The Case for Charity
One of the first questions I ask when I think about donating to a particular charity is what their overhead is – that is, how much money the spend on personnel and marketing and everything else it takes to administer their relief efforts. This kind of information is readily available and I use it to determine a sense of the charity’s efficiency – the lower the overhead, the more money goes directly to the recipients of the aid I and others give. Of course I assume the reverse is true as well: the higher the overhead the more wasteful the charity is and less deserving of my support.
In this provocative TED Talk based on his book Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up For Itself and Really Change the World
Take a look at this Talk when you have a chance and browse through some of the comments, as the discussion Dan is engendering is both interesting and important.
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not your father’s Offering Plate
Bob’s comment prompted me to look at the video now and not later. The video blew apart many of my own biases, preconceptions, and “working mottoes”. I’m glad!
Thanks for posting this talk. I’ve found it agitating and inspiring. Here’s a related book review on a tome called “The End of Fundraising” Peace. http://www.ssireview.org/book_reviews/entry/end_fundraising_jason_saul
Thanks for bumping it up on my viewing list, Tom :), and for this link as well. It seems like everything is changing, including how we think about fundraising, charity, and how we give in a way that makes a real difference in the world. David
A very thought provoking video and he makes sense. We as church need to rethink our theology of giving too- in the sense that people see “overhead” like ministers and buildings as part of the problem not the solution! They may be or they may be what is needed depending on what we do with them.
The difficult thing for me is that churches (I know he’s addressing non-profits, not really churches, in this TED talk)… but churches have this sense of the mustard seed… the strength-in-weakness paradox… but maybe I’m missing the point and it’s not ‘big money with slick marketing vs. small operation w/little overhead.’ Maybe what we should be more concerned about is the scope of our dreams / vision for the church (organization). How to do that w/out dissing ‘the lowly bake sale’? I’m reminded by a quote attributed to St. Teresa of Avila: “You pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him.”
Certainly not the message we’ve been enculturated with in the Church and Church related charities.