Chad ([info]cannibal) wrote,
@ 2009-02-19 23:32:00
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Donate Locally
Food banks are the best charities for keeping your money in the community and usually have the lowest administrative overhead: Food Gatherers uses 96% of donations to actually buy and distribute food in Washtenaw County. Gleaners is also at 96% but in Wayne County. I have volunteered twice for a day at Food Gatherers, they were founded by the Zingerman's people but are separate now, the food they buy is core nutritional stuff and baby formula, and they get big discounts, plus rescue a lot of food that would go to waste otherwise.

Another good one I've volunteered for is Habitat for Humanity Detroit at 89%, again a good percentage of your money goes to help people.

Compare that to United Way at 72%, Race for the Cure at 78%, World Wildlife Fund at 81%, JDRF at 86%. The big charities spend a lot of money on salaries and advertising, even the best of them, and the money goes all over, whereas food banks are very efficient. A lot of charities are a lot worse, for example the Magic Johnson Foundation at 50%, and scams like the Disabled Veterans Associations at 2%, which makes a lot of money from confusing people with a name similar to the Disabled American Veterans, which is a great charity at 95%. The real charity, the DAV, collected 8 million dollars in 2007, the scam collected (and kept) 9 million. Many "police" or "firefighter" charities are scams, at less than ten percent, the rest disappears as administrative or fundraising expenses.

Data from bbb.org and charitynavigator.org

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[info]cannibal
2009-02-20 05:46 am UTC (link)
I didn't mention two "charities" I dislike because I disagree with both their organizational goals and methods. Greenpeace isn't actually a 501(c)(3) charity, it is a lobbying organization and therefore is allowed to do all sorts of sneaky things with its money. It does have a charity, the Greenpeace Fund, at 77%, but how much of your money might actually get to the fund is unknown. PETA fails to meet the BBB standards for Charity Accountability because it only has 3 board members and fails to disclose its IRS form 990. Supposedly good at 83%, but the lack of transparency makes me wonder what they're hiding. Again, donate locally, your local animal shelter will make better use of the money.

Edited at 2009-02-20 05:48 am UTC

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[info]encorecrazay
2009-02-20 11:55 am UTC (link)
All organizations are required to provide copies of their last three years 990's immediately if made in person or with 30 days if made by written request. Regulation has been effective since June 30, 1999.

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[info]cannibal
2009-02-21 02:32 am UTC (link)
The BBB standards say they should post it on their website.

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[info]encorecrazay
2009-02-21 03:05 am UTC (link)
That's nice, but it's not the law. By the way, the organization can require a reasonable payment for the copies, which the IRS defines as no more than $1 for the 1st page and 15 cente for each additional page. By the way, PETA is listed by the IRS as a public charity with a 50% deductibility limitation.

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[info]tyskkvinna
2009-02-20 02:01 pm UTC (link)
I work full-time for a 501(c)(3) charity. I can tell you firsthand that it is VERY easy for an organisation to go from something in the 80-90% range to much lower. Fund-raising is ridiculously expensive. With a lot of major fund-raising firms it is not unusual at all for them to give you (the charity) less than 20% of the total funds raised by them. When they break it down for you (as they are required to do), the numbers aren't completely unreasonable.. but you realise pretty quickly there's effective ways to do fund-raising and they are definitely ineffective ways. It's easy to get stuck in the latter.

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[info]backrubbear
2009-02-21 03:37 am UTC (link)
it is not unusual at all for them to give you (the charity) less than 20% of the total funds raised by them.

I try to make it a habit of donating to the charity directly when I'm solicited in some sort of fundraiser. "You want to sell me a candy bar for $5?" and instead I send the organization in question a check for the full amount. Given the 20% (or less), it's a 5x+ multiplier.

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[info]tyskkvinna
2009-02-21 03:43 am UTC (link)
That's really great - I applaud you for it and wish more people did just that!

Unfortunately we have to do a lot of stupid things like candy bar sales and what-have-you, because it's a lot easier to get people to say "I'll give $X and get something, it's a neat ShinyThing" than for most people to say "Yeah I'll you $X because your charity needs it".

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[info]backrubbear
2009-02-21 04:23 pm UTC (link)
For kids, I usually will buy one of something cheap. I'll then find out their name and when I make out the check send along a letter to the school specifically mentioning them.

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[info]cannibal
2009-02-21 04:17 am UTC (link)
Really, I didn't know that! I'm the treasurer for a nonprofit group, and our outgoing president really wanted to become a 501(c)(3) so we could get grants to hire students to do work for us... I didn't want to because I didn't want to be responsible for all kinds of paperwork and money going through our hands... right now everything we do is volunteer, we take in about $100 a year, don't do any fund-raising, just have cheap memberships, and that keeps us going. I've been on the board for a Friends of the Library group too.

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[info]tyskkvinna
2009-02-21 04:42 pm UTC (link)
Our expenses and costs annually run in the neighbourhood of 100k, or at least have for the past few years. We've looked at working with some professional fund-raisers for raising that kind of cash and the hoops and loops required get kind of ridiculous. But on the same note, I wouldn't want somebody to donate several thousand dollars without being quite certain of what's going to happen with it. Most the money raised ends up going to salary for the people doing the footwork - but the amount of footwork required usually justifies it. (Certainly not always!!)

Your group is very wise to just stay nonprofit and not 501(c)(3). It's very expensive to get approved, and then takes about 5 years on probation to permanently seal the deal.. and just isn't worth it unless you're working with significantly larger sums of money. If you are though, that 501(c)(3) status is very, very helpful.

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[info]ladyinfidel
2009-02-20 04:16 pm UTC (link)
don't forget the dearborn animal shelter! not much more local than that!

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[info]renniekins
2009-02-20 06:57 pm UTC (link)
I like donorschoose.com, because you get to pick exactly what you want to fund. And I'm a bit fan of education!

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[info]cannibal
2009-02-23 04:29 pm UTC (link)
Hadn't heard of that one before... I like Jeff's idea better, find an individual local school to support and write a check for them - for example, one of Howard's daughters works in the Highland Park school system, and the city is bankrupt. I can put you in touch. Plus, I think gifts to Michigan schools qualify for a 50% Michigan tax credit, like gifts to Michigan libraries (which I've always done).

DonorsChoose is better than Race for the Cure, 86%, but where Race for the Cure fails by spending huge amounts of money on advertising and fundraising, and paying their executives six figure salaries (the COO is paid over half a million dollars out of our donations) DonorsChoose only pays their executives over a hundred thousand. Still seems like a lot.

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