Money laundering country for the criminals of the whole world.
$3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year
81–88 of 88 posts
Re: $3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year
#82For five years, I ran a healthcare nonprofit, and the problem is much worse than you think. For C3 nonprofits, for which donations are tax deductible, you have a lot of rich people who just flush cash through them to take is a tax deduction. Then they dictate to the nonprofit what political issues they want pursued. Executives are paid exorbitant salaries, and very little actually goes to what it is intended. Many of the nonprofits that I worked with claim each other's work, when there's a victory, they claim it as their own, and they relentlessly fundraisers so they can pay themselves more. The c3 system is desperately in need of an overhaul.
Re: $3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year
#83For anyone even more skeptical of where your money goes when you donate to a nonprofit, there are plenty of resources out there for researching this. CharityNavigator is a popular one, but I donate primarily to GiveWell: https://www.givewell.org
It's a start, but it's woefully inadequate. Just take the ARRL, which is supposed to be a nonprofit organization for ham radio. They waste money on lobbyists working on absolutely pointless endeavors, and achieve nothing. But don't worry, all of the executives are well paid.
Re: $3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year
#84I recently had to get surgery at a local hospital with a cross on top and named after a saint. As I waited for my appointment, I noticed the walls were covered with quotes from donors. The lady who was working the desk was an unpaid volunteer from a local church. Out of curiosity, I looked up the financials for the hospital and saw that the board of directors and various executives (around 12 people) were pulling in…
wait, are you saying a hospital that charges 60K for surgery is a charity? because it cheaper than other options or what?
IKEA is a charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichting_INGKA_Foundation
Re: $3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what respect did you work with them? What is your main complaint? As far as I know, top GiveWell charities give malaria nets and stuff and it saves lives at fairly efficient rates.
Malaria nets are band-aids, what really needs to happen is building up institutions and infrastructure that make the nets unnecessary.
Saving lives is valuable even if the underlying causes of international poverty persist.
Re: $3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year
#86I believe that many (most?) non-profits are a combination of grift and money laundering. I would love to see requirements that 75%+ of all non-profit revenue has to pass through to the community, that non-profits may not transfer funds to other non-profits, and that directors and officers cannot be compensated and have very modest limits on expenses.
It seems to me that there's a strong Pareto law inclination to this. 99% of non-profits are going to the local volley ball club type organizations that indeed don't make any money at all, or maybe a few hundred at most. I am in the board of a local chess club and you should see the amount of discussion that sometimes happens around a budget of no more than the equivalent of several hundred USD. I honestly can't imagi…
I don’t agree but I take your point. After seeing the recent scandals regarding US AID etc. I have very low confidence that the majority of nonprofits have altruistic motives.
I also don’t buy the “most of our money goes to staff and directors salary and expenses because what we do is organize volunteers”. Why? Why can’t the staff and directors be volunteers too? Why do they need to even have any funding if it’s just volunteer coordination? We do lots of complex things with just volunteers- Linux, for example.
And I’m unable to differentiate the behavior of most nonprofit hospitals from for-profit hospitals, with only a few exceptions.
Re: $3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year
#87I recently had to get surgery at a local hospital with a cross on top and named after a saint. As I waited for my appointment, I noticed the walls were covered with quotes from donors. The lady who was working the desk was an unpaid volunteer from a local church. Out of curiosity, I looked up the financials for the hospital and saw that the board of directors and various executives (around 12 people) were pulling in…
wait, are you saying a hospital that charges 60K for surgery is a charity? because it cheaper than other options or what?
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Re: $3T flows through U.S. nonprofits every year
#88I recently had to get surgery at a local hospital with a cross on top and named after a saint. As I waited for my appointment, I noticed the walls were covered with quotes from donors. The lady who was working the desk was an unpaid volunteer from a local church. Out of curiosity, I looked up the financials for the hospital and saw that the board of directors and various executives (around 12 people) were pulling in…
wait, are you saying a hospital that charges 60K for surgery is a charity? because it cheaper than other options or what?
No, it's not cheaper than other options. Pretty much market rate healthcare highway robbery. Afaict, they call themselves a charity because of the cross on top of the building. That's it. Their website mumbled something about helping the community with some sort of program with vague handwaving. Maybe an investigative journalist could figure out what they do that's actually charitable, but based on publicly available information, I could not find much. My sense is people just assume they have good intentions because they named themselves after some saint. Just charity vibes.