If I do give money to people I prefer to do it directly or donate time or goods instead. The overhead costs of modern charities are absurd. The Children's Charity Fund, for example, spends 93 cents of every dollar donated on administrative costs, which does not seem very helpful for children. That isn't even unusual! And I hear far right conservatives and libertarians harking on charity as a great free market alternative to government welfare. :roll:

A lot of nonprofits do not even disclose their CEO's pay or how much money donated actually goes to their cause, and even when they do, people do not seem to care enough to research it before donating. Don't get me wrong, I believe in social entrepreneurs and if you can get rich helping others then more power to you. However, the goal in such an organization should be to squeeze as much as possible out of every penny to serve the cause and high overhead and administrative costs indicate a poor CEO who should not be taking home absurd sums of money. And yet, that is what happens. Plenty of people in the top 1% are executives of charities and that is a sad state of affairs for anyone who thinks their money is going to help others rather than pay for some CEO's yacht.

Does anyone know of a viable nonpartisan ranking system for charities?
Click to expand...
I'm similar to you, in that I don't feel I can judge individual charities well enough.

I also don't give cash directly to homeless or beggars for obvious reasons.

So I give to Catholic Charities, where I feel my money will most likely be used fairly & in general accordance with my values.

I don't trust charities in general (scams at worst, possibly inefficient at best), and don't have the desire to research them individually. But I've seen a lifetime of the work of Catholic Charities, so I play it safe with them.
 
One cannot simply blanket all charities and say that they all suck, and not give to any of them for that reason alone.

Or, if that's the case, then volunteer your time at a homeless shelter.

And how have we gone 15 posts into this thread without someone asking for pictures of Charity, so that we may determine for ourselves if she is indeed a terrible model?

You guys are slipping.
 
Compared to the federal government's record over the last 48 years beginning with LBJ's Great society programs most charities look pretty good. For every dime that goes into these anti poverty programs less than a dime ever winds up in the hands of the poor. On top of that they do almost nothing that ever lifts anyone out of poverty. In fact about the only things that have changed since 1968 is a ten fold increase in the poverty level for a family of four.
 
OrphanSlug said:
Is what it is. I suppose the conversation we should have is the bad charities being so numerous as they drown out the ones doing a pretty good job.
Click to expand...
It is not that bad charities out number the good ones but rather that the bad ones get all the publicity.
 
There's plenty of good charities out there, just do some homework. With the Internet is not that hard anymore. Stay away from the ones that pop up after a disaster. After 9/11 I didn't give a cent to any of those charities. And good thing too, many were a scam. But there's many good ones too, just look them up. It's not hard.

The people who don't want the government to have any social safety nets, but then bitch and moan about private charities too. Whatever. Just can't make some people happy, no matter what.

As mentioned above most Catholic charities are really good too. Love the Catholic Church or hate them their charities are good.
 
Giving to charities is a great thing but they definitely aren't all created equal. Gotta do the research before giving.
 
CriticalThought said:
I absolutely refuse to give money to charitable organizations. I think that it is a generational thing and most baby boomers I share that sentiment with actually seem offended by it. If I do give money to people I prefer to do it directly or donate time or goods instead. The overhead costs of modern charities are absurd. The Children's Charity Fund, for example, spends 93 cents of every dollar donated on administrative costs, which does not seem very helpful for children. That isn't even unusual! And I hear far right conservatives and libertarians harking on charity as a great free market alternative to government welfare. :roll:

A lot of nonprofits do not even disclose their CEO's pay or how much money donated actually goes to their cause, and even when they do, people do not seem to care enough to research it before donating. Don't get me wrong, I believe in social entrepreneurs and if you can get rich helping others then more power to you. However, the goal in such an organization should be to squeeze as much as possible out of every penny to serve the cause and high overhead and administrative costs indicate a poor CEO who should not be taking home absurd sums of money. And yet, that is what happens. Plenty of people in the top 1% are executives of charities and that is a sad state of affairs for anyone who thinks their money is going to help others rather than pay for some CEO's yacht.

Does anyone know of a viable nonpartisan ranking system for charities?
Click to expand...

I am glad the OP has gotten into the Season Spirit.

Bah... Humbug.
 
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