Mr Pink would not approve of this jester

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j8...ox/28t9oox.jpg

Update from Seth -- Donations are at $38,000

I'm thinking if people want to spend their hard earned money on whatever they wish, they most certainly can. What someone sees as a piss poor investment don't necessarily equate to what the giver sees it as.

Point is people have the right to spend however much they wish on what they wish and to derive whatever level of satisfaction from it as they wish. Quit talking like "we have spent" when in reality they have spent their own money.

People have the right to spend their money however they want. And I have the right to call people out for being stupid if months or years later, you find out you weren't donating to what you thought you were donating to.

I'm not saying people can't donate to these things. I'm saying the trend is disturbing. We're so hooked on immediate gratification goodwill that we're starting to devalue organizations that are more likely to make an impact.

I know you're taking some heat in this thread, but I generally agree. I wouldn't go so far as to criticize others' choices, but I'm not a fan of the $50k given to a guy with cancer for a vacation, the $400k given to the bullied bus monitor just because, or this.

It's becoming a weird phenomenon these days (reddit is one of the biggest culprits) to give exorbitant amounts of money to random people who have a touching story. While I appreciate the willingness to give, I do wish it were more focused on improving the world rather than improving the lives of a small handful of people.

Also - another issue with this stuff is that there's little to no accountability. It would be pretty easy to fake a story to get some sympathetic souls to blindly throw money at you.

No, it happens in the real world all the time for people who think critically about how to maximize the impact of their charitable giving rather than throwing it at one story that won't make any real difference in the world.

As a less-sob-story example: you'll have more of an impact if you make a large donation to one organization rather than several smaller ones to multiple organizations. That $10 you give to the Red Cross for Haiti is great, but it costs them $1 (my estimate) just to process the donation. So, if you made ten $10 donations like that, 10% of your donation is lost just to the administrative costs of dealing with so many separate transactions. If you donated $100 all at once, it'd still just cost $1, so only 1% would be lost. (This is an over-simplified example, but the principle is definitely true.)

Don't get me wrong - anything that gets people to think of how they can help others is great. But there are ways to do it that make sure you're getting more bang for your buck, so to speak, and the OP isn't it.

What is the cash overhead of your charity? How well is it managed? What 70% of cash donated goes to expenses?

People obviously want to donate. Go ****ing earn that dollar and quit bitching about how people help others. FFS I saw this shit with the March of Crimes, United Pay and other big outfits paying a multitude of bureaucratic salaries and expecting to make payroll on name ID alone. The money was never theirs to begin with. Adhering to that principle is usually a good idea in charity work.

You've convinced me, I ain't giving to shit. They are all shady.

I find the OP to be a compelling story of good will. Good for them & it's an uplifting sperit for the person that recieved the tip of $500 cash was really freaking cool.


Now on a side note: if anyone would like to donate there monies to the KC Tattoo Foundation I assure you it would go for a good cause and be greatly appreciated thank you o:-)

"Expenses" is a tricky topic. Because larger organizations are going to have more bureaucratic waste and I think people forget that these nonprofits are essentially businesses. You have to invest in your business in order to maximize its impact. I work for more local boards where expenses are typically kept lower. About 80% goes toward funding programs. That shouldn't make people believe that expenses are a bad thing for bigger organizations. People often don't get that you have to invest in marketing to get donorship, and for bigger organizations, the brand of that group is critical toward getting grassroots donations and volunteering. You have to invest in better technology and pay better salaries to better managers, because that enables you to make your organization more efficiently. The Red Cross has an insane expense and cost structure, but anyone who's ever coordinated a blood drive or a disaster relief site with them knows that they are incredibly efficient. Their expense allows them to collect blood at a rate nobody could do on their own without massive investment. Same with disaster relief. Let's also not forget that most organizations have the volunteer support of a board of extremely qualified business professionals.

It's like this. If you donate $50 to some guy who's going to volunteer for disaster relief vs. $50 to the Red Cross... sure, your $50 is going directly to charity without the expenses. But you don't know if he's going to use that $50 to pay for his meals or to go boozing at night. In many cases, those volunteers spend the entire month learning what to do (and end up being unproductive, even if they're trying hard) while experienced volunteers are able to crank out a ton of work.

So while I appreciate grassroots groups. They don't match the experience of an organization that's done it for a long time. And at least they have to report every dollar they spend their money on. People are free to donate to whatever they want. I'm just saying they should be careful and be better educated to if you're actually impacting anything.

I have gone and ****ing earned those dollars. I donate a portion of my paycheck to the United Way and donate a good percent of my income on charity in general. I volunteer over 100 hours a year to local charities. I have raised thousands of dollars for charity events. So yes, I know how damn hard it is to raise money and think I have a right to have a voice in this.

To your second point, while I'm not the biggest fan of The United Way, it's exactly this mentality that is hurting donations. There's almost a level of arrogance about how much people know. That big organizations shouldn't invest in expenses or management talent or marketing. Actually, the bigger you get, the more important those things become and it saves the organization a lot of money even if they're considered "expenses." If that bothers you, then donate local. But it's ridiculous to suggest that large nonprofits shouldn't have higher expense structures, nor should it shy people away from donating to them. These large organizations can impact in ways small organizations cannot and they require the ability to cover administrative costs to do that.

good for them.

Yup. If you want to make a donation that goes 100% to helping people, go give it to the drunk homeless guy on the street corner and see how much good that does the world.

If you want to really make a difference, donate to a group that provides treatment programs to alcoholics. They may have a bunch of "overhead" for the buildings and staff, but if you want a program to be well-run, you need people who know what they're doing. Staff in the nonprofit sector are people like anyone else, and they don't generally work for free (aside from volunteers, who are great, but can't put in 40 hours a week).

(And for the record, I don't work for a nonprofit, nor do I know anyone well who does. I just get sick of all the misconceptions that people have who have never seriously done their homework.)

Agreed. Thanks for the comments. The responses to this thread show how much misinformation is out there. And it's really sad that a large organization like the boys and girls club (that reports every single thing they do to its minute detail) gets more scrutiny than grassroots efforts.

People are free to spend on whatever they like. I would wish and hope that people at least cared a little bit about impact and would actually do the homework on what they are impacting. Like I said, for all we know, this family is pocketing some of this money. Or maybe one day tipping their friends.