Charities

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Looking to compile a list of effective (i.e. not wasting donation revenue on tchotchkes mailed to regular donors) and/or innovative charities.

Social enterprises too, most broadly, ideally ones with savvy and sustainable business models.

Anyone have any go-tos?
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Perhaps certain social enterprises that involve contributing to the commons somehow, or inventing some new sector of the commons i.e. archive.org
 

sufi

lala
Looking to compile a list of effective (i.e. not wasting donation revenue on tchotchkes mailed to regular donors) and/or innovative charities.

Social enterprises too, most broadly, ideally ones with savvy and sustainable business models.

Anyone have any go-tos?
?
proportion of funding that goes to beneficiaries is a "kpi" that some charities are promoting, but not to the extent that you can use it as a reliable comparator as far as i know - and some orgs need to spend more on overheads than others by the nature of their operations so it's not a very exact science.

The white saviour issue is a hot one https://charitysowhite.org/ & https://twitter.com/nonprofitssay reminded me to use some "" on the jargon above x
 

sufi

lala
I think that the accursed start-up culture may have actually had a relatively positive effect on charities (here in uk, as far as i can see anyway).
There are lots of big, rich, lumbering charities with very stable but heavily hierarchical cultures and structures, which make them fundable, but not great at delivering the right services (the bind is that you can only do what is fundable, and funders want to fund what is measurable, not necessarily what is needed), so small nimble charities, sometimes with more collective and open structures, have been popping up and meeting needs that the big ones can't get to e.g https://refugeesathome.org which i founded, and which has been on the front pages the last week offering 100s of beds for refugees

there have been a series of mini-scandals about bullying and nastiness in some of the big orgs recently, tip of the iceberg in my experience
Why are reports of bullying, harassment and discrimination repeatedly occurring in organisations whose purpose is progressive change?
The National Lottery Community Fund is undergoing an external investigation into its leadership and organisational culture after allegations of bullying.
The Chartered Institute of Fundraising has faced allegations of failure to act on complaints about sexual harassment, followed by a much-criticised investigation.
Earlier this year an independent inquiry reported on bullying and harassment at the NCVO, the umbrella body for the UK’s volunteer organisations.
Last year the Charity Commission investigated Save the Children’s poor handling of sexual harassment allegations. The list goes on.
A few years ago I left my job as an NGO campaigns director to seek answers to why so many organisations, despite good intentions, replicate the same problems they purport to fix.
I interviewed campaigners and psychologists, and researched psychoanalytic and decolonial thought, applying them to my own experiences as a campaigner.
The news agenda reports each incident of harassment and discrimination as one separate scandal after another.
But oppressive and abusive dynamics, burnout-creating work patterns and saviour culture are connected. They are all manifestations of a way of relating to other people that is rooted in dominance and constructed hierarchies.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
@sufi yeah I'm very unacquainted with the culture of non-profits, and I can only assume how much of an attractor this organization type is for money laundering, and the energy that comes with that.

And I do think we are still in the domain of acting in self-interest here, be it for tax deductions or ego boosts or both, but I think there can be discernibly good impacts made regardless of such intentions.

And yeah maybe there are justifications for all the stuffed animals and whatnot that get mailed out, i.e. maybe such practices have proven to sustain revenue streams by making donors feel acknowledged, etc.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Instead of asking about charities, I'll ask this:

If a billionaire decides to give away their wealth (wealth in any form I suppose), how would you like to see them give it away?
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Dividing up a cash sum into checks that are mailed out? Or could more of an impact be made by funneling cash into some kind of program or institution?

Which ways would result in the least procedural friction, i.e. bureaucratic silos, and the least opportunity for laundering?
 

sufi

lala
Instead of asking about charities, I'll ask this:

If a billionaire decides to give away their wealth (wealth in any form I suppose), how would you like to see them give it away?
i can give you some contacts who will be glad of those billions
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Follow this line of inquiry/reasoning far enough, and a would-be redistribution of wealth may turn into an investment that, perhaps despite genuinely good intention, involves a single-bottom line rationale that depletes the act of its benevolence.

That is, what was initiated on a pretext of charity turns into yet another bureaucratized investment process that opens up windows for middlemen, lawyers, etc to siphon the wealth that was supposed to be redistributed.

I think blockchain may help here, in terms of immediately distributing funds directly to end users who can do whatever they want with it
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
The big argument, in my opinion so far, against a flat-out redistribution of wealth [qua cash] to a large number of people, is that the net impact will be transient and minimal. Perhaps a step forward would be a private distribution of funds into some kind of interest bearing accounts that cannot be emptied right away.

edit: bracketed text
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
It seems to me that if the means of high-impact charity are ill-defined, then any expectations of the 1% to carry out such charitable intentions are ill-founded, beyond even the assumption that a 1% would even be interested in such charity.

That said, there must be some examples of well defined avenues for high-impact charity, I'm just wondering what they are.
 
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