CCF (a charity) Rant

In My Humble Opinion
1

[/COLOR=indigo]When I was a senior in high school I got talked into becoming the President of Future Teachers of America (even though I never planned on being a teacher).

Since we did collect monthly dues, I thought it would be great for us to use some of the funds to sponsor a child through Christian Children’s Fund (CCF). After a vote, all agreed that would be a good idea.

We became foster “parents” of Chow Shou Seung, a Korean girl, and it was really a great experience for us to write her letters and receive letters back from her. She wrote in Korean, but CCF carefully translated her letters for us into English, so it was really great.

I give this premise because I want to make it clear I thought CCF did a very good job then, and are probably doing a very good job now.

What bothers me is that now it seems like they are spending MILLIONS of dollars on what appears to be 5 minute commercials that run practically every half hour on every station (except PBS) that I turn to.

If they are getting these spots donated to them GREAT – I have no problem seeing 20 of these a day (though they certainly seem to try to push every guilt button a lot harder than they need to).

But I COMPLETELY object to them spending a ton of money on so many long commercials. If I had a lot of money I would NEVER send it to them now, because it looks like they are wasting way too much on all the costs necessary to make and place these extensive, frequent commercials. Commercial time is not cheap, and even public service announcements are often “pushed” to wee hours of the morning because airtime is cheaper then.

But CCF commercials are rarely run only at the cheap times.

Why do they think they have to long commercials on so many stations so often? Once a day should suffice, if that much.

So now, every time I see these commercials all I see is money flying out the window that SHOULD be going to these poor kids they keep talking about.

If I was President or whatever of CCF that would change quickly. We’d do a couple of commercials on the weekends when people are home, and any other “advertising” would be done ANY NUMBER of much less expensive ways.

Again, if I learn CCF is getting all this airtime donated, it would be a different thing. But lacking that, if I’m ever get in a position to have money to donate, it’s going to UNITED WAY and OTHER charities that manage their money wisely (and cover significant needs of many segments of the population in our local areas).

Thank you for letting me rant.[/COLOR]

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I Googled “Christian Children’s Fund” + “expenses” and got back a lot of relevant links. From looking at a few, it appears that CCF is considered to “need improvement” in the area of % spent on administrative costs. This link

gives CCF two stars out of four.

CCF has a web page with a “contact us” link. You might want to express your concerns directly to them.

In the past, I’ve stopped giving to charities that I thought were spending too much on fund raising. I donated to one charity that sent me a “thank you” letter that included a request for further donations – I found that kind of insulting. Then they sent more requests about every 2 weeks. I figured they had too much money, and I never donated again.

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I worry much more about the administrative expenses then I do about the fund raising expenses.

Think about. If they have $100,000 they can either spend that $100,000 on the children or they can spend it on commercials. If they know that the commercials will bring in $500,000 then they have $400,000 for the children and $100,000 for more commericals. Not a bad deal.

Now, if a large % of their money is for office space and the director’s salary I worry and won’t donate.

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lainaf found a good source - I use it a lot when dealing with non-profits. Two stars is not a stellar score, however, a little more research is helpful. Their adminstrative expenses and fundraising efficiency are very good (admin. especially - only 8.2%!).

As for their fundraising, I’m not sure if TV ads are included. They pull in $131 million, and only spend $15 million on fundraising. Those are pretty impressive figures.

Another great resource is Guidestar. I get a lot of Form 990s from there. However, it looks like they’ve installed some security measures, and need you to sign in now. I’ll be back with some 990s for CCF.

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Well, it’s a free registration, and they don’t send out e-mails or sell your address. The Form 990 for CCF is here.

Their president/VPs make a lot of money, but it’s a total of about 1% of CCF’s income (p. 4). They spend $282,460 on advertising, which is only $34,000 more than they spend on accounting (p. 7). All in all, I would have no qualms donating to this nonprofit.

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Thanks for posting that link lainaf – great one to check for anyone wanting to make sure their bucks are spent in the most efficient way – which is the name of the game IMHO.