Comments on: How Much Of Your Donation Makes It To The Charity? http://weakonomics.com/2009/12/28/how-much-of-your-donation-makes-it-to-the-charity/ Everything That's Wrong With You And Your Money Wed, 23 May 2012 01:09:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Dog house http://weakonomics.com/2009/12/28/how-much-of-your-donation-makes-it-to-the-charity/comment-page-1/#comment-5996 Dog house Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:32:00 +0000 http://weakonomics.com/?p=3606#comment-5996 The nonprofit that hires a fundraiser survives to make an impact and those that don't struggle along or disappear altogether. The animal foundations that actively solicit funds make lots of money to help dogs. Those that don't have a hard time even letting the public know they exist. I fail to see how a serious charity can get by on 10% of donations going towards their admin, fundraising and anything else they need to get done and don't have the free labor of volunteers to do it for them.. perhaps it's easier when the numbers get bigger but half our money goes to fundraisers to go out and bring our money in. The alternative is to sit and wait for someone to donate to us while the big charities hog all the attention. If they solved all the problems, I wouldn't care but they don't which makes our existence necessary.   The nonprofit that hires a fundraiser survives to make an impact and those that don’t struggle along or disappear altogether. The animal foundations that actively solicit funds make lots of money to help dogs. Those that don’t have a hard time even letting the public know they exist. I fail to see how a serious charity can get by on 10% of donations going towards their admin, fundraising and anything else they need to get done and don’t have the free labor of volunteers to do it for them.. perhaps it’s easier when the numbers get bigger but half our money goes to fundraisers to go out and bring our money in. The alternative is to sit and wait for someone to donate to us while the big charities hog all the attention. If they solved all the problems, I wouldn’t care but they don’t which makes our existence necessary.  

]]> By: Kevin M http://weakonomics.com/2009/12/28/how-much-of-your-donation-makes-it-to-the-charity/comment-page-1/#comment-3415 Kevin M Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:49:58 +0000 http://weakonomics.com/?p=3606#comment-3415 Most charities have a public disclosure policy for their Form 990 (information return filed with the IRS). If you're in doubt, you can always ask to see that. Pay attention to page 1, where all the revenue and expenses are shown. You can do a quick calculation to see how much of their revenue actually goes to the cause. I personally use guidestar.org (requires free registration) but my guess is Charity Navigator does basically the same thing. Most charities have a public disclosure policy for their Form 990 (information return filed with the IRS). If you’re in doubt, you can always ask to see that. Pay attention to page 1, where all the revenue and expenses are shown. You can do a quick calculation to see how much of their revenue actually goes to the cause.

I personally use guidestar.org (requires free registration) but my guess is Charity Navigator does basically the same thing.

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