Charities - overhead vs programs

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tedster
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Post by tedster »

what do you think of Centraide, a sort of group fund raiser! Or a library?
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Post by brucecohen »

tedster wrote:what do you think of Centraide, a sort of group fund raiser! Or a library?
Isn't Centraide Quebec's version of United Way? UW is an umbrella group that raises money and then divides it among a wide range of charities, big and small.

I was shocked in the latter '90s when the person responsible for handling a mutual fund company's charitable giving told me that, without consultation, United Way gives each financial organization in Toronto a fundraising quota for the company's employees. The expectation is that if the employee campaign falls short, the company or individual senior executives will make up the difference. That's exactly what happened at this fundco -- the top guys ponied up. No kneecaps got broken. :(

Aside from one time when a friend was a volunteer industry chairman, I've never given money to United Way because I want to direct my money to specific organizations whose work I value.
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Post by Taggart »

jiHymas wrote:
Taggart wrote:The message I'm receiving from both threads is that all you have to do is look at the accounting statements for the charity involved, and one should be able to figure out which are the charities worth donating to.
I'd suggest that investing in a charity is similar investing in any other company - the fact that the pay-off is less tangible makes things a little harder, but does not alter the basic situation.

Accounting statements are a good start, but will not include such information as "Office Supplies are purchased from the President's brother-in-Law at triple price".

I'd suggest the success ratio (as defined by 'how closely what you are doing resembles what you want to do') is similar to investment success as well.
Agree with what you say.

By the way, there was a response to The Star from Elizabeth Tromp of the CRA:

Federal agency regulates charities

Dec. 13, 2006. 01:00 AM

Your editorial implies that there is currently no regulator that collects information about charities and makes it public. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regulates registered charities under the Income Tax Act and is committed to providing donors with relevant information. The CRA collects information from charities each year and posts it on our website for the public to access.

Donors can research the CRA's charities listings, which provide information about all registered charities in Canada. Using the listings, donors can verify whether a charity is registered with the CRA and therefore eligible to issue official receipts for income tax purposes.

Elizabeth Tromp,

Director General,

Charities Directorate,

Canada Revenue Agency, Ottawa
jiHymas
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Post by jiHymas »

BruceCohen wrote:
tedster wrote:what do you think of Centraide, a sort of group fund raiser! Or a library?
Isn't Centraide Quebec's version of United Way? UW is an umbrella group that raises money and then divides it among a wide range of charities, big and small.

...

Aside from one time when a friend was a volunteer industry chairman, I've never given money to United Way because I want to direct my money to specific organizations whose work I value.
There are a lot of Centraides listed at the United Way site. Assuming that tedster's Centraide is one of them and that all the various Canadian constituents operate in more-or-less the same way .... well, it's basically an index fund, isn't it? It will be popular for the same reasons index funds are popular and have corresponding strengths and weaknesses.

Libraries are always a good choice, particularly if you can give them books, not cash. I'm a member of Friends of Freddy!
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Post by Leprosy Worker »

Hi Foks,

I am the Director of Fundraising at The Leprosy Mission Canada. Yoder had asked me to respond and I have to agree about the site. Good polite discussion. My post is going to be long, so please bear with me.

On the issue of the money, lets dive right in. Yoder has already covered a lot of what the money goes to, so I will just go over a few other points.

The actual medication needed to kill the leprosy bacteria is a three part drug plan called multi drug therapy (MDT) using Clofazamine, Dapsone and Rifampicin. Treatment can range from 6 months to over 2 years depending on how advanced the disease is. We average the time out to 1 year for our 2 minute commercials.

The MDT is provided free of charge by the Novartis foundation to the World Health Organization who provides it to the countries who need it. From there, it comes to the hospitals. However, the actual medicine is the smaller part of the treatment. I am going to paste in a summary of everything that goes into the treatment.

