I often see commercials for charities where they show pictures of people suffering from some disease or living in terrible conditions. Then they talk about how if you donated just one dollar how much good you could do. Airtime for commercials is not cheap. Producing a commercial also takes a lot of time, people, equipment, and money. Why didn’t they just put the many thousands of dollars towards their own cause instead?
Well, obviously, they hope to get more in donations than the commercial costs.
That said, there do exist charities for whom the administrative and fund-raising expenditures exceed those for the project described. One good place to check is Charity Navigator.
Oten the time for those ‘commercials’ is donated at no cost by the station (which then writes it off their taxes, so in effect the rest of us taxpayers pay for it). That’s why you most often see such items at odd, non-prime-time times – spots that the station has a hard time selling.
There is an EXCELLENT TED talk about this The Way We Think About Charity is All Wrong.
You beat me to it, I was going to come in and post this. The TED talk disabuses the notion that charities must themselves operate in poverty to ensure that EVERY DOLLAR goes directly to the needy.
I haven’t seen that talk but I would say that the charities are a business the same as any other so why shouldn’t they advertize? Are they supposed to operate from a small wooden hut somewhere, only having bread and water for lunch, sitting on cushions on the floor because that money could be put to their own cause instead?
Here in Singapore to maintain charity status, a certain % of each dollar collected must go to the cause - I can’t remember the exact figure off the top of my head, but it is of the order of 80 or 85%.
This came about after one charity head renovated his corporate washroom with gold taps
OK, that makes sense.
The percentage I mean, not the gold taps. Gold taps never make sense.
While i have no problems with charities advertising, and i think that the TED talk linked by Foxy40 makes some excellent points, your observation is perfectly and precisely incorrect.
They are not, in fact, “a business the same as any other.” Most obviously, they are non-profit entities, and thus are governed by very different rules regarding taxation than for-profit business enterprises. There are pages and pages of the tax code and other federal codes outlining the differences between non-profits and regular businesses. And many states also have regulations regarding charities, often related to efforts to reduce charitable fraud.
Also, to expand on the point made by bengangmo, people have a different relationship with a charity than they do with a for-profit business. If i buy (for example), a computer from a for-profit business, my primary concern is whether the computer will suit my needs, and whether i consider it to be reasonable value for money. Once the computer company has my money, and i have the computer, i really don’t care that much what they do with the money i’ve given them. They can use it to pay wages, build a new factory, pay dividends to shareholders, or purchase gold-plated bathroom accessories.
But if i give money to a charity, i’m doing so for different reasons, and i’d like to think that the money i donate is being put to good use. Most people who donate have similar feelings, to a greater or lesser extent. If i find out that 90 cents of every dollar goes to administrative overhead, and only 10 cents actually goes towards helping the cause that i’m interested in, i might decide to remove my money.
But commercials don’t affect anybody. Everyone says so. So they must be a waste of money.
Right?