Unfortunately, in my experience a lot of talk of charity overheads is just a way of rationalizing tight fistedness. Quick bit of math: 10 bucks to a charity with 90% overheads has one buck worth of value more than sitting on a 100 bucks waiting for the ideal charity.
I, for example, could probably give 10x more to charity before I felt the pinch. I should probably just do that instead of pontificating on mailing lists. :-) -- b On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:48 AM, Deepak Shenoy <deepakshe...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Ingrid Srinath > <ingrid.srin...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Deepak, >> >> Here are a couple of devil's advocate scenarios: >> >> Charity J: Spends virtually nothing on donor acquisition, brand building, >> policy advocacy, professional staff, technology or monitoring and >> evaluation. Deploys virtually the entirety of the small sums they collect to >> feed starving children. Saves their lives but does nothing to expand the >> number of lives they can save or to prevent more children from being reduced >> to starvation. >> >> Charity Q: Spends about 50% of their revenues on expanding their donor base, >> auditing programmes to improve effectiveness/efficiency, building knowledge >> on causes of and remedies to poverty. Consequently, reaches greater numbers >> of children with greater effectiveness each year, changes policies that >> cause poverty or prevent its reduction, develops programme innovations that >> are widely replicated by other charities and governments. >> >> Which would you choose to support? Would it be the latter subject to say, a >> 30% cap on 'overheads'? > > But that's what I call the problem with overheads per se. You have to > get more detailed. I have seen brochures from large NGOs and annual > reports printed on very expensive paper. I've seen NGO seniors travel > "J" class on flights, billed to the NGO (non international, in the > late 90s). One of the "building knowledge" pieces involved a sojourn > to Goa for a large number of people in Fort Aguada or some such > resort. This is not great ways to spend money; you might actually > reach more people this way, but it is at a substantially higher cost, > and it might be more efficient forme to find 10s of Charity J's to > spend on. > > I would say that Charity Q is doing a disservice by not substantially > optimizing costs to stay under 20%/30% ranges, or plan to do so in the > near term. I would like to see more efficient spending by them, > instead of just attempting to make the programs they sponsor more > effective. I mean that if you have 10 people in Fort Aguada for a week > at 10K per person per night, to make a program that costs Rs. 50 lakh > more efficient by 10%, you might as well ditch the Aguada trip and > give them the Rs. 6 lakh extra. > >> By the way, one simple way to help a charity lower its fundraising costs is >> to pledge long-term support. > > Agreed. Thats why Payroll giving works so well (in the west at least). > There's also a theory that instead of doign the spray and pray you > should find one cause and give enough to do it justice. Like building > one school, funding one old age home etc. >
