Holiday Season Charity

That ASPCA commercial is crushing, they all are. 
It would be interesting to compare the rise of nonprofits with the defunding of social services and education, seems like nonprofits skyrocketed in the 80s... maybe the 70s?

The vast majority of funding for non-profits comes from individual donors. As an aggregate it's about 70%. At the same time, over 70% of families give to charities.

The need right now is at its highest. Hundreds of billions sit in family trust accounts, which are tax free as long as 5% a year gets doled out. Many of these family funds are administered by organizations like Vanguard Charitable and Bank of America Charitable. These cocksuckers pool all the funds, give out 5%, watch the fund accounts grow due to interest, and get higher administration fees because the accounts are bigger. Lets say that Vanguard has one major account, with $200 million, and 100 other accounts that add up to $200 million. They'll dole out the 5%, $10,000,000, from that huge account, and nothing from the smaller ones. The fund holders think that they are being philanthropists, but they're really not. It's a bullshit system.

I've been realigning my own philanthropy, and shifting from organizations that get millions in endowments and corporate funding to more local and grassroots organizations. For instance, the Vermont Foodbank pulls in over $30 million a year from major corporations. My local food shelf is struggling. Vermont Public Radio also brings in millions. The local Youth Service Bureau is in desperate need, trying to serve homeless youth during a pandemic.

Some things are "sexy" to give to, like homelessness and food, and even veterans. In 2018, DAV had almost $500 million in assets, with $150 million in revenue for the year. Leadership was pulling in up to $600,000 a year, a total of $51 million in salaries. They gave out just over $7 million in grants. https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2018/310/263/2018-310263158-112c319...

DAV does geta  4-star rating by Charity Navigator. It does what it's supposed to and is transparent. It's a worthy cause.

My question is, are there any direct service organizations that provide services to veterans? Would your money be better served and spent by those organizations?

The Christmas Shriners Begmercial is brutal

no because socialism is bad....

It's not an original thought, but I think it's strange that many people restrict their charitable efforts to the holiday season.

Something like 75% of individual giving is in December, and 75% of that is in the week between Christmas an New Years. Most non-profits plan accordingly. Also, if the fiscal year ends on June 30, Holiday giving is smack dab in the middle of the year.

As an FYI, due to the CARES Act, this year's limit for a non-itemized deduction for charitable giving has been raised to $300. The limit for itemized giving has been raised to 100% of one's income. If you can, give!

I just had someone on my FB feed gushing about how great it was that Jeff Bezos ex wife gave away $4.5 billion over the last 10 months. She is worth $60 billion which means on 10% return on her money she "earns" $6 billion a year. So her $4.5 billion gift isn't even equivalent to any of us giving a homeless person a $1 as far as how much it cost her.

That said who she is giving the money too is awesome. She gave a shit ton of the money to small community colleges and technical schools.

They should have to show the percentage of dollars that actually go to the cause. 

Can you imagine how much fun it would be to give away billions?

Consumer Reports does a ranking of charities.

https://www.consumerreports.org/charities/best-charities-for-your-donati...

>>They should have to show the percentage of dollars that actually go to the cause. 

You can find annual reports on the Websites of most non-profits, and they give that breakdown.

Not to pick on DAV, but I will: https://www.dav.org/wp-content/uploads/2019_AnnualReport.pdf

If you go to page 25 you'll see that 85% goes to program services, which is stellar. The prior pages give success stories about those programs. It's awesome.

Then, though, look at the second pie chart on page 25, "Breakdown of expenses by program."  Almost 50% of their program costs go to public service announcements and to communications. Another 10.6% is going to "Public Awareness." So, that 60% is going to program services, but not to all those awesome direct service programs that they have.

Nice work Brian, thank you. I am a DAV member but honestly have never needed any of their services or assistance.

Paying $100+ million annually for 1:1 paid advertising as a non-profit is absolutely, senselessly insane.

A powerful non-profit with a properly run NCSA/PEP program could be investing a tenth of that and receiving 10:1 or better return without changing much except the format of their contracts and the actual ad tagline. Obviously the savings could go toward expanding services rather than enriching for-profit broadcaster bankrolls. I'm going to be writing their board of directors a letter about this today.

Please, Bss, don't tell them that some dude on a dbmb tipped you off.

I thought this may be slackers gofundme thread.