this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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I want to give them money but since my childhood my parents pretty much told me that they are all either faking it or are too lazy to go to work for money. I mean, I guess they can go to work but not everyone gets accepted to work as easy as it sounds like.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (10 children)

I've been involved as a treasurer for a number of "medium" charities in Australia. Most recently one providing free legal services to the disadvantaged, and another running a refuge for homeless youth.

As an aside, bear in mind that I as a treasurer as well as the entire board are volunteers - well qualified and experienced professionals donating their time to ensure that the organisation is run efficiently and is maximising the benefit to the community.

Your comments really grind my gears. They're born of shallow social media type thinking. These falsehoods are commonly used as a "reason" why one ought not to donate to charities.

Certainly there are overpaid CEOs, but these are a minority. Recently the charity running the refuge got a new CEO. He had been a police superintendent. He took a pay cut of about two thirds in order to be our CEO. He said that he had spent most of his career locking people up, and wanted to spend the last part of his career changing kids trajectories before they got involved with the law.

Imagine saying that this organisation would be more efficient of it were subsumed by the government, so the CEO-equivalent could be paid 3x as much.

[–] bustrpoindextr -2 points 11 months ago (6 children)

The CEO equivalent doesn't exist in government. Your entire argument is pointless.

Do you realize how little a CEO does?

Do you realize how little the actual money donated to an organization trickles down to the cause?

Do you realize that there are multiple charities for the same thing, which just means more and more waste?

In fact in pretty much every instance of a modern government taking over a service, it becomes cheaper and more efficient. That's why many governments run utilities, and healthcare.

Look I'm not saying your service is useless, but I am saying it would be more efficient elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

On the contrary. Many charities benefit from volunteer work hours that simply would not be possible on a normal government contract. The efficiency of some charities simply cannot be matched by State institutions, as people don't want to volunteer working for the state.

Some volunteer positions could possibly be replaced with well-paying jobs to lower unemployment rates at the benefit of the economy, but people also get a sense of purpose from volunteering. The charitable economy ran by volunteering and donations is an incredible asset for any society, no matter how great the social security net is. And in my experience, a better security net is often correlated with more charity.

That's not to say shitty charities don't exist. But good luck financing all the activities of the Red Cross through a state budget, paying everyone for their work.

[–] bustrpoindextr 1 points 11 months ago

So first off, you can totally volunteer for government things. I mean, I can volunteer at my local government library for instance, there's nothing about a government contract that removes the ability to volunteer.

But I wouldn't need to have volunteers if the red cross and all competing charities were swallowed up into one thing.

There are a bunch of organizations that do the same or part of what the red cross does. That's a lot of wasted time of resources, that would be better spent lumped together as a collective unit.

Charity is simply one of the places you absolutely don't want competition/capitalism. You want oversight and efficiency, that's the government.

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