<story><title>A charity that spends a sliver of its money on those it purports to serve</title><url>https://publicintegrity.org/politics/iupa-leorf-police-union-charity-telemarketers/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jeffdavis</author><text>Although this particular case is egregious, I&amp;#x27;d like to point out that donors should not be overly focused on a simplistic view of a charity&amp;#x27;s finances.&lt;p&gt;A charity that only moves money around should of course be pretty efficient about it. But a charity that actually &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt; things faces the same kinds of inefficiencies as any business.&lt;p&gt;For instance, The Nature Conservancy is a charity I like (I&amp;#x27;m not necessarily recommending them -- do your own research). About 2&amp;#x2F;3 of the raised funds go to their actual programs, and the rest is administrative and fundraising.&lt;p&gt;However, they are one of the few large environmental charities that &lt;i&gt;actually does stuff to help the environment, and attracts the expertise to do it well&lt;/i&gt;. The rest are lobbyists and money-shufflers, which I have little patience for when it comes to charities.&lt;p&gt;In other words, I&amp;#x27;m much more tolerant of inefficiency when actually doing something. I think anyone who actually does things would agree that it&amp;#x27;s not always efficient when observed from afar. But in reality it&amp;#x27;s much more efficient to go straight to the people who can do stuff than what other charities do: buy time with Congress, hoping that they will pass laws that will either (a) move some money around in such a way that someone (perhaps someone without much expertise) will do something; or (b) force someone to stop doing something, hoping that they won&amp;#x27;t find a much worse thing to do instead.</text></comment>
<story><title>A charity that spends a sliver of its money on those it purports to serve</title><url>https://publicintegrity.org/politics/iupa-leorf-police-union-charity-telemarketers/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jc01480</author><text>This same scheme applies to any “charity” that does not overtly state 100% of their proceeds are donated.  And it’s not limited to law enforcement associations.  Those commercials you see on TV about starving children, abused animals, suffering refugees, etc. are all complicit.  What really happens: executive level and staff salaries are set at the market level for the association.  All donations go to cover these “costs” throughout the year.  Whatever is left over from these “costs” actually gets donated to their target group.  The donations usually equal about 10% or less of their received funds.  Correlate the executives that run these to other donation groups and you’ll see a pattern of people running them.  Unless 100% of the proceeds go toward the target group is clearly communicated, all you’re doing is paying someone’s salary to run a feel-good effort that actually contributes very little to their target.  And I’m a cop.  Do your research.</text></comment>