I suggest World Vision? They are a Christian charity with child and family sponsorships, with a project-vs-admin ratio of $0.86 per dollar (to projects) (worldvision.org)...

Posted by: Mike at December 29, 2004 09:49 AM

I'd like to see data on how these charities handled 9/11 donations. I'm not giving a dime to a certain organization that squandered our goodwill.

Posted by: JS at December 29, 2004 10:12 AM

Here's the rating for UNICEF: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/4617.htm

It's usually listed under United States Fund for UNICEF. It got **** from Charity Navigator.

Posted by: Joe at December 29, 2004 10:17 AM

Sorry to post again:

From BBB: Yes for UNICEF

https://give.org/reports/care_dyn.asp?438

I don't see it on AIP.

Posted by: Joe at December 29, 2004 10:23 AM

I'd really like to see efficiency information included along with the other criteria. Perhaps also a 'tick-the-box' situation as to whether donations go towards proselytising too.

Posted by: Jackson at December 29, 2004 10:25 AM

JS: the BBB report on the Red Cross discusses in detail their handling of the 9/11 money. They are still sitting on some of it, but there may be good reasons for that. I haven't run across other discussions of that aspect, but I'm sure there are some out there.

Joe: Actually I looked at that, but the problem is that the United States Fund for UNICEF seems to be a "funnel" charity. They are efficient in terms of their major "project", which is grants to UNICEF. That doesn't, however, tell you what UNICEF does with the money, in terms of real projects vs. administrative/bureaucratic overhead, etc.

Jackson, that would be interesting; but I don't know where to get that information, and it's also hard to define "proselytizing". I'm a big fan of the Grameen Foundation, which is a secular charity and doesn't proselytize in a religious sense -- but they do promote particular social practices, even to the extent of, for instance, asking credit recipients to pledge not to engage in dowry marriage! Is that proselytizing?

So your best bet with regards to that issue is to go to the charity's website and poke around to see if their philosophy fits yours, and what they consider "programs".

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at December 29, 2004 10:47 AM

Consider adding:
Mercy Corps (AIP B+; BBB yes: Charity Navigator ****)
American Friends Service Committee (AIP A-; BBB yes; Charity Navigator not listed)

The Charity Navigator site seems slow to load; may be taking a lot of hits today.

Posted by: Maines at December 29, 2004 11:05 AM

Hi,
People might want to consider giving to the following:

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societits www.ifrc.org -- the world's largest humanitarian organization.

Posted by: Nancy at December 29, 2004 11:26 AM

Added World Vision, Mercy Corps, AFSC. The watchdogs I'm familiar with seem to have information on the American Red Cross rather than IFRC. However, now I'm wondering if ARC and IFRC have the same funnel/destination relationship as United States Fund for UNICEF and UNICEF, which might artificially inflate ARC's efficiency (i.e., some layers of bureaucracy are "hidden" by the transfer between ARC and IFRC). Anyone know anything about this?

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at December 29, 2004 12:15 PM

Isn't the Red Cross and United Way constantly coming into little scandals because of how little of each dollar makes it to the victim in need? After 9/11 there was an investigation as to how the Red Cross squandered most the donations for the victims' fund.

How about trying to find out and publish how much of every dollar donated actually goes to the people in need (especially the children)?

Posted by: -lc- at December 29, 2004 12:26 PM

Charity Navigator on CARE (***). Not bad, but had I known about Charity Navigator I may have given to American Red Cross instead. My only criteria were a) doesn't exist to spend money on fundraising (I checked on guidestar) and b) doesn't proselytize for jesus and preferably isn't xian at all.

Posted by: Mike Linksvayer at December 29, 2004 12:29 PM

Association for India's Development (AID) has been active in South India, specially Tamil Nadu since Sunday and has been coordinating relief efforts with local NGOs to reach out in areas where the government, ICRC and UNICEF effort is lacking. AID has already released $75,000 in immediate relief and is working to develop plans for meeting medium term as well as long term needs. For more information and to contribute: https://survivors.aidindia.org/

Thanks.

P.S. At times the web site may be experiencing heavy traffic. Please bear with us.

Posted by: Anup at December 29, 2004 12:47 PM

lc, I added some links relating to the controversy around the American Red Cross's usage of 9/11 funds. There is a breakdown of disbursed money in the BBB report. From a cursory reading, it looks like they were sluggish and bureaucratic about disbursing the money, but most of it has been given out. It also seems like many people thought it was all going to victim's families, when in fact a lot of it went to infrastructural items like call centers. Infrastructure is important too, though.

There was also controversy around the fact that the ICRC knew about the Abu Ghraib abuses and complained in private to the US, rather than going public. "Red Cross workers insist that the policy of talking only to prison authorities about abuses they have witnessed is what opens the prison gates for them."

Big organizations like the Red Cross are to some extent magnets for this kind of complaint (complaining about the financial practices of, say, the National Association of Police Athletic Leagues is not going to make headlines), which is why the hard data collected by the watchdog organizations can be a useful corrective.

There was also a scandal involving ongoing child abuse by local UNHCR and Save the Children employees that may have tangentially involved other NGOs.

Anup, thanks for posting! You were first on the list from the beginning. :-)

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at December 29, 2004 01:08 PM

A friend in Singapore suggested the Singapore Red Cross. He claims they are very well organized and will likely be a big part of the relief efforts throughout Indonesia.

Posted by: Franky at December 29, 2004 01:39 PM

Thanks, Franky. Does anyone know anything about watchdog organizations outside of the USA?

I also wonder how independent the various Red Crosses are from one another, and whether it might indeed maximize efficiency to donate directly to a local one?

The Singapore Red Cross seems to have online donation. I haven't tried it to see if it takes US credit cards.

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at December 29, 2004 01:51 PM

Asha for Education is also doing work in the affected areas in India. You can find regular updates at https://ashatsunamirelief.blogspot.com/
To support these relief efforts donations can be made online at https://www.ashanet.org/

Also Please note and correct if possible that AID and Asha for Education have 4 star ratings from Charity Navigator. Both of these organisations are on the ground and working with grass roots project partners to bring relief to the survivors.

https://ashanet.org/index.php?page=charitynav-4star

In Charity Navigator search for "Asha for Education" and "Association for India's DEvelopment"

Posted by: Barnali at December 29, 2004 01:58 PM

Ben,
The only issue with the charity navigator is that it reports charities that receive more than $500,000 in public support with require 4 years of Forms 990 to complete an evaluation.

Ours usually is under $50K (as 90% of our work is pro-bono) and as we are a small organization 0% is spent on admin. - I don't take a salary and cover admin. costs. We also work with partners who employ local labor and utilize construction techniques.

By working with those affected this keeps funds within the community and creates micro-economies for those trying to get out of this disaster. We have found this to be the most cost-effective way of rebuilding.

Back on topic I think Guidestar is more inclusive but there support sucks (online updating has been down for FOUR months and no-one returns calls).

Cheers for bringing this topic up - it is vitally important in relief work.

Cameron

Posted by: Cameron Sinclair at December 29, 2004 02:07 PM

I made a donation through American Jewish World Service which is a wonderful and efficient org. www.ajws.org

Posted by: sarah at December 29, 2004 02:20 PM

One last thought - any massive organization such as the Red Cross already has disaster supplies at hand and in stock, they don't run to the store the moment someone hands them a check. They also have emergency funds at hand for dispursement. Any money going to them is for future restocking, not to help someone tomorrow or next week. IMHO, the smaller and mid-sized organizations are the ones I want give to, they logically should move faster and have less administration overhead (Red Cross spent $100 million out of the 9/11 $500 million on telecommunications, accounting and database management systems???!!!) Apparently they have $2 billion in assets right now: https://google.com/search?q=cache:www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/3277.htm
compare that to $15 million Unicef assets:
https://google.com/search?q=cache:www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/4617.htm

Posted by: -lc- at December 29, 2004 02:32 PM

Hi Cameron, that's a good point: the small organizations must really slip through the cracks. Perhaps I can add Guidestar ratings later, if I have time. Your organization looks really cool.

(The other problem with Charity Navigator is that they're generating all their pages dynamically as Java servlets on JRun; I think they're finding out today that that doesn't scale. :-/ But that's what Google is for, I guess...)

Sarah, I added AJWS.

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at December 29, 2004 02:38 PM

How does The Salvation Army rate?

Posted by: Frank at December 29, 2004 02:48 PM

Its very troubling to see that Network Solutions has somehow fouled up the DNS routing for the Doctors Without Borders website. if you TRY to go to https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org you quickly get routed to some Network Associates Search page that offers other charities to give funds to! Of course, folks get listed on the NetAss Search engine page by paying placement fees, but I'd call it outrageous to see this kind of situation where one charity turns up when you tried to go to another.

Someone needs to help Doctors Without Borders out - and you folks have more combined clout that a casual and humble HTML coder like me ...

Here is the URL I got when I tried to go to the https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org address https://apps5.oingo.com/apps/domainpark/domainpark.cgi?client=netw8744&s=www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Thats just evil ...

Posted by: at December 29, 2004 02:52 PM

I don't know if they are rated, but the UCC's International Relief Fund comes through a Christian Church with a history of caring about social justic issues and you can give your donation in another person's memory or honor. They'll even send a letter of acknowledgement to them. https://www.ucc.org/index2.html

Posted by: Lisa at December 29, 2004 03:22 PM

lc, those are good points. Big organizations may be slow and inefficient. However, they may also have certain economies of scale -- administrative salaries and the like may actually be a smaller percentage of a big charity's total funds, if the same number of people are moving more money. It pays to examine the details.

