Charities

[Cancellator]

Every day, in different media, we are bombarded with requests from various charitable organizations. From TV spots asking for a donation to people with buckets popping up at my college every other day raising money for every cause imaginable.

Question is, how much of what you give to these charities actually makes it to the people/animals/whatever you are trying to help?

The workings of Livestrong, with their spin bikes, for example, look pretty shady if you read some articles.

Also, looking on the Internet for part time jobs, I constantly come across advertisements like "Win 7 pounds an hour being a door-to-door collector!" If they can afford to pay their collectors like that, they must also be paying their management some serious cash, and then you think, how is the money you are giving them actually distributed?

What do you think?

 

[Bala Verde]

There is charity navigator, which evaluates charities and it is never bad to do some background research on the charity you would potentially like to donate to.

http://www.charitynavigator.org/

I think most charities have to keep pretty good records of how they spend their money and publish that in annual reports. I think you might even be able to request the, if they aren't already published online (which would be a bit of a red flag)

A couple of years ago people were talking about 'green washing' ie companies advertising false claims that their products were green(er than they actually are), which ultimately lead to a backlash and better standards. More recently they started looking into the phenomenon of making money by 'pink washing'. Or how much money is being made by companies and charities by using breast cancer to turn a profit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/15/komen-pinkwashing-problem-planned-parenthood

With respect to jobs on the Internet, be careful when submitting your resume or personal details because there are (especially in this economy) 'fake' job ads out there. These people want to collect personal details and don't really have any jobs open, so after you submit a cv, they'll never get back to you, or they'll say you weren't selected and in the meanwhile they know everything about you and they enter you in their databases.

 

[El Imbatido]

Hey,

I used to work as a door to door charity salesperson for a while after i left school. The way alot of charities are going now is they hire sales and marketing agencies to get the donations. The way it is in Australia now (i believe this is correct) is that they cannot collect money off people now. All people must be signed up with a credit card for a monthly payment to the charity.

So basically i worked for a sales agency and they picked which charity we would help out at the time. You were actually paid really well. Almost $100 dollars per person you signed up...so basically if you were a really good salesperson you could earn alot each week. BUT and there were a couple of them. Is that when you first joined they took part of your pay packet each week to form a 'bond' upto $900 (i think it was) because if the 'donor' you signed up for monthly payments didnt stay atleast 3 months then the charity got nothing out of them (because you have to be paid, the marketing agency has to get paid... then the charity starts taking money after that)....so your bond was used to cover the hole to get them back to even. (You were basically at fault because you found a 'bad' donor).

Also it was very much like pyramid like sales (not saying it is one because ive never been in a pyramid scheme). Basically if you knocked on someones door and were able to recruit them to join the sales agency. You were then their leader and for every donor they then signed up you made 'x' dollars. So eventually if you got a big crew of guys working for you and then they had people working under them, then you would be raking in the extra dollars just by having people lower than you in the structure that are making sales.

In Australia there was a big news article in one of the major papers a few months back, looking at this grey underside of charity sales. Just take a read of this....and it is true...although we did not use that acronym that they used. We just avoided those people and targeted the ones we knew were able to give donations

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...the-hard-sell/comments-e6freuy9-1226274694765

It was a great job for someone like me who was a pretty good talker and someone who could think on their feet and i made a bit of cash straight out of school but be aware it is commission and if you start having a dry spell after a while your head could be on the chopping block. If you want to do it and it is a legit job, look at sales and marketing agencies that help out charities and just fill out their online form and then someone just calls you up to come in for an interview...that is all that happened to me.

Cheers

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I rarely give to large organizations.

As an example, I have donated to the Humane Society a couple of times. But in order to help animals and pets I donate to two very small local organizations. Foster Pets of Portland, and Cupid Kitten Rescue. The former is a 501c3. Both are run by single individuals who have full time jobs and live in small homes. It seems as if all the money I donate goes to their cause, and I can see with my own eyes where the money often goes. Compare that to some of these mega charities with celebrities pimping for them.

The one exception in my donating is the Nature Conservancy, simply because I can't see anyone doing what they do on a small level (they purchase large swaths of land to protect it for future generations).

 

[BroDeal]

I think most of them are a scam with the chief goal of providing a paycheck, often large, for those who work at the organization. The smaller the charity, the more likely it is a scam. Then there is the BS like Livestrong, which has its main purpose to promote make a drug cheat more money by increasing his public profile.

There is a local dude who has a charity that ostensibly provides money to help an African country. The way I hear it is that he has no job, his wife has no job, he has kids, they live in a parent's basement, and his family is getting government assistance. Last year he did thirty Ironman triathlons, and this year he is doing more than twenty. He is trying to build a coaching business by using the record number of tris done in a year as a selling point. Supposedly it is all done on the dime of his charity. The registration fees alone for thirty official Ironman races would be $18K. Add in the travel and the tab has to be quite large.

 

[auscyclefan94]

I personally don't have such a sceptical or mistrusting attitude towards Charities as people on here have but at the same time I don't ever give massive amounts to Charities. What I do dislike is Governments giving taxpayers money to charities or supporting charitable concepts that have don't relate to the Country itself.

 

[elapid]

I donate to charities that I am passionate about, namely cancer research. I do my research and decide whether to donate or not based on what percentage of my donation actually goes to researchers. For instance, a few years ago 50% of your contributions to Movember went to the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF). Movember is meant to raise funds for researching cancer in men, but I didn't want 50% of my money going to LAF because, firstly, they are advocates and do not support cancer research and, secondly, their motivation is testicular cancer which represents a tiny proportion of cancer in men, which is mainly prostatic cancer.

I also agree with ACF. Because I live in Canada, I do not support US or overseas charities.

My two other beefs with charities and donations:

1. I would love to support WWF and other such charities, but I don't want all the fluffy toys or the continual mailed reminders to renew membership (which I view as a waste of money and not environmentally sound) that automatically come with membership. Yet it is a package deal and there is no way around it. No money for them.

2. As El Imbatido mentioned, marketing companies are now hired by charities to increase the number of people giving donations, but this can only be done by providing credit card details and promising monthly contributions. The classic for this in Canada are young people trying to sign people up on the streets for causes such as Green Peace, WWF, and other humanity based projects. The problem with this is that the marketing company takes up to 99% of these donations as payment and leaving only 1% to the actual charity, so there is another significant layer of costs that are not factored in sites like http://www.charitynavigator.com.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

The smaller the charity, the more likely it is a scam.

Perhaps. But a very small charity you can often check out on your own. The one's I mentioned I can drive over to that person's house, and talk to them for an hour if I want. Nothing like that triathlete guy. But at least he's not like some of these CEOs of large charitable organizations raking it in. The worst are PACs that are non-profit.

Then there is the BS like Livestrong, which has its main purpose to promote make a drug cheat more money by increasing his public profile.

I wouldn't say that's their main purpose. Well, it is for the leader, definitely. Maybe I just feel sorry for the good people that are there helping. Then again, maybe they should know better.

1. I would love to support WWF and other such charities, but I don't want all the fluffy toys or the continual mailed reminders to renew membership.

May I suggest the Nature Conservancy? They only hand out a calendar, and you can tell them you don't want it and they won't send it.

The other reason I like the Nature Conservancy, regardless of how they do on that link above, is that they don't sue anyone or lobby politicians to protect the land, they just buy it!

 

[LongSprint]

I know of a person who controls a charity of which his family is a beneficiary. And it's not like he needs charity, he earns a very good salary. I'm afraid there might be many small charities like this so that's why I contribute only to the larger, recognized charities like Oxfam, The Salvation Army, etc.