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I’m often disappointed when I see tzedakose where more than 50 cents of every dollar goes to pay for overhead — staff, advertising, prizes, etc. Why not support organizations that will use all donated money, or almost all of it, to help the poor and needy, families that desperately need it? Why should we support organizations that spend more than half of it on shtick? Is it fair to count that towards maaser money, if most of it does not help the truly needy?
You cant run a Charity giving 100% of the funds to the tzdekah. You need to have things like office space, Phones, Electric bills, Office supplies and frankly volunteers can be hard to come by so you need workers that you have to pay
for over 20 years my mother ran a charity that gave 100% of the funds to tzedaka.
SY What kind of charity is it?
And you also need liability insurance, A simple example Hatzolah is on a call and accidently hits another car unrelated to the call. They are liable for the damage to the car unrelated to the call
She worked in an agency that provided services to the community based on financial need. Through that, she and another baal chesed and a local Rav kept bumping in to people who where in desperate need, often for temporary reasons, but didn’t qualify financially. They had “too much income”.
The three got together and established a fund. They accepted donations and handed out cash. It was all done on the books and the accountant was another baal chesed in the community.
They distibuted food monthly and money for bills as needed. Tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. The once a year mailing to the community was done on paper and envelopes and stamps donated by friends.
Every penny went to tzedaka. And much of the volunteer work for packing and deliveries was done by gvirim and recipients who were happy to give back.
What you dont know is how much more funds fundraising brought in. Say you spent $1 for fundraising, but got $5 in return, thats a good deal. Fundraising is not so easy and you really have to spend money to get money.
Its not what I personally think, Its the reality of today
Would anyone have ever heard of Kars-4-Kids if they didnt spend so much on advertising?
sometimes i wonder if it is better to stay small and let 90-100% go direct. have 10 small organizations with little overhead instead of one or two (in that area) with 35% going out.
I know what i would do with just the money spent on printing. but then again the printing is sometimes donated or sponsored. i think that really there are so many variables and specifics that it isn’t even possible to tell from a numbers sheet.
take the car example. I know people who have gotten donated cars. usually they are cars that someone else is totally done with. it costs hundreds to transfer title, and, of those who I know, the cars required hundreds of dollars in repairs right away, with thousands over the next years. and then they couldnt afford it but couldnt ask for financial help to get another, functional, less costly car because they had already accepted a *free* one.
its really hard to know anything from the outside.
The fact is that were it not for the money spent on advertising, they would not be able to function at the level, or with the scope, that they do. As such, I think that advertising expenses are very difficult to divorce from operating expenses. The work that they do (i.e., the money spent “actually helping people”) is qualitatively different as a result of the money they spend on advertising. I do not consider the advertising money as having been “wasted”. On the contrary, it is an important part of their charitable activities.
The question is not whether it is worth spending 48 cents of every dollar on advertising to facilitate 42 cents of operation; the question is whether the operations of the specific charity are worth $34M.
M,
Apparently you do not really understand the information in the 990.
Look at page 10 of the 990, you should note that total expenses for the year was $30,841,000, of which $19,482,000 was spent on the programs which is 63%, just a bit lower than the BBB standard of 65%. The management and general (what you call your “overhead”) was $1,441,000 which is 4%. Very low.
The funds spent advertising for cars directly result in the donations. These are resources that they would not have from anywhere else and likely would not have been benefitting anyone. Those could hardly be considered part of overhead.
Anyone who is familiar with car donation programs knows that they are expensive to get and you cant compare to other fundraising.
However, there are many of the national charities that use “fund raising” professional agencies that retain 90% of the funds they raise. This is nowhere near that.
Your percentages about what goes to help people does not even match the source of where you are getting information from (They do notch the information in the 990. You are taking unlike numbers). Yours is just made up bad math.
Further, you seem to think that they agency must spend every dollar they raise during the period they raise it. Without putting any aside4 to maintain the viability of the agency, which is just imprudent.