• Diagnosis (including securing skin smears that are examined by our lab technicians to confirm the visual diagnosis, and to determine the severity of the infection.)
• Ordering the MDT drugs from the national government (and sometimes paying for a supply separately, because the “free” supply is disrupted)
• Administration of the drugs to the patients. This is important, because the MDT has its own side effects, which are sometimes quite unpleasant. Some patients stop the regimen part-way through, and then later succumb to the disease in an even worse way.
• Monitoring for drug reaction (both allergies, and nerve reactions that can be both painful, and dangerous to the affected nerves require additional medication that is not provided free.)
• Hospital Care, which includes salaries for Doctors and Nurses to diagnose, care for and look after patients who are receiving the cure. It also includes surgery and specialized medication to help with complications resulting from the treatment.
• Reconstructive Surgery, which is more extensive and can mean re-attaching tendons and muscles in different ways to allow for proper movement. This is always followed by physiotherapy.
• Leprosy Control, which involves the detection and diagnosis of the disease as well as ongoing treatment outside of hospitals.
• Prevention of Disability is crucial in helping those who are recovering. The nerves are already damaged, but the disabilities do not have to occur if we can work with the patient, involve them in self help groups, assist them with physiotherapists and give them the prosthetic limbs and devices they need to function.
• Education is equally important, and involves educating the patient, the family and the local community on what leprosy is and what it is not. This allows the leprosy sufferer to re-integrate into their community and increases the chance of an early diagnosis of others who may be affected.
• Eye Care is vital to those whose facial nerves have been destroyed. The blinking reflex is lost and that means that eye problems and blindness are common. This area of care involves diagnosis, medicine and surgery.
• Training of both hospital and local government staff in the detection and treatment of leprosy is ongoing and results in an earlier diagnosis/cure and less disability.
• Vocational training is often the only way to give the leprosy sufferer a means to earn a living after they are cured. This is provided when required.
• Socio-Economic Rehabilitation is a large title meaning that we help the leprosy patient re-integrate into their community through a number of methods. Education and micro enterprise loans are two of the ways your gifts help.

When we calculated the cost in 2006, we looked at four of our hospitals in India, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. We averaged the costs, treatments and converted to Canadian $. We also added a 15% amount for administration and fundraising to the cost. No charity can work for nothing.

I am going to stop here since this is getting too long. If you have any other questions or thoughts about The Leprosy Mission Canada, my e-mail is gwaterman@leprosy.ca or just post here and I will try to check back.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond.
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Post by Keithm »

It appears that MADD has had the bright lights focused on their cost of fund raising :oops:
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Post by Bylo Selhi »

Murky books leave donors with questions [my bold]
Fundraising can be expensive. For example, Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation held two lotteries last year which raised $60.6-million. However, the costs associated with the lotteries totalled $42-million, leaving roughly $18.5-million in net proceeds to the foundation.
So more than 2/3 of the funds raised were spent on fundraising :shock: Imagine if some of that $42M had actually gone to good works.

And no wonder when there are 83,000 charities [plus who knows how many unregistered ones like Greenpeace] vying for fundraisers to better separate us from our donations:
Bob Wyatt, executive director of the Muttart Foundation, said regulation might only increase the burden on volunteers, who run most of Canada's 83,000 registered charities. He said it might be worth examining the British system, where large organizations are required to provide more detailed financial disclosure than their smaller counterparts. The 80-20 spending rule established by government should also be scrutinized, he said. "The reality is that the cost of fundraising . . . has been increasing since those rules were established in the early eighties. There's more competition, salaries have gone up," he said. "Is the 80-20 split still appropriate? According to the latest study that looked at this, no."
Why do we need 83,000 charities in Canada? What does number 83,000 do that's different from what at least one of the other 82,999 already do?

Presumably Canadians have a finite amount of money available for charitable donations. Do the charities have any responsibility to ensure that the vast majority of that resource is actually spent on good works rather than running lotteries and inflating the salaries of those who run them?
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Shakespeare
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Post by Shakespeare »

So more than 2/3 of the funds raised were spent on fundraising Shocked Imagine if some of that $42M had actually gone to good works.
Lotteries have prizes. Prizes cost money. The amount of the gross that went to prizes isn't stated, but may well be most of the "expenses" in a poorly-written article.
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Post by jiHymas »

Bylo Selhi wrote:Presumably Canadians have a finite amount of money available for charitable donations. Do the charities have any responsibility to ensure that the vast majority of that resource is actually spent on good works rather than running lotteries and inflating the salaries of those who run them?
There are legal requirements that must be met, but otherwise, no, they don't have any such responsibility. Why should they?

Charities should be constrained only by need to get money from willing donors. If they find willing donors, they can devote their funds to anything they like. The point of a charity is that it does ... something ... that the government should not or can not or will not do. If it's over-regulated, there's no point in having the sector, let's just make everything a government programme.
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Post by Jo Anne »

Fundraising can be expensive. For example, Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation held two lotteries last year which raised $60.6-million. However, the costs associated with the lotteries totalled $42-million, leaving roughly $18.5-million in net proceeds to the foundation.
When you buy one of those lottery tickets, you are not making a donation.

