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<p>Have you heard of Charity Navigator? If not, you might want to
check it out. They evaluate charities above a certain size with
published records. They give the Shriners' Hospital for Children
in Tampa, FL a very good rating. (Comparable to Doctors Without
Borders, which I like very much.)</p>
<p>Joe</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 4/22/20 3:17 PM, Frank Wimberly
wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">Whenever I get drawn to contributing to a charity,
usually based on sentimental TV ads, I send them an email and
ask how to access their IRS Form 990, which has to be publicly
available, usually via a web page. The last time I did this was
for Shriners' Hospital for Children. If I read the form
correctly, in a recent year they had $700,000,000 in income,
paid $500,000,000 in executive salaries and fundraising. I
don't believe remaining $200,000,000 all went to medical and
family travel/lodging expenses. But I may not be reading it
right. Any accountants out there?
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<div>Frank</div>
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<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 2:36
PM uǝlƃ ☣ <<a href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">gepropella@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Heh,
it's funny how something you say can be perfectly inverted by
the audience to mean the opposite of what you intended. The
Telephone Game is always relevant.<br>
<br>
My point to Steve was about "effective altruism", the idea
that the philanthropist has any idea whatsoever of the
relative optimality of one charity compared to another. My
position is one of ignorance and against the (mostly wealthy,
tech-savvy, arrogant) person's most likely *mistaken* belief
in their own competence, especially in a domain that is
fundamentally different from where they operate
"professionally". My point to Steve was that meritocracy is a
sham and a sibling effect to the Great Man Theory.<br>
<br>
Now, to the extent that my reading of von Hayek (not Friedman)
argued for market forces because it is *arrogant* to pretend
you can design a system more efficient than the one nature
relaxes into, then I would argue for such natural, organic
solutions over engineered ones. But that's precisely *because*
those who think they can singularly, themselves, engineer a
reality better than the one that grew, stigmergically,
socially, naturally are most likely wrong.<br>
<br>
But I have *never* insisted there is such a thing as a *free*
market. Everything that seems to be "natural" is constrained
by the engineering of the agents in and around it, even if
those agents are termites or bacteria. Whatever the Robin Hood
foundation might mean by "free market", their very use of the
term means I would not support them in any way. The term "free
market" is a trigger phrase for this delicate snowflake.
>8^D And I've already blown several cherries at billionaire
phlanthropists. Ptouie. E.g. Bill Gates' magnanimity comes at
the cost of decades of slimy and exploitative practices. It's
reputation laundering in the extreme. If Bill Gates really
gave a flying fsck about these things, he should have begun
working on them *before* (or instead of) exploiting the world
to make siphon off and concentrate billions of dollars.<br>
<br>
So, I tend to stick with established charities with proven
track records including both the united way and the red cross.
My tiny personal donations are doled out at the end of the
year to organizations like mozilla, MAPS, software in the
public interest, etc. with ZERO regard to how "efficient" or
"effective" they are. And my real contributions are paying
(and voting for) taxes and buying goods and services from the
smallest businesses and co-ops I can find.<br>
<br>
On 4/22/20 1:04 PM, <a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>
wrote:<br>
> I was listening to a podcast by the guy who runs Robin
Hood, an organization dedicated to getting at the
institutional roots of poverty. When asked where we should
give money in this crisis, he said, give it where you feel
passion, because that is where you are likely to give it
again. I confess I feel passion for these young folks, who in
the 60’s would have been in graduate programs, or art or
music schools, teaching, learning, inspiring, but are instead
meagerly supporting their passions by making me coffee. And
very good coffee at that. So that’s where my money goes.
Robin Hood <<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Foundation"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Foundation</a>>
might be better for Glen because “According to /Fortune <<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_(magazine)"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_(magazine)</a>>/
magazine, "Robin Hood was a pioneer in what is now called
venture philanthropy, or charity that embraces free-market
forces. An early practitioner of using metrics to measure the
effectiveness of grants, it is a place where<br>
> strategies to alleviate urban poverty are hotly debated,
ineffectual plans are coldly discarded, and its staff of 66
hatches radical new ideas."^[ <<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Foundation#cite_note-fm-2"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_Foundation#cite_note-fm-2</a>>
”<br>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
☣ uǝlƃ<br>
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</blockquote>
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-- <br>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">Frank Wimberly<br>
140 Calle Ojo Feliz<br>
Santa Fe, NM 87505<br>
505 670-9918</div>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Joe
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