And as far as spending $1 to make $3, would you be happier if that was an investment? Not for profits can have investments. All the larger have investments and endowments.. In fact, for large universities, that is actually the largest part of their activities. (See Harvard or Yale)Then it would be an unbelievable return.
When you give Mir a donation, why wouldn’t you think a percent goes to cover the expenses of their fundraisers costs (travel, telephone calls, etc.)?
M
Most organizations have paid staff that arent directly related to the organzation, Like a Yeshivas has office workers, clerical workers and some have R’L “FUND RAISERS” people whose jobs it is to raise funds
Do you think if you go to a dinner 100% of the money go to the organization. They have to pay for the food, room rental, The Journal etc
The more you need to collect, the harder it gets and the more expensive it is.
Raising $10 isnt that difficult and raising $100 isnt that difficult, but raising $10,000 is harder you need time and maybe money to do so.
I do have problems with the charity we are discussing here for various reasons not for this discussion, but they raised $34 Million. That is quite hard to do, You need to pay to get this.
Is anyone going to seriously poskin that if you give money to a yeshiva, you only get tzedkah credit if the money goes to learning, but you dont get credit if the money is used to pay the secretary who answers the phone or the desks in the offices
Wishful thinking.
I think they’re competing with donors for money a lot more than they’re competing with each other, unfortunately.
The reason that isn’t done is because it doesn’t usually work.
M,
1) You seem to infer that salaries are not an appropriate expense for an organization, why would that be? Doesn’t the Mir have to pay its Rabbeim? And the executive Director and the remainder of the office staff?
2)Program expenses means that is what is spent on program, the purposes of the organization. A program of an organization is not going to be only giving out money unless they are solely a grant making organization. And even then it is likely that there will be salaries and related expenses that are deemed programmatic.
3) I don’t know the details of the marketing included in program, however it is pretty clear that an outreach organization would have marketing as part of their program. There would also be other educational outreach that would be communicated via programmatic marketing. I know I’ve seen many informational articles on general child raring information and car safety distributed by K4K.
4) When you make general donations, you are not making them to K4K, that organization does their fundraising almost solely through vehicle and other non cash contributions. They are asking for the car you were disposing of (anyway) they are not asking for your cash. Nor are they holding a Chinese auction of any sort. That is a different organization. As noted before, the inherent cost of acquiring such donations is high, but it is tied directly to advertising.
5) To reiterate, the organization you would be donating to would not be the organization that you fear is spending so much of what it raises to obtain the funds. And the programmatic percentage of even K4K was 63% in 2014, just shy of the BBB’s general 65% for all charities, even those that would seem to really have no meaningful overhead.
6) The fundraisers that go out for many organizations get a much higher cut than 35% of what they collect. Your suggesting that this would be indicative of a “not honest” tzedakah is unfounded. They, unlike many other organizations, undergo annual audits and report their activities. V’dal.
I think many people give more when they’re reminded with calls, letters, visits, etc. Even advertising (with its associated costs) gets people to donate when they otherwise probably would not have. That’s the reality. In prewar Europe the Roshei Yeshivos and Rebbes also traveled within Europe and beyond (America, etc.) to raise funds for the Yeshiva. The travelling back then cost them money too.
Of course your point what percent of the raised funds go towards fundraising costs is a very relevant and pertinent question about whether it is reasonable. 10% most people might agree is reasonable. 50% most people probably agree is unreasonable and too much.
I recall a story from prewar Europe where one of the major Rosh Yeshivas went fundraising. He came to a gvir’s home to solicit tzedakah for the yeshiva. The gvir said how do I know my donation won’t go towards the costs of your travelling rather than towards paying for the Limud Torah. The Rosh Yeshiva gave him a good answer, though I forgot what it was (as well as which RY it was.)
I think it’s also worth noting that a great deal of the money which you see as “wasted” is actually going back to the community. The meshulach you mentioned is but one example.
