131–140 of 215 posts
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No, don't go to Charity Navigator, go to Givewell ( http://www.givewell.com ). The quality of their research is much better, and they focus on the question that really matters: what effect your donation will have on the margin.
So now we need a Charity Navigator Navigator?
The biggest revelation to me in that article, which I feel should be highlighted more, is that the Red Cross provides almost zero information about how it spends its money. It refuses to provide more than very vague information about how the money was spent in Haiti (information like "35% of $488 million on shelters"), with no specific details about what projects they spent the money on, how those projects went etc.…
Could it be that actually getting things done in horrible environments requires interacting with, and paying off, some shady people? This is of course a charitable guess, but could it be that the Red Cross has made a decision to make morally questionable choices in the short term in support of the greater good, and they know they can't publish such truths and continue to exist?
>>$170 million providing shelter
>>the number of permanent homes the charity has built is six.
I know their primary mission is not housing, but that is a large number for some tents and a vanishingly small number of houses. Where did the rest of the money go?
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> Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently ... [big charities] will never get another cent out of me until at least one of their large scale disaster responses works out well...Because of the total lack of end-to-end accountability with organizations like the red cross... Your post is ideological - sweeping application of game-theory style logic, but without the evidence to suggest that the…
His post isn't ideological. Yours is.
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So now we need a Charity Navigator Navigator?
Great, as if I didn't need more excuses not to give money. I think I stick to the local community soup kitchen/churches even though I'm not religious.
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Unlikely. Far, far more likely, according to a friend who is very senior in the British Red Cross, when I asked her about how they use their money, is one of two scenarios: 1) They misreported how much they collected. Apparently they regularly say they've collected more than they have in order to encourage people to give yet more, and to appear to be "the big magnet charity". 2) They've lost it. This apparently happe…
Hi, can you confirm that the British Red Cross is a different organization and more transparent? Ideally they should confirm this on their webpage, but they don't.
Does anyone know anything about the effectiveness of other Haiti efforts like Mercy Corps?
I stopped giving to 'big charities' twenty years ago and since then have only helped people locally where I can see what happens to the money. That's a real pity because of course on a relative scale those are probably much less in need than the people in Haiti (and Nepal and other areas devastated by natural disasters). But the red cross - once a paragon of virtue - and a number of other big time charities that were…
I was upset to hear that nearly $30 million of the tsunami relief money ended up subsidizing the Japanese whaling fleet. (Heard that on Whale Wars, so I'm not 100% sure it's true.)
The biggest revelation to me in that article, which I feel should be highlighted more, is that the Red Cross provides almost zero information about how it spends its money. It refuses to provide more than very vague information about how the money was spent in Haiti (information like "35% of $488 million on shelters"), with no specific details about what projects they spent the money on, how those projects went etc.…
Could it be that actually getting things done in horrible environments requires interacting with, and paying off, some shady people? This is of course a charitable guess, but could it be that the Red Cross has made a decision to make morally questionable choices in the short term in support of the greater good, and they know they can't publish such truths and continue to exist?
1)Set up a few small projects 2)Take a few pictures 3)Create a few press articles to appear as if all funds are being sent to the people in need
Rinse and repeat when the next disaster hits.
All charity based organizations should have no problem being fully transparent. Do not make excuses for them
My wife and I worked in some Red Cross shelters in Lake Charles, LA in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. I wrote a bit about what I was doing here: http://arstechnica.com/security/2005/10/disaster-livecd/ My take-away from that is that I would never, ever donate a dime to that organization. The people in the local chapters who were the first to respond immediately after the disaster were fantastic. But when the nat…
Just think the impact that would have had if it had been divided up and given directly to each Haitian adult. The adult population of Haiti is roughly 6 million, so we're talking about almost $100 per adult Haitian. Roughly, it's about 1/8 of the per capita GDP of Haiti. Imagine what you could if you were a poor American and received 1/8 of the American per capita GDP after a disaster (~6000 USD). That's a new roof,…
Maybe not as much as you'd think. Haiti doesn't have goods for ready cash. Most of the relief issue was shipping goods into the country where needed.