Quote:
Originally Posted by Valiant
What is the cash overhead of your charity? How well is it managed? What 70% of cash donated goes to expenses?
|
"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.