i'll disclose information from my professional expereinces that may help to explain why some persons with intimate knowledge/experiences with certain very high profile/well thought of/highly rated (donations going to recipients vs. administration) charities choose not to personaly financialy support these same charities.
when i worked for social services i learned that many well known national/international charities have policies for accessing funds by applicants that not only disadvantages the applicants but disadvantage countless others. by this i mean, when a disaster or personal situation/tragedy occurs and a person/family makes application to these charities they are intialy told that before their application can even be considered they must first apply for and be determined "formaly" ineligible to any local/state or federal public assistance emergency funds.
in my experience these charities would not accept a quick determination by a public assistance professional that the applicant was ineligible (can be done easily with honest disclosure by an applicant in 5-10 minutes), it was required that a formal application and denial take place (can take up to 45 days and requires documentation those whose homes have been damaged/lost are not in a situation to begin to provide, and requires a minimum of 5 hours of dss staff time for all aspects). people were placed into a position where in order to receive housing or assistance they had to somehow manage, at a horrendous time in their lives, to get to a dss office, fill out a barrage of paperwork, and then be told that no initial determination that could be made was deemed acceptable by the charity.
if the family/individual WAS eligible to p.a. emergency funds it was horrendously minimal at best (we could pay maybe $300 for an entire household of belongings), and the funds they drew from were in place to cover a wide variety of emergency situations, but the funds were insanely limited. SO-a person who "could" be served if they were ineligible to p.a. funds for a fire or flood or hurricane by one of the BIG named charities used up the funds such that another person who had a legitimate emergent need that WAS'NT one of the ones covered by one of the big named charites was left out with any means of p.a. or charitable aide (it was routine, in a GOOD year, that our agencie's emergency funds became available in January and were gone by March at the latest
).
for me it made me reccognize that some large scale charities manage to keep their 'administrative costs' down by virtue of utilizing tax payer dollers via dss employees to administer the bulk of their applications. additionaly, because we had some of these charities located in our buildings i came to understand that administrative costs were further minimized (or grossly underreported) by virtue of the charities utlizing staff ("volunteers") they received funding for(commonly mandatory jail work release or community service "volunteers" for which the charity received funds to allow them to serve their time). the stats on the amount they spent on admin costs vs what they received in charitable donations was awsome, the reality in how much they received by virtue of public funding and pay for participation 'volunteering' and utilized for admin. was horrendous.
i'm not sour on all chairites-but i investigate any i'm inclined to give to, and i resent hostile solicitations. i've experienced them face to face and by phone.
our local safeway apparantly has taken notice of the issue of people being offended by the seemingly constant barrage of charitable solicitations these days. whereas the clerks used to ask at check out if you wished to donate to their 'charity of the week', they now no longer ask in leiu of the small machine in which you enter your membership number making a non audible inquiry.
