How Do I Choose Who Gets The Charitable Donation?
I am a fundraising professional. I tend to run on a bit. Following is a course in responsible giving. In general, if you are giving to local charities, or to local branches of national charities but which manage their own local campaigns, probably 80 to 90% of your gift is going to direct services, with only that small percentage to non-program overhead and fundraising costs (which also need to be funded, so don’t turn your nose up at it. Your hundred bucks might be paying for lunch where they schmooze a $100,000 gift). The media are hugely overfocussed on “how much of your money goes to services.” These stories do enormous damage to legit nfps, because it makes people think we’re all crooks. This kind of abuse really only happens (yes there are probably exceptions) in national campaigns that are run by for-profit events managers, doing things like national AIDS, Breast cancer, etc campaigns. Even there, most reputable, well known charities like ASPCA, Susan Komen, even Red Cross (whic