Anonymous, when I go to https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org , I get redirected to this page, which says "Doctors Without Borders web site is experiencing very heavy traffic". Anyone know why anonymous's results differ?

Frank, I've added information on the Salvation Army. They don't report information to Charity Navigator, because they are a church. But they are reported to be very efficient; you'll have to consult the links and see whether you find the sources credible.

Lisa, thanks for posting; I can't find any watchdog or rating information on UCC.

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at December 29, 2004 04:05 PM

lc - while it's true that smaller organisations might move faster in some situations, I personally give regularly to organisations like MSF *because* they're larger. The stocks of disaster supplies they have means that they're able to move very quickly to provide the resources that are needed - MSF is already moving the supplies in to establish a field hospital for thousands of people for a 3 month period. Personally I don't mind donating money that could be spent on the restocking of these supplies, because I know it's going to help continue the work that's already been started.

Posted by: Madeline at December 29, 2004 05:55 PM

Hmmm - I just tried donating to the American Red Cross via the Amazon Honor System page, but my contribution was denied because apparently there's a $50 limit. Also, the page describing the Honor System says Amazon takes 2.9% + $0.30 of each transaction. Anyone know if that limit or that Amazon fee is being changed for use by the ARC?

Posted by: Phil at December 29, 2004 06:33 PM

Please get the word out to people looking at ways of making a difference by helping those effected. On-line donations may be made at: https://www.giveworld.org/tsunami.htm.

Posted by: GiveWorld at December 29, 2004 08:14 PM

Thanks for posting this!

For thos who want to help out... I have added some Christian mission relief links to: www.heartformissions.net

Posted by: Heart for Missions at December 29, 2004 11:20 PM

Consider adding Christian Children's Fund. They have projects onsite throughout Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India, and have already mobilized emergency plans in response to the tsunami, hoping to reach 50000 children in Indonesia alone. They are widely recognized as experts in dealing with trauma faced by children in areas ravaged by national disasters and ongoing war. They received an A rating from the Am. Institute of Philanthropy, and spend over 80% of their funds directly on program services to children (and despite the name, serve children of every race and creed).

Posted by: Christe McMenomy at December 30, 2004 01:31 AM

Phil, my impression is that Amazon is waiving that fee: "One hundred percent of your donation will go to the American Red Cross".

Heart For Missions, thanks for the additional links.

Christie, thanks, I have added CCF.

Re: GiveWorld, there is no watchdog information available from Charity Navigator, AIP or BB. However, their parent organization's 2003 Form 990 is online, which is an admirable degree of transparency. In 2003, GiveWorld started with $6,298.00 in assets, received $126,129.00 in revenues ($100K from one company), disbursed $4,445.00 in programs and spent $951.00 on management.

The good news: high transparency, lean administration, and a volunteer staff. The bad news: not much of a track record yet, perhaps?

However, looking deeper, I'm not sure if those numbers account for all donations made through GiveWorld to their partner NGOs? Basically, the model seems to be that GiveWorld screens grassroots NGOs in India, publishes a profile on each, breaks down what each donation will do, and requires the recipient NGOs to provide social-worker-case-report-like feedback on the results.

So it seems like it's potentially a lean, innovative model with an emphasis on transparency and accountability. It's not clear how much GiveWorld has in the way of resources for oversight of the recipient NGOs.

It's not clear how old GiveWorld is. Is this a start-up?

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at December 30, 2004 11:00 AM

I'd like to suggest Americares be added to the list:

Charity Navigator rates them highly. They spend an astonishing 99.0% of their income on the people they're trying to help, and their CEO doesn't pull down $600K+ a year in salary like the CEO of the American Red Cross. They also have an online form that earmarks donations for South Asian Earthquake Relief

Thanks,

- Mike

Posted by: at December 30, 2004 01:16 PM

Thanks Mike, added Americares.

I just donated to Asha for Education -- I'm impressed with their transparency, their efficiency, the flurry of on-the-ground activity on their blog, their size (small enough to seem to me to be nimble, large enough to be stable as an enterprise), their usually long-term focus (and the speed at which they adapted to respond to this disaster), and their structure -- they seem to be principally composed of Indians, in America and Europe as well as in India, organized into small chapters which make donations directly to grassroots NGOs.

The fact that, in this case, many of the donors living in the first world share a language and culture with recipients in Third World poverty, strikes me as a very good example of leverage -- look at their internship FAQ for an example of what I mean -- they take it for granted that interns will speak an Indian language and have a local friend or family member to stay with -- so it sounds like we're talking about a constant flow of donor Indians from the US and Europe dropping in on the recipient grassroots NGOs to help out while on summer break, family vacations, etc -- a wonderfully low-cost and reliable mechanism for oversight, it seems to me.