I think it’s also worth noting that a great deal of the money which you see as “wasted” is actually going back to the community
Many people actually have parnassah from this waste. The caterer , the printer . The Hall that is rented (If its a Jewish place) so its not “Waste”
He said part of the ???? ?????? of ????? was allocating the donated gold to the items with a higher level of ????? according to the purity of the intention of the donor.
So too, Hashem arranges that the money given with pure intentions goes directly towards the ???? ?????, and the money given with less pure intentions goes to the horse and wagon.
As I recall, it was R’ Chaim Volozhiner.
Yes, ZD, those are also good examples.
TY, DY.
” Wouldn’t $35 million spent directly on poor people, for example, go much further than $35 million minus tens of millions of overhead expenses, with then only half left to help people?”
Your mistake is that you assume that there would be $35,000,000 without the $14,000,000 spent to get it.
Because of the type of donations received, old cars, they would never receive any of it. So the correct way to look at it is sort of cost of goods sold. They have to report both, the funds raised and the costs (including the click through costs which are several dollars a click) at the gross amounts. In the car donation programs the fair way to evaluate would be to report just the net amount raised. There are amounts that are required to be spent because of the copious reporting requirements and the balance was spent for the programs.
You can hardly call the funds spent to directly acquire such donations as wasted. There is very much a direct correlation of what comes in to what is spent.
In short, if they didn’t spend what they did raising the money, they would not have it all. Specifically here where they are converting what would be an unusable commodity into funds they can use to further their programs. Its a true win-win situation.
Supporting the printer and caterer and the hall, etc, are all nice things but not if those expenses are unnecessary in the first place.
They need parnassah whether or not the tzedakah’s expenses are necessary.
As explained several times, though, the expenses are necessary.
You live in a fantasy world, 100% of funds cannot go to the Tzadeak unless its a very small charity with only 1 or 2 people involved, no offices , no phones etc
This by itself is not a justification for giving tzedakah somewhere.
I didn’t say it was.
Overhead costs are part of tzedaka.
If you give $180 to a yeshiva, it might go to pay a kollel check, pay a plumber, or pay for advertising. All these are part of the yeshiva’s expenses and all equally count toward maaser.
Do you then go and ask what the kollel guy and plumber are spending their check on? Groceries, sforim, tuition, bowling? Is your mitzvah of tzedaka any less based on this?
If you believe in the cause then give to it, otherwise don’t. It is not up to you how they spend their money. There are holy people working in their offices who make these decisions. If they can make $1,000 without any overhead, or $3,000 with 50% overhead costs, which should they choose? Is the $1,500 overhead a “waste of money”? Do you realize that that $1,500 is mostly going toward the parnasa of other Jews?
At least we agree on this, 42…
” I doubt that even half of the $14 million dollars spent in advertising goes to employ people in our community. “
I wonder what percentage of the car donations coming is from people from our “community”
You live in a fantasy world, 100% of funds cannot go to the Tzadeak unless its a very small charity with only 1 or 2 people involved, no offices , no phones etc
**
With Verizon for $68.86 a month (tax included) you can make unlimited phone calls to every state in USA + Canada + High Speed Internet. It will cover all day long calls and tons of e-mails. Today big corporations send employees to home offices and cut off corporate expenses on office. I can’t see why someone can’t collect tzedakah from home.
Let’s look at this from a different angle. Instead of tzedaka, let’s talk tuition collectors.
They’ve got a real nasty rap. Nobody likes them. At least not in the parent body! But you know who loves ’em? The rebbes and teachers that wouldn’t have food to put on their table without the tuition collector bully chasing down the parents…
Yes, there is overhead when it comes to tzedaka. But think of the rebbes and teachers- that overhead is going to feed their kids. These are people we are talking about!
A chesed organization cannot run soley on volunteers round the clock. Every organization needs some kind of paid workers, in order that they CAN devote their time to helping the organization.
A volunteer who has no money can only volunteer for the time it takes to starve…
So, yes, feel good when you give to tzedaka, knowing that even the “overhead” keeps the chesed going!
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