And, the ticket purchases are not tax deductible. Big difference.
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Post by Bylo Selhi »

Jo Anne wrote:
Fundraising can be expensive. For example, Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation held two lotteries last year which raised $60.6-million. However, the costs associated with the lotteries totalled $42-million, leaving roughly $18.5-million in net proceeds to the foundation.
When you buy one of those lottery tickets, you are not making a donation.

And, the ticket purchases are not tax deductible. Big difference.
I understand that. At least taxpayers aren't subsidizing lottery players with tax credits. But presuming that the public has a limited amount of money to spend on charitable contributions, then $42M gets syphoned off on lotteries rather than good works.

BTW, based on your PMH link, assuming this year's lottery numbers are comparable, there will be $14M in prize money out of $60M gambled. That means $60M - $14M - $19M = $27M -- almost half of the money wagered -- will go to fundraising and other frictional costs. Surely there are more efficient ways to raise money for charitable works. Surely there's a responsibility for the media, and even members on this forum, to draw these numbers to the public's attention.
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Shakespeare
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Post by Shakespeare »

Surely there are more efficient ways to raise money for charitable works.
People who won't make a donation will buy lottery tickets.
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Post by jiHymas »

Bylo Selhi wrote:Surely there's a responsibility for the media, and even members on this forum, to draw these numbers to the public's attention.
Absolutely none whatsoever. Nobody is paying me to accept responsibility for such a task.

I suggest you start a charity that has such a task as its mission statement and pay me a lot of money from the takings. I will then exert all my efforts to draw these numbers to the public's attention.

As for the media - there's quite enough preachiness already, thank you very much. Any more and I'll cancel my subscription.
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Post by xerxes »

Most telemarketing firms (phone solicitation) charge 70% costs. They raise $1,000,000 you pay them $700,000 and you receive a net of $300,000.
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Post by Bylo Selhi »

jiHymas wrote:
Bylo Selhi wrote:Surely there's a responsibility for the media, and even members on this forum, to draw these numbers to the public's attention.
Absolutely none whatsoever. Nobody is paying me to accept responsibility for such a task.
Feel free to be irresponsible. It's your right ;)
As for the media - there's quite enough preachiness already, thank you very much. Any more and I'll cancel my subscription.
Again, it's your right to read only the National Post and the Western Standard if you so choose (for as long as they remain financially viable) :D

IMO (and it's an opinion only) there's something "wrong" about a system that exacts ~70% in frictional costs to extract the other 30%, particularly when it justifies it as a noble cause. While folks are correct that lottery tickets don't give rise to tax credits, in more conventional charitable fundraising they do. We can debate whether Ottawa should subsidize charitable donations at all, but given that they do, something definitely feels wrong (to me) about taxpayers subsidizing the 70% (or 80% as alleged for MADD) of donations that end up in fundraisers' pockets. Next thing financial advisers and mutual fund managers will want the same sort of subsidy on the grounds that they do good and noble work for their clients ;)
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Post by WishingWealth »

From recollection in a Star story of a few years back, the issue of too much money going to the fund raisers was 'raised' and the explanation from the charities and the FR was the following:*
Few people volunteering for charities accept to do telemarketing or fund raising. Au contraire, they simply run away at the mere mention. It was proven again and again they (the volunteers) also do a lousy job.
And in the end, the 20% the charities get from the FR exceeds whatever amount they could raise themselves.

So long story short, I also find the FR take a cut that is way way too high but I don't have an easy one liner answer.

Except to say the governement should not give a tax deduction/refund for any charities or church or political party.
Not a fu.... cent back.

You can afford now to give $60.00; in 'my system' you'd shell out $60.00 to the charity of your choice. Not $100.00 with $40.00 back in May.

IMVVHO

WW

* that point was probably raised in one or the other threads on the subject.
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Post by Jo Anne »

WishingWealth wrote:Few people volunteering for charities accept to do telemarketing or fund raising. Au contraire, they simply run away at the mere mention. It was proven again and again they (the volunteers) also do a lousy job.
Anybody here ever done any door-to-door canvassing for charity? I have, and I can tell you that it's a thankless task. You don't exactly get doors slammed in your face, but it's close. Charities can't possibly make much money doing that.

