Ok, before you say it, I already know that the red cross DOES help people and if you have been through a disaster, you know that they were there to help. This is not about the quality of service the red cross and others provide. It’s about how they get the money to do so and the end does not justify the means.
The red cross is just an example. All year they do fundraisers telling you they need money just in case a disaster happens. They take money from people who agreed to deduct it from their paychecks all year long to make sure they have the money to respond and help duiring a disaster.
Yet, as soon as a disaster happens, they run commercials to tell you they need money because a disaster has occured!
What happens to all that money they were raising in advance so they would be prepared? High salaries, plush offices, and a lot of stuff that isn’t really necessary.
No. I do not mind that someone gets paid for doing good work. I think they should be paid. But some of them are getting paid a ton of money when someone could have been found that really wants to do it for the right reasons and who will accept a reasonable salary.
Instead these charities reach out to the corporate world for their CEOs and Board members and say they need to pay high to compete with what the for profit corporations pay.
If you are a charity and you are hiring someone to run the charity who’s major concern is how much they will be paid, you should not be hiring them in the first place.
If you are a charity and your first concern is finding someone who is good at marketing and business rather than for their interest in the charitable work that you do, then you are at fault when your charity is more about collecting money than about accomplishing your mission and serving others.
Then when the charity is caught doing something wrong or it is getting bad press, they fire the CEO and say “There, everything is fixed now.”
Red Cross Fires Its President, Citing Relationship
The American Red Cross dismissed its president and chief executive, Mark W. Everson, yesterday, citing his “personal relationship with a subordinate employee.” He had been in office for only six months.
The news was another blow to an organization that has struggled to overcome criticism of its performance after Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, and it stunned the organization’s employees, as well as the nonprofit world at large.
“Although this is difficult and disappointing news for the Red Cross community, the organization remains strong and the life-saving mission of the American Red Cross will go forward,” Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, chairman of the Red Cross board, said in a statement.
See, we fired this guy and that solves all the problems relating to hurricane katrina and everything. We are AOK now!
The United Way is another one. The nes media talks about commercial fundraisers who call on the phone for doantions because they say the commercial fundraiser takes 75% of the money and the charity only receives 25%.
Each commercial fundraiser likely raises less than 1 million dollars per year gross. That means they kept $750,000 but paid for whatever entertainment the event had, paid for the insurance for the event, paid the payroll for the phone callers, paid the payroll taxes for the employees, and paid for everything else associated with the fundraising event. Which probably nets them about 25%. So the charity gets 25% and so does the commercial fundraiser.
The United Way has no charitable purpose, yet it is registered as a charity. What they do is raise money for charities. How are they any different than the commercial fundraisers and how do they get 501C3 status while the commercial fundraiser has to register as a commercial fundraiser?
The United Way says they only retain 25%. Yes, after paying all the same expenses that the commercial fundraiser had to pay. But even if they kept only 25% and paid the expenses out of that, you have to consider that they raise over 100 million dollars each year.
That means they keep 25 million dollars for processing your charitable donation and deciding who to give it to.
If you went ahead and decided which charity you wanted to give it to, then you would not have that 25% going to the United Way.
Figure this. You donate $1000 to the United Way. They take out $250 and pass the other $750 to the charity of their choice. Then that charity is also allowed to deduct 25% for their administration costs. So now you have made a $500 contribution. 50%. About the same as if you had just donated it through the commercial fundraiser over the phone.
The NCMEC, National Center For Missing And Exploited Childre gets more than 40 million dollars per year in government funding and donations. Yet, as far as finding missing children, they haven’t done anything at all. They have helped with online porn.
They have maintained a website that lists all the missing children. They claim that they have helped recover thousands of missing children.
Not true at all. Here is how it works. When a child is reported missing, law enforcement reports it to the NCIC, National Crime Information Center. Any missing child that is entered into NCIC is then also added to the NCMEC website.
If the police find the child 3 blocks away playing with friends, the police report the child found to NCIC. Then it is removed from the NCMEC database and the NCMEC tells us they have helped recover another missing child.
Now we all feel better because the NCMEC is doing such a great job so we are ok with them getting next year’s funding.
When charities get too large, they become businesses. They are there to make a profit. The NCMEC spends a million dollars or more each year on PR to make sure you know they are on the job while that money could be funding a real search team for missing children instead.
But these charities pay big money to hire the best PR people they can find. They work on showing the public an image and making people believe that charities they have never heard of should be avoided and that you should only give to charities whose name you recognize.
They know they do enough PR to make sure you recognize their names so they know that by convincing the public that name awareness equals legitimacy then they will get the bulk of the charity money that is available each year.
The truth is that if you want your charitable dollars to have the most impact, you should be looking around in your own community and finding those who are doing real charitible work that you can see. Give your money to them.
Better yet, do not donate to a charity until you have volunteered with them for at least one day so you can really see what they do. Any charity that tells you they only need your money and not your time should send you running the other way.
