Most effective charities?

woodyone1

WhiteHorse wrote: »

Of the larger charities, the only one worth a damn anymore is the RNLI.

Their administrative tail is very small and their frontline staff (most of whom are volunteers), put their lives on the line for total strangers.

It doesn't get any better than that.

Depends on your interpretation of "better". Based on the RNLI's numbers for 2012 (£140.7m operating costs, 7964 rescues [inc lives saved], 328 lives saved) there are certainly more cost effective ways to spend money on saving lives.

According to Giving What We Can 1000USD (about £650 at time of writing) spent on anti-malarial nets will save 3 lives. That's £217 per life saved.

RNLI works out at over £17,000 per life saved if you call ALL rescues a life saved. And over £428,000 per life saved if you divide operating costs by just the 328 lives (which is a bit harsh because it ignores rescues). So RNLI is at best 82 times less cost effective than malaria nets. At worst 1,980 times less effective.

Please don't see this as a criticism of the RNLI. I've supported them and certainly value the work they and their volunteers do. But if you want to impact lives with your charitable giving, it certainly does get better than that.

cepheus

Charities which fund overseas aid will easily beat national ones simply because their needs are often basic, such as a simple cataract operation or malarial net. It's not just about saving lives but improving the quality of life. We still need to make sure the aid gets through to the right people though.

cepheus

Some more relevant information here

Good charities spend more on admin but it is not money wasted

The popular idea that charities fritter money on unnecessary admin has been proven wrong. You must spend to be effective

Just ordered this BTW

Mids_Costcutter

edenbank6 wrote: »

It's perhaps worth bearing in mind the three "Es" of "value for money": Efficiency, Effectiveness and Economy. Just looking for a charity which spends a lot of its income on the chosen cause might actually fail on all these criteria whereas one which uses a higher percentage of income on that nasty old administration might be paying professionals to ensure that the outcomes from the front-line expenditure achieve something really positive for the greatest possible number of beneficiaries.

Is that why some people don't like the big charities, because they're run more like profit-driven businesses? And we expect charities to behave differently than commercial companies?

Jamie1989

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

Is that why some people don't like the big charities, because they're run more like profit-driven businesses? And we expect charities to behave differently than commercial companies?

I believe it's a question of balance. Clearly charities can learn something from business insofar as they're also marketing a product. And charities have the advantage that they're selling a warm glow and (often) real benefits.

On the other hand, too aggressive an approach in direct marketing - be it through mailouts, chugging, or door-to-door solicitation - can turn a lot of people off for good, and waste a lot of money.

forgotmyname

Maybe its the age creeping in but i have become so cynical of charities.

In my mind, They need volunteers to do the work so the people that run it can earn a large salary with plenty of nice lease cars parked outside all paid for by the donations.

I received a leaflet through the door for basicall what amounted to a loan shark. Except it was a charity. I forget the interest rate but it was 600% + it may have even been into 4 figures.
What made it worse they received £250,000 from the government.

How does that work? Oh yes and a quick google streetview showed the office with posh signs and a row of Merc's.

Wonder who paid for them.

Mids_Costcutter

forgotmyname wrote: »

Maybe its the age creeping in but i have become so cynical of charities.

In my mind, They need volunteers to do the work so the people that run it can earn a large salary with plenty of nice lease cars parked outside all paid for by the donations.

I received a leaflet through the door for basicall what amounted to a loan shark. Except it was a charity. I forget the interest rate but it was 600% + it may have even been into 4 figures.
What made it worse they received £250,000 from the government.

How does that work? Oh yes and a quick google streetview showed the office with posh signs and a row of Merc's.

Wonder who paid for them.

Was this really a (registered) charity? Would you care to name them?

knightstyle

I have been looking into charity giving for an article for our church mag and here are a few things I found:
Harris Polak, a 54-year-old from Liverpool, has been jailed for three years and nine months for a massive charity collection scam. He recruited a group of charity collectors, who thought they were collecting for Clatterbridge Cancer Research Trust, Cerebral Palsy Care for Children and Cancer Relief UK. Instead he took thousands of pounds from the collections to fund a lavish lifestyle.
He organised teams of chuggers in Speke, Ramsbottom and Failsworth. He paid them a percentage of the money raised, and was authorised to take another chunk of the money. However, he did not report properly what he was making, and instead took thousands of pounds directly from the collecting buckets.
The prosecution noted that because he did not keep proper accounts, it's impossible to tell the full sum of money that was taken from the charities, but that from what they could ascertain it was at least £213,906.83 over the course of five years. He spent the money on holidays a new car and mortgage payments.

......................

Oxfam has assets of 80+ million, 45million in the bank, an annual T/O of 250million and the CEO has a pay and pensions package worth 175K. So when they ask for your 3 quid a month, the first 4 861 people to contract are paying for the Chief Executive's salary.!

........................

The scam involves a fraudster informing a charity that they will be donating a large sum of money on the condition that the charity sends half of the donation onto another specified charity that is, in fact the personal bank account of the fraudster.

..........................

Age UK!was formed on 1 April 2009 when!Age Concern!and!Help the Agedmerged. In the last financial year,!Age UK!raised an impressive £167.7m, supposedly for charity.
However, it cost!Age UK!about a!whopping £85m to raise and manage this money, leaving just £80.4m for charitable use (after retaining a little money for future use). So, just 48% of the money raised for charity could actually be used for charity – rather pathetic really.
Of this £80.4m supposedly used for charity, around £25m was donated to other charities. As these charities would all have chief executives and financial directors and fundraising managers and staff and offices and computers and whatever, they would!almost certainly have costs of say 30% (£7.5m) of all money donated. That just left £72.9m (43%) of!Age UK’s!cash!that could possibly be used for charity. Then you’d have to subtract!Age UK’s!administrative and management costs – but I can’t find out how much these were.
However, I do know that!two!Age UK!executives were paid (I deliberately did not write “earned”) between £170,000 and £180,000 a year. Nice work if you can get it.

...........................

Please note that I have copied and pasted all this and I am not the I in the last paragraph.

forgotmyname

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

Was this really a (registered) charity? Would you care to name them?

I dont have the name it was a fair while back now. But i only looked them up from a card through the door offering loans. With % rates in the thousands.

I looked them up online and found the Government had given them £250,000.

Somewhere in Birmingham, Near the city centre. Not sure how you would find them now?

Just had a search on the charity website and nothing coming up for loan or poor. Unless i mentioned it in an older post i cannot remember.

Had a good search and cannot find anything. But it was anything upto 6 years ago now.

cepheus

There are only two charities recommended on Giving well, which appear to be registered in the UK. The [SIZE=+1]Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)[/SIZE] looks interesting.

Treating children for parasite infections in sub-Saharan Africa
_________________________________________________________________
In sub-Saharan Africa, a large proportion of people, often children, are infected with parasitic worms that cause short-term symptoms such as anemia, and may cause longer-term developmental problems. These worms are extremely inexpensive to treat -- about $5 to protect a child for 10 years. (For more, see our full report on deworming.) We believe that SCI effectively expands access to deworming treatment.
Tax deductibility: US , UK

Another cause which comes to mind is Vitamin A deficiency since it benefits so many young and can save their sight. I'm not such how well the charities which support this are run though.