Charity: good, bad, ugly
by Miki SaxonPost from Leadership Turn Image credit: thaney8
When it comes to charity, I’m very opinionated (no surprise there), so I thought I’d take this opportunity to present the good, my favorite charity—that you probably never heard of, and rant a bit about the bad and the ugly—two things that really tick me off.
The Good: I have a real passion for the M3 Foundation, on the web at M3boys.org. I like M3 because it’s successfully attacking the roots of one of the greatest problems in America today—keeping young, black boys in school.
“Removing the Achievement Gap for African American Boys—Boys are the most important issue facing the African American community today. With 1/3 of all black men in the USA in the penal system and more than 70% drop-out rate in high school, the situation is catastrophical. By their mid 30’s, more than 60% of black men who dropped out of school have spent time in prison.”
What’s more, it’s doing it on a shoestring budget with a highly innovative approach that’s showing enormous success in its first roll-out.
“In its first year, M3 assisted the boys in achieving average improvements in mathematics grades from 1.9 to 3.14 (from a D/F grade to a B). The average in the boys GPA increased from 2.4 to 3.0… M3 has since expanded to work in all the middle schools in Berkeley with similar success.”
Pretty cool.
The Bad: Every fundraising business or charity where too much money goes to pay the overhead, it’s the reason I never respond to any solicitation in the mail. If I like the hype I check the charity out myself and then send a donation direct to the headquarters—never the address on the solicitation. And when checking out the charity I focus on financials using Charity Navigator when possible or just digging if it isn’t listed there. I look for around an 80/20 split, with the 80% going to support programs.
The Ugly: Avoiding real estate taxes on property that isn’t mission related—especially common among religious organizations. For example, way back when I lived in Denver, CO, the largest owner of apartment buildings was the Catholic Church. It paid no income or real estate taxes because the church was tax exempt, yet those properties used municipal resources without limit. I have no problem exempting actual places of worship and associated community centers, but not the rest. The same goes for other tax-exempt abuses—do leaders really need fleets of expensive automodiles, first class/private jet travel, (multiple) mansions, etc. to accomplish their missions?
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What are your good, bad and uglies?
Your comments—priceless
June 20th, 2008 at 7:17 am
As an alumni of a private college and a member of a fraternal society (which has many branches and many related philanthropies) I get a sollicitation for donation from someone about once a month.
The Ugly is that some times it’s the same group asking for money over and over…don’t you think if I didn’t send in a check the first time that I’m probably not going to send it the second time?
June 21st, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Or the third, fourth, fifth, etc. The multiple solicitations don’t bother me that much, I figure they either don’t know how or can’t be bothered to reprogram their computer. Sort of like spammers:)