Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan9871
According to Charity Ratings | America's Most Independent, Assertive Charity Watchdog | CharityWatch Americares has an overhead of 36%, so only 64% of their funds go to their programs. And they spend $27 to get $100 of donations. They are given a C+ rating.
Charity Watch mentions that in general the accounting rules for a charity don't always give you the info you think they might. Charities often count gifts in kind, i.e. people donating goods instead of money, at a much higher value than than they are worth so that they can inflate the dollar percentage of their donations.
Charity Watch is a pay for service that digs into all of the IRS filings the charity make to analyze how much of dollar donations to the program are actually going to their programs.
In general it is very hard to tell how effective a charity really is.
BTW Charity Watch rates the American Red Cross as a B+. |
Interesting that Red Cross has been called out publicly over their lack of true reporting, but AmeriCares has not? Are you a paying member of Charity Watch, or do they post info for the public. I will check it out. Thanks.
My multi-millionaire Ph.D. BIL gives many thousands of dollars per year to charities. When I told him about AmmeriCares, his response was he's been donating to them for years. One of the things AmeriCares did well with Puerto Rico was get their supplies directly to the people, rather than delivering it to the distribution site, where many supplies languished for lack of transportation. Not that that has anything to do with percent of donations actually going to recipients...
My BIL doesn't give his $ away cavalierly. I'll ask him about his research.