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> There actually are good charities out there that do good work, but separating them from this kind of self-service is hard to do No it's not. Charities have
by muzz 13y ago
> There actually are good charities out there that do good work, but separating them from this kind of self-service is hard to do
No it's not.
Charities have to report how much money they spend on things like overhead, and sites like Charity Navigator can be used to quickly and easily locate this information.
Your ignorance of it does not make it so.
- bane 13y agoSo I checked a dozen or so local charities I know of, some with reputations I don't know and some with, not a single one I checked was on the site. It appears to be absolutely useless and totally doesn't help at all with what I was talking about.
- rdouble 13y agoGuidestar is best for that but sadly the reports are very expensive these days.
- kareemm 13y ago> Charities have to report how much money they spend on things like overhead, and sites like Charity Navigator can be used to quickly and easily locate this information. Reporting many expenses as either "Programs" vs. "Overhead" is subjective; guess which way most charities lean? I know this because I've been building a product for one of the most knowledgeable charitable tax lawyers in this space over the last five years, and have gone over many charity tax returns in that time (called T3010 forms in Canada).
- scarmig 13y agoEfficiency and overhead aren't good measures of a charity's effectiveness. Trying to evaluate the success and impact of a program is very important, for instance. But many charity's don't do it, because it adds "overhead" costs when you could be using that money to inflate a meaningless metric that looks good to donors who like to think of themselves as savvy.
- thejteam 13y agoAgree. And typically programs to educate the public about the issue and programs you are raising money for are counted as "overhead" even though in many cases they are just as important as the programs themselves. For example, educating people about world hunger is as important as sending food overseas.