Comments | tookhernowhere: Underbelly of the nonprofit sector

tookhernowhere

Underbelly of the nonprofit sector

Nov 02, 2007 17:29

An example of (one reason) why I dislike third-party charities like United Way and MissionFish: http://www.pgdc.com/usa/item/?itemID=513649

MissionFish then deducts a "small portion" of the proceeds to cover its expenses and then grants to remainder to the charitable donee ( Read more... )

nonprofit

Comments 4

eponine119 November 3 2007, 02:05:58 UTC

I totally agree. I hate the hoops that the United Way seems to make smaller charities/nonprofits jump through in order to qualify for their support.

tookhernowhere November 3 2007, 06:45:07 UTC

At least my org is ginormous enough that (as far as I know) UW doesn't bother us too much about qualifying for stuff. Or maybe we already jumped through all the hoops a million years ago.

curious_bunny November 3 2007, 14:13:15 UTC

I personally am not a fan of giving to United Way... but my workplace does it, and the amount of pressure to participate is large. The donor list is circulated to all the partners. I always give something during the campaign, though I would prefer to give directly.

I know that many of the people at work give only because of the pressure and the prizes, and not out of any interest in giving. So I am positive that the organizations do come out with more funds this way, even with all the processing costs.

So I have mixed feelings about United Way. On the one hand, it helps the community, on the other it is an inefficient bureaucracy.

tookhernowhere November 3 2007, 21:48:12 UTC

That donor list sounds really fishy. On the one hand, it's perfectly fine to publicize an honor roll to acknowledge all the people (or those over a certain giving level) who give. . . . In a workplace campaign, though, I think it's extremely hard to do any kind of donor roll without causing tremendous pressure to non-donors. And that's on top of the pressure that comes with ust having a campaign.

It becomes just utterly wrong if there isn't an opt-out, in case you just don't want your name listed. Or if they do this before the campaign is over (otherwise it's just a way to pressure those who haven't donated . . . yet). Or if it's not actually, you know, publicized--everybody in your company (maybe even everybody in the general public) should be able to look at it ( ... )