From: jlove@ivrit.ra.itd.umich.edu (Jack Love)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Jewish Charities
Date: 29 Dec 1992 16:48:42 GMT
Organization: /usr/local/trn/lib/organization
NNTP-Posting-Host: ivrit.ra.itd.umich.edu
Keywords: disgusting

In article <1992Dec29.151641.7225@cbnewsh.cb.att.com> sg@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (stephan.gross) writes:
>  Are other people bothered by the high salaries and waste of these charities?
>I have tried to avoid giving to them; usually, I put all my Jewish charity-
>money in State of Israel bonds.  Does anyone have any other charity recommen-
>dations?


I think you raise a number of excellent points, and I hope to see some
enlightened discussion of your issues here. In some cases, I would have
to (reluctantly) concede that a high salary is necessary to accomplish
a given mission, even one that is charitable. Therefore, I would not
withhold my contribution solely on this basis. On the other hand,
whether I can actually obtain enough information to judge whether a
salary is justified or not is another question. I think the answer
would be generally "no." Therefore, my own practice is to direct my
contributions to the local and international agencies where I believe
the funds will be most directly utilized.

If, for example, you believe that the Hillel Foundations do a good job,
I would urge you to make contributions to their "Friends of Hillel"
campaigns. The members of local boards are generally unpaid, and the
administrative staffs generally work for far less than market salaries.
Jewish homes for the aged, Jewish schools and community centers are
other good bets. Although I'm sure there are those who would disagree
with me, I think that the New Israel Fund does a good job with
relatively small adminsistrative expense--but if you don't want the
money distributed amongst a horde of unknown (to you) agencies, you can
ask them for a list and designate where you want the money to go. I
don't know whether they extract a percentage for this service, but I
wouldn't object if it is 10% or less since they do have legitimate
operational expense.

One issue that I would be very interested in exploring is the question
of whether the umbrella organizations discussed in the original posting
are guilty of misrepresenting the percentage of funds which goes to
adminstrative expense. Our local papers do annual features listing
large charities and how they compare on this issue, and various
national Jewish charities usually do very well--often coming in at
under 15% for administrative charges. But I have often wondered if the
calculation is really correctly computed. For example, if I give $100
to my local UJA campaign, and they take $15 for administrative costs
and turn $85 over to national UJA, is this then reported to watchdog
agencies as an 85% efficient transaction? Because if this the case, I
think the definitions need to be reworked. I figure that I'd be lucky
if $25 actually ever makes it to the people I'm trying to help, and I'd
call that a 75% *inefficient* transaction.

Anyone have some real research on this?
-- 
________________________________________
Jack F. Love	| 	Opinions expressed are mine alone.
		|	(Unless you happen to agree.)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish