Re: Here's your Red Cross....

rdean3REMOVE@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

OK, but it still doesn't explain how the RC, at least according to the
website, spends .18 cents to raise a dollar, but somehow also only
spends 3.something percent to raise a dollar. 

I don't think it says anywhere on the website that it spends 3 point
something cents to raise a dollar.  It says that out of every dollar it
spends, 3.5 cents is spent on fundraising.  Two different things.

OTOH, and don't take this
as a shot, if any of this is based upon what the RC "figures" and that
is accepted as fact, then I can see no difference from the
supposedly-wrong "church" organizations who simply report what they
want. 

Might have read that way, but I never intended to imply that church
organizations are bad or wrong, only that the assumption they're always
and only good and efficient just because they're small and "faith-based"
is a recipe for *potential* abuse.  The point isn't that RC's figures
are accurate (I'm just assuming they are, lacking any evidence to the
contrary), but that the faith-based orgs don't have to report the docs
that allow calculation of the common stats that allow easy comparison.

And that brings us to another point: why does reporting in such a
fashion as to be acceptable to this or that watchdog org make an
organization "good" or better or more helpful. 

Because the watchdog groups don't know everything (or even if everything
the charities report to the govt is accurate) doesn't mean they don't
serve a useful purpose to the average small-scale contributor.  They
collect the data that the charities report, they digest, synthesize and
report it in a user-friendly form and present it all in a way that
allows the potential donor to make comparisons.

Accounting can cover all
sorts of things, 

It's the government's job, in the case of tax-exempt charities, to
verify the truthfulness of what's reported, just as they should verify
what ordinary taxpayers and corporations report.  Given the watchdogs'
brief, though (even if it's a "self-appointed" one), I think it makes
sense that they devote whatever resources they have to acting simply as
clearing houses of publicly but not easily available information rather
than taking on law-enforcement or investigative reporting functions.

and at least for me, I don't care what some small,
self-appointed, and VERY closely held org says if I can see evidence
of good works (or the lack thereof, as the case may be).


I agree that the financial stats aren't the whole picture, maybe not
even the most important part of the picture.  Their value is that they
rise above the anecdotal and that they allow objective analysis, even if
of perhaps imperfect data.  For folks without on-the-ground contact,
they're useful.

BTW, is Consumer Reports to be faulted for being "self-appointed"?  The
Heritage Foundation?  And anyway, I thought small and private was
*good*. (That's why I'd make a bad Republican.... I can never get this
stuff straight.)  <g>






.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: snfs factorization of a 1039-bit number
    ... Somebody bend once, revise broadly, then raise in front of the ... relationship until the fog. ... If you'll report Imran's establishment with ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: Re New Binary Bruteforcing Method Discovered
    ... auditing tools (source code scanners, black box testers, and known ... Direct URL (the report is the HTML file inside the ZIP file): ... </two cents> ...
    (Vuln-Dev)
  • Re: How to use the concept of "OnNoData" in this situation...
    ... open your Weekly_Report in design, open property sheet, go to nodata event, select event proc and type there: ... report is used, I've never seen it coded out like I need it. ... > table, loops through the record set, and prints a report for each org. ... > Dim myRs As DAO.Recordset ...
    (microsoft.public.access.modulesdaovba)
  • How to use the concept of "OnNoData" in this situation...
    ... We have some code that prints a report for each of our orgs.It ... table, loops through the record set, and prints a report for each org. ... The org is used as a "where clause" when the report is run, ... Dim myRs As DAO.Recordset ...
    (microsoft.public.access.modulesdaovba)
  • Re: Wikipedia article on New Valerie Plame book
    ... exposed@AlGore's mansion .org> wrote: ... Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission ... Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, ...
    (alt.politics.bush)
Loading