The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
nytimes.com
The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#2It's not that complicated: If you are collecting donations from people (i.e. they give you something for nothing), then you must not make a profile.
If you are getting your money in other ways, then go for it.
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#3It's not that complicated: If you are collecting donations from people (i.e. they give you something for nothing), then you must not make a profile. If you are getting your money in other ways, then go for it.
They're aren't giving you something for nothing. They are giving you something so you can help the people that the charity benefits. That's the service he (Pallotta) provides.
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#4It's not that complicated: If you are collecting donations from people (i.e. they give you something for nothing), then you must not make a profile. If you are getting your money in other ways, then go for it.
It's not that obvious where to draw the line. Executives of charities need to get paid. And because charities deal with large amounts of money, mismanagement can be very costly. By increasing the salary of the executives you can get more qualified people. As a result, the charity becomes more efficient and effective and everybody's happy.
Often charities have billions (?) of capital. If they hire a local private bank to look after the money they will have to pay for it, and the bankers will be driving porches. But if they manage the capital in house they suddenly can't compensate people for it similarly, because they're still a charity?
Charity.
Raise money: OK
Spend money: OK
Save money, use part of savings as bonus: Evil?
I haven't really thought this through, so my logic could be flawed. Still, I think that most charities should become more business-like. (Good) Businesses are, after all, all about creating value.
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#5Wow. An editorial on the NY that makes significant economic sense and goes against the liberal ideology. This is a first.
On the op-ed itself. I don't understand why anybody considers profit evil if said profit is not gotten through fraud or coercion. Exactly what is so evil about making money? Furthermore, all donations to charity are completely voluntary and private. Whether for-profit charities are evil or not is not something to the public at large to decide. We have no business passing judgment on any charity unless we happen to be one of the donors (and even then, clauses from their contracts apply). Lastly: if I was donating to a charity, I would not be concerned by how much they got in profit or how much their chief manager was paid. I would be interested in what I was giving them money for: how effective they were is helping the people they claimed to help.
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#6Wow. An editorial on the NY that makes significant economic sense and goes against the liberal ideology. This is a first. On the op-ed itself. I don't understand why anybody considers profit evil if said profit is not gotten through fraud or coercion. Exactly what is so evil about making money? Furthermore, all donations to charity are completely voluntary and private . Whether for-profit charities are evil or not is…
Give NYT some credit, in the sense that not all their opinion pieces must adhere to some liberal ideology. As you mentioned, it is an "op-ed", not the NYT editorial board. The very fact that they have William Kristol as a regular columnist says a lot.
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#7Renumeration is tricky for charities.
In a public company, and to a large extent a private company, the bottom line is the bottom line. Investors invest, and they want money out of it. As long as it's legal, anything goes to get that profit.
In a charity the bottom line is providing some much less tangible benefit to someone or something. The bottom line is a much fuzzier concept. The benefit is harder to gauge than when you're just looking at a number of currency units.
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#8It's not that complicated: If you are collecting donations from people (i.e. they give you something for nothing), then you must not make a profile. If you are getting your money in other ways, then go for it.
It's not that obvious where to draw the line. Executives of charities need to get paid. And because charities deal with large amounts of money, mismanagement can be very costly. By increasing the salary of the executives you can get more qualified people. As a result, the charity becomes more efficient and effective and everybody's happy. Often charities have billions (?) of capital. If they hire a local private bank…
No, they are paying people to make more money with investments or whatever - that's fine, do what you want - the money comes from the investment income, it doesn't matter if it's inhouse or out.
But if you pay people from donations directly then it's not OK to pay a lot.
Are you paying people to get more donations (no good), or are you paying people to make more money in some other way - including by saving you money (...more efficient and effective....), then it's fine.
Basically if by paying people you will end up needing to collect less donations - or you use those more effectively, then I'm fine with it.
But if you pay people to work on methods of getting more donations in the first place, then I'm not OK with it (if it's excessive, more then a few %) - even if it means you have more money in total.
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#9It's not that complicated: If you are collecting donations from people (i.e. they give you something for nothing), then you must not make a profile. If you are getting your money in other ways, then go for it.
They're aren't giving you something for nothing. They are giving you something so you can help the people that the charity benefits. That's the service he (Pallotta) provides.
Missed the point.
Obviously they want you to use the money that way, but that's the only thing you should use it for, you should not use to get more money.
But if you provided a service (not something for nothing), then it's like any other business.
Re: The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
#10Renumeration is tricky for charities. In a public company, and to a large extent a private company, the bottom line is the bottom line. Investors invest, and they want money out of it. As long as it's legal, anything goes to get that profit. In a charity the bottom line is providing some much less tangible benefit to someone or something. The bottom line is a much fuzzier concept. The benefit is harder to gauge than…
Indeed. People give money to charities because they want to help a cause, not because they want to help the chief executive get paid lots of money.