Articles tagged with "charities"

In September 2024 I wrote a short article, titled Saeed's Millions, describing an email exchange I had with a man named Saeed. He'd emailed me asking if our communication was private, and when I responded he followed up by offering me millions of dollars to give to charities, with 30% of the money going to me in exchange for doing the work.

For every dollar you donate to charities, a portion is usually directed towards covering administrative and fundraising costs. What is the maximum percentage that is acceptable to you? The rule of thumb is a fundraising efficiency ratio of 30:70 - 70% to programming, and 30% to overheads (including fundraising, management, and other general costs). However, amongst charity watchdogs and monitors such as CharityWatch, Charity Intelligence Canada, and the Charities Review Council, a charity is considered financially efficient, or at least performing satisfactorily, if overhead spending is between 20 and 35%, with between 65 and 80% distributed to programmes. Some charities and non-profit trade organisations argue that excessive focus on financial overhead can cause harm, and can actually have an overall detrimental effect on programme investment. However, how overhead spending is calculated and communicated varies, and from some charities the amount deducted from donations for admin and fundraising is less than their true costs.

At the end of part one, charities that used child sponsorship were facing a period of transition, both at home and in the countries they served. Conflicts throughout Asia during this time obviously hampered child charity operations, regardless of their fundraising model: World Vision had to abandon operations in Vietnam and Cambodia, and SOS Children's Villages had two of their villages taken over by the Vietnamese government in 1976. The retreat from parts of Asia experiencing war or other conflicts would be a boon for other countries, although World Vision described having to abandon 23,000 sponsored children with their retreat. By the 1980s child sponsorship would surge again, as millions of dollars in humanitarian aid was sent to anyone and everyone working in, or singing about, Ethiopia during the famines of the early-to-mid 1980s.

One of the ways that I monitor unskeptical groups is by signing up for their newsletters - at the moment I receive regular emails from Voices for Freedom, Scientology, Eckankar, Freedom Village, Transformation Into The New Paradigm and more. The titles of some of the recent emails I've received include such gems as:

The church was irresponsible with their recent protest, held during a level 3 lockdown in Auckland. The majority of those attending were without masks, and were not following physical distancing guidelines. When the media pointed out that most people were not wearing masks, the church's leader, Brian Tamaki, said: "I saw everyone wearing masks."

This weekend was the Humanist Conference in Auckland, with some great international and local speakers.

How the standards of skeptical thinking can be used to reject ineffective charities in favour of effective charities.