These are not precisely the numbers you asked for, but check out Charity Navigator and the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. The two organizations you mention look pretty decent But then there’sUnited Children’s Fund, for example, with administration expenses of 99.4 % (!)
PEER ANALYSIS
Charity Name … Overall Score … Overall Rating
Christian Children’s Fund … 51.45… 3 stars
Compassion International … 63.04… 4 stars
Children International … 50.70… 3 stars
Christian Foundation for Children & Aging … 64.12… 4 stars
Save the Children … 61.59… 4 stars
**INCOME STATEMENT: FYE 06/2003
Revenue**
Primary Revenue … $141,354,028
Other Revenue … $428,590
Total Revenue: … $141,782,618
Expenses
Fundraising Expenses … $16,777,149
Program Expenses … $113,033,391
Administration Expenses … $12,551,936
Total Functional Expenses: … $142,362,476
Payments to Affiliates … 0
Excess (or Deficit) for the Year ............................ -579,858
Net Assets: … $34,667,902
Analysis, for those who don’t understand how to read these:
This says that out of $141M income they spent $113M on the kids, their families, and their villages/neighborhoods, IOW 79.4%, which is very good, really. Net assets is property, which includes both real property and such things as trucks, cars, and office equipment. Ya can’t operate an organization without this stuff. AAMOF, in order to keep administrative expenses that low, they probably own the warehouses they use in “first world” countries. Rentals in other places, probably.
Other stuff - no affiliates; very good.Deficits - they went in the hole $0.5M last year, which means they’re (still) seriously committed to their recipients. This also means that there are a bunch of people who’ve made pledges who are either behind (some have probably lost jobs; there’s a lot of that going around, y’know), or who have completely defaulted on their pledges (and the kids depending on them).
Hokay. This is a pretty good scorecard. A number of years back I sponsored kids through CCF, and it always seemed like they were doing an honest job. This says they still are. Another thing I liked was that they didn’t have a strong proselytizing philosophy. That may sound weird coming from me, but I strongly dislike psychological pressure being put on someone who needs help.
OTOH, World Vision has an even more attractive balance sheet. It has better ratios. Of course, this could be almost entirely a function of their far larger revenues (about four times as large). And then there’s the >$1M of red ink for “Other Income”. This could be an indicator of several different things, some of them positive. I clicked on the link, but didn’t find it particularly informative. I’d want to read the charities’ own financial statements with particular attention to footnotes before making a decision. WV seems to have made a very good thing out of their Sunday morning informercials.
I think that any of these charities which meets at least the standards of CCF would be a good place to invest some of your charitable contributions. However, don’t forget to pay attention to how each one describes its “mission”. Compassion International, frex, states explicitly that their goal is conversion.
BTW, United Children’s Fund looks to me like it was set up to pay its president to for lobbying. It’s located in D.C. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that he represents a number of other interests - after all, <$30K per year is hardly a salary in D.C.
If there’s a way to do tables (as opposed to lists) here, I’d sure like to know how! Forcing the spacing is so … ugly.
There is a downside to the concept of child sponsorship as analysed in this article.
There are some organisations that use child sponsorship as a donor engagement mechanism, but their actual development work on the ground goes to the entire community. I suggest you look at organisations who present this way of working in their materials.
One such agency is Actionaid. If you visit their site, there is an option on the top left hand corner to select the country you are in (if it is not the UK).