Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501
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.
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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.)