I have prepped some tax returns for non profits (990) in the usa, and all are publicly available on guidestar.org and you can see the amount paid to the board and key employees like ceo. It would be cool if the information was easier to compare.
Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
51–60 of 64 posts
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really need an answer or are you as guilty as they are?
It's a reasonable request. Readers who see the charity to be named named may also donate to them, and seeing such a claim would make readers think twice and perhaps make their donations elsewhere.
There is almost a zero percent chance of other people here being from the small town I'm from.
Naming them doesn't do any good, because the national charity does really good work in a lot of places.
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people post comments like this and not name the offenders?
To be fair, without evidence such name-calling would not be helpful. Not talking about a specific local chapter of a single charity and instead focusing on the problem in general seems to be more helpful in this context.
Exactly. And the national charity for this example does really good work in a lot of places. Like I said, I think it's just how the local chapter is organized.
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#54"charity spent millions to raise thousands" is a very usual way of tax evasion. The charity owner has parties with friends and family as guests. This is taxes as "charitable work". Can this be improved? Yes, this was going to be improved but the politicians were invited to a fundraiser where they got good food and some freebies. And then it stopped. Or something like that...
Susan G Koman is infamous for this. So many people assume money raised is for cancer research, when it's actually meant for awareness. Yes yes, we're well aware that breast cancer exists. Let's cure it with the money instead.
That is infuriating!
It also seems to not be true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1508105/
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#55If you want to see a whole documentary that really outlines and emphasizes this point, the ‘Telemarketers’ documentary follows a few workers for a police lodge hotline that also keeps 90% of the revenue for themselves.
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#56Unfortunately, prosecutors rarely go after nonprofits for fraud. This has led most grifters into the nonprofit sector.
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#57There are lots of apps to plan and track one's investments. Maybe there should be an app to track one's donations too. If I could see a history of what was the ROI (in terms of money spent on actual programs) of my monthly donations, and also easily reallocate those donations to other charities, I'd certainly check up on that app every once in a while.
I believe this is the idea of effective altruism.
I believe part of it is about measuring quantitative indicators of program quality, but they also seem to go for the more fraught project of trying to put a dollar figure on the value of the outcomes. Or a “quality-adjusted life years” figure, or whatever have you.
It feels like that frame of mind selects for a very specific sense of success.
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Susan G Koman is infamous for this. So many people assume money raised is for cancer research, when it's actually meant for awareness. Yes yes, we're well aware that breast cancer exists. Let's cure it with the money instead.
That is infuriating! It also seems to not be true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1508105/
I don’t see how that (which is written by the Susan Komen foundation) is a viable source for disagreeing with OP. It also clearly says they use the funds for shaping public policy (in addition to grants)
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#59Only donate to smaller non-profits, get to know them first, find out if the administrators take any income from the non-profit, then make up your mind to donate or not. For example, one charity I like [0] runs a school and the administrators don't take any income from it. [0] https://www.dominino.de/spenden-helfen
Smaller non-profits are _way_ more likely to poorly use your funds, especially if they fundraise. Use charity navigator or other reputable organizations to see if a charity you want to support uses your funds well or not.
Some non-profits only pay salaries of employees, but spend the vast majority of their time and money on their fundraising events, which are just ways for rich people to throw parties for free. In that case, they'd still pass your test.
People who work at non-profits deserve to be paid a similar salary to what they'd be paid in the private sector. The important part is that a non-profit should be using the majority of their funds on their mission (and that may require the majority of the funds going to the workers, depending on the mission).
Re: Some fundraisers pay >90% of the funds to themselves
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is infuriating! It also seems to not be true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1508105/
I don’t see how that (which is written by the Susan Komen foundation) is a viable source for disagreeing with OP. It also clearly says they use the funds for shaping public policy (in addition to grants)
The comment I'm replying to strongly implies that Susan G Komen funds are NOT used for research.
According to LOTS of links hosted on many credible sites, that is false.
E.g. "Yes yes, we're well aware that breast cancer exists. Let's cure it with the money instead" is negative snark and appears to be completely unjustified.