I've known for a long time that the hospital lotteries only made ~30% for the hospitals. But what they end up with is a lot of money - money that they wouldn't otherwise be able to raise. And it's raised without the hospital actually doing much, other than contracting out the work.

My mother used to buy the Princess Margaret tickets every year. She won something about half the time. Usually small stuff like VCRs.
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Post by jiHymas »

Bylo Selhi wrote:
jiHymas wrote:
Bylo Selhi wrote:Surely there's a responsibility for the media, and even members on this forum, to draw these numbers to the public's attention.
Absolutely none whatsoever. Nobody is paying me to accept responsibility for such a task.
Feel free to be irresponsible. It's your right ;)
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Bylo Selhi wrote:
jiHymas wrote:As for the media - there's quite enough preachiness already, thank you very much. Any more and I'll cancel my subscription.
Again, it's your right to read only the National Post and the Western Standard if you so choose (for as long as they remain financially viable) :D
You consider these to be preach-free journals, do you? Try reading them sometime.
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Post by dusty2 »

What a lot of the lottery sellers do, with the scratch and win tickets, is to find out the difference, in the box, at the bottom of the ticket, which reads either 'try again' or the prize won. They rub it with a pin, to remove the covering, but keep it hidden and separate the winners from the rest. It's a easy scam, almost undetectable.
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Post by brucecohen »

Might this be a new high (or low)?

It seems that every week my wife gets a donation solicitation from the Canadian Wildlife Federation. OK, that's an exaggeration -- every two weeks.

They've sent greeting cards and calendars and photos and God knows what else. (Heather can't remember when she gave them money, if ever)

The latest envelope contained -- suitable for framing -- a certificate of appreciation. Even has her name on it. Declares: "Your generosity makes such a difference."

CWF's 2006 return on the CRA site says they raised $11.9 million and spent $6.8 million on advertising and promotion. Their "charitable" activities seem to be producing materials for use in schools (maybe for sale to schools a la MADD) and sponsoring wingdings for teachers.
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Post by Come on Eileen »

Avoid like the plague: CBMI (Christian Blind Mission International) I made the mistake of giving them one small donation about a decade ago. They insist on sending me elaborate packages of material at least every three months, despite my written request that they desist. They will not get a penny more from me. I do not support incompetence.

Check out the SickKids foundation; expenses are approximately 50% of revenues. Those slick tearjerker TV ads don't get made for nothing, you know!
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Post by Bylo Selhi »

Charity scams bust public trust
The federal government has consistently failed to protect the public from fraudulent and misleading charities, a Star investigation shows. Bogus charities that prey on donors' heartstrings are frequently licensed and allowed to carry on fundraising for many years before they are shut down, if they are shut down at all. They organize campaigns that promise they are raising money for such causes as missing, dying and abused children; local poverty; conquering AIDS in Africa; medical conditions such as Parkinson's Disease and asthma; helping the lives of animals; or saving human souls. Instead, the owners line their pockets with charitable dollars, pay high costs to fundraisers or simply waste the funds...

The federal government operates the Charities Directorate, part of the Canada Revenue Agency. Charities are tax exempt and can issue federal tax receipts to donors. Provincial authorities, usually through the Public Guardian's office, also have the power to step in and take a charity to court if it is doing something wrong. The guardians across Canada rarely take action. The Star found the primary regulator, the federal Charities Directorate, is virtually powerless to deal with problem charities. To begin, tax law forbids it from warning the public about bogus or wayward charities. The directorate, which is part of the Canada Revenue Agency, treats charities the same way the taxman treats personal taxpayers. So, even when auditors have found a charity is doing little or no good work at all they cannot tell the public...
[my bold]
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Post by WishingWealth »

Reinforces my thoughts on the whole thing: Cancel 'em (tax deductions) all.

WW
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Post by tedster »

JHymas said
For a tax deduction? Why not drop by one of these places that you've supported in the past and tell them flat out that you're not going to give them money for general revenue, but that you will sponsor ... fresh paint? a new roof? a summer picnic? dental work? anything else that probably won't get done otherwise? ... if you get a receipt. See what happens
You know I did exactly this and it really works. So the $$ has done some good and Stephen Harper doesn't get it. Thanks
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Post by tedster »

Ooops sorry JiHymas said.
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