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It would be ridiculously inefficient to literally use your money to buy the chickens or whatever. So yes, it's abstracted a bit, but so is every charity.
by acheron 13y ago
It would be ridiculously inefficient to literally use your money to buy the chickens or whatever. So yes, it's abstracted a bit, but so is every charity.
- michaelt 13y agoWhy would that be inefficient? They just need to count the number of donors who have selected 'baby goat', count the number of baby goats you've distributed, and make sure they're equal. Charge enough per goat to cover some reasonable management overheads. If donors are supplying more goats than you need, stop accepting the donations and ask them to choose chickens instead. Organisations do things like this all the time. Orders are placed, orders are paid for, orders are fulfilled. Internet retailers manage this millions of times a day with very low overheads. What's the problem? If a charity wants donations to a general fund rather than a specific use, they should be honest about that in their marketing materials.
- jiggy2011 13y agoI think the idea is to show that worthwhile things can be done with what seems like a small amount of money, otherwise potential donors may feel that their $10 can't make a measurable difference to a real person's outcome and will be less inclined to donate. Ringfencing money like that would be very inefficient unless you can perfectly balance supply/demand beforehand. What happens if a ton of donors donate goats but then you find that nobody needs the goats anymore but you could really use the money for something boring like employment liability insurance?
- timdiggerm 13y agoWhat if lots and lots of people donate to the goat fund, but what people really need is chickens?
- achy 13y agoI think there's a middle ground where you are giving the gift of x dollars in real food / livestock to a family in xyz. Then the actual logistics of what that means are figured out and told to you.