Charities: The Gap Between Real and Ideal

America has thousands of active charities nationwide; from the local town soup kitchen to international natural disaster relief, American assistance reaches far and wide. However, the degree of the helpfulness of these charities greatly varies. For some organizations, non-profit means non-profit-as in nearly 100% of the donations are put toward what the donators actually wish to give money to. For others, non-profit means spending 80% of proceeds on salaries and publicity while a mere 20% goes to the true cause. Not only does this take away from people and places in need but it also deters civilians from donating at all because they can't be sure that the majority of their money is going to children with cancer, or victims of poverty, or homeless veterans, unless they do a bit of research. While charities like Heifer International and Direct Relief are reliable in giving almost all of their donations to the advertised cause, organizations such as Children's Cancer Recovery Foundation and Youth Development Fund are hardly fit to call themselves charities.

America's worst charities all use less than 10% of their donations on direct cash aid. In fact, Operation Lookout National Center for Missing Youth, Survivors and Victims Empowered, and National Narcotic Officers Associations Coalition use 0% of donations in direct cash aid. That means not a single cent of any donated dollar is used directly, meaning a potential donator cannot in any way, shape, or form directly track where their money goes! Among the other worst offenders are Kids Wish Network, in which $109 million is paid to solicitors and only $3.2 million is used in direct aid! That's only 2.5% of all donations, meaning if you donate $100 (a significant sum of money for the average person to donate by themselves), only $2.50 will go to the true cause. Sick children receive less than 3 cents of every dollar. In the past decade alone, Kids Wish has sucked nearly $110 million donated for sick children to its corporate fundraisers, making it the worst charity in the nation, according to a review of charities that have steered the most money to professional solicitation companies over time. It gets better: the organization paid its founder and his own companies at least $4.8 million in salary and fees over the years, and its president earned nearly $150,000 a year, along with all of the money he used to pay the employees. When the selfishness of of the people in charge was exposed in 2010, the company hired Melissa Schwartz, a crisis management specialist, to help turn it around. Although Schwartz claims that 100% of online donations go to granting children's wishes (about 800 per year), this company has been consistently ranked America's worst charity by an impartial judge: charitynavigator.org. It's terribly sad that we cannot trust the people who are meant to be selflessly bettering the lives of others to use the donation of the public accordingly, because it only hurts the people they are meant to be helping. The less the public trusts charities, the less donations will be made and the worse off the people in need will be. However, there are also many charities who are just as giving and productive as they are meant to be.

In contrast to the worst charities, who spend less than 10% of donations on helping their cause, other charities spend less than 10% of donations on administrative expense (salaries), and give more than 80% of proceeds directly to those in need. Direct Relief is consistently voted the top rated charity in the U.S. by charitynavigator.org. Direct Relief International, located in California, is the state's largest international humanitarian nonprofit organization. Direct Relief provides medical assistance to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty and disaster in the U.S. and throughout the world. In contrast to the mere 2.5% given to the program of Kids Wish, Direct Relief spends a whopping 99% of donations directly on their program. Only .5% is used in administrative expenses, and  .3% in fundraising expenses. That's it. No tricks, no hiding, no pretending; as much money as possible is put toward people in need worldwide. This is the way charities should be; we should be able to trust every charity with using as much money as financially possible in its quest to help those in need. Although not every organization can realistically be as idealistic as Direct Relief, I believe its reasonable to ask for the majority of our donations (more than 50%) to be directly used in funding the cause we intended to help.

This is idealistic, but we should strive to come as close to it as we possibly can because no matter how many donations are made and how much relief is provided, there will always be people, places, and animals in need.

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