They also seem to be entirely volunteer-run -- according to their income statement, in 2003 they spent only $21K on general and administrative expenses, of which they account for about $14K explicitly in categories like banking fees, postage and printing, and advertising. I like the idea that none of my donation is going towards salaries or office rental, and that the money is nonetheless going straight to on-the-ground NGOs without any intermediaries. The only people getting paid here are Indian social workers and the like, and my dollar goes a lot farher in Indian social worker salaries than it would in paying American charity CEOs, etc.

I may make a donation to one of the larger charities as well, however. The one drawback of Asha is that India, while hard hit, seems to have relatively more resources to deal with the problems than places like Indonesia, which is devastated, and Myanmar, which is not letting anyone even know that there is a problem. So I'm interested in what are the most effective ways to reach those places.

Thanks to everyone for posting with your suggestions.

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at December 30, 2004 05:05 PM

Humanitarian Aid from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is distributed at 100%. See contribution guidelines at www.lds.org

The church is already well established in most of the hard hit areas, and is already distributing from their storehouses.

Their assistance is non-demoninational.

Posted by: cllattun at December 31, 2004 04:48 AM

You're doing a fantastic job in providing information about making financial donations. Have you been able to find any information on how to offer assistance in caring for the orphaned children? e.g. fostering them?

Posted by: John at December 31, 2004 08:08 AM

The Lancet, perhaps the world's most presigious medical journal, published a very negative editorial about the Director of UNICEF recently:

https://pdf.thelancet.com/pdfdownload?uid=llan.364.9451.analysis_and_interpretation.31463.1&x=x.pdf

"It is widely, if regrettably, accepted that UNICEF has lost its way during Carol Bellamy’s long term of office."

Posted by: John Daly at December 31, 2004 11:44 AM

PayPal is now taking direct donatations for Unicef and waiving all their fees (I hope amazon waives their fees too). https://donations.paypal.com/

Did you hear that Bill Gates gave $3million out of his own foundation (not microsoft's money but his own) very nice move.

Posted by: -lc- at December 31, 2004 12:30 PM

We've set up a website that makes it even easier for people to generate funds for the tsunami relief effort. Please check out https://www.ReliefSearch.org.

Very simply, when users click on search results generated from ReliefSearch.org, the site earns revenues on a pay-per-click basis. All click revenues generated from these searches will help fund the victims of the Earthquake/Tsunami disaster. People can continue performing searches on the web as they normally would, only proceeds from their activities on ReliefSearch.org will help the cause. So, we're encouraging users to use the ReliefSearch.org search engine instead of Google or Yahoo!

Our goal is 1 million searches in the next 30 days. Anything you can do to help spread the word about ReliefSearch.org will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much for your help!

Posted by: Ben Padnos at January 2, 2005 10:00 AM

The United States Fund for UNICEF "funnels" money to UNICEF becuase that is its mission. UNICEF does not receive money from the UN, so there are 38 national committees that raise money and awareness about its causes. You can research their efficiency by looking at their annual reports on their websites: unicef.org and unicefusa.org.
Carol Bellamy has come under fire for her work at unicef, mostly from those who oppose her interest in increasing the opportunites for girls because they see this as some kind of hidden "women's rights" agenda.

Posted by: mayes at January 3, 2005 01:29 PM

I know some people who are involved with Asha, and can vouch that they are very committed. However, they are limited to India. You should consider Islamic Relief Worldwide, www.irw.org, who currently has relief operations running (from before the disaster) in Sri Lanka and in Indonesia. They are rated 4 stars by charitynavigator (https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/4438.htm), and over 90% of their funds go directly to programs to feed, clothe, and rehabilitate the poor.

Posted by: sifta at January 3, 2005 02:36 PM

Thanks for the information, clattun, John, John, lc, and mayes.

John, I don't know much about fostering orphans. There is reason to be cautious; the State Department has blocked adoptions: "the international standard in a crisis is to keep children as close to their family members as possible. It can be extremely difficult to determine whether children whose parents are missing are truly orphans."

UNICEF also advises caution: "In conflict and other emergency situations, UNICEF operates on the principle that no child should be adopted abroad unless it is firmly established that he or she has no parents, relatives or community members willing and able to care for the child."

Many affected areas lost disproportionately more children than adults -- there may be more parents who lost children in the tsunami, than children who lost parents. If local relatives can be provided with the resources to take care of the children, or local families can adopt them, those children may be much better off where they have a shared language, culture, religion, family, and where everyone around them has been through the same tragedy.

mayes, I did not mean to criticize United States Fund for UNICEF for channeling money to UNICEF -- obviously, that's their job. I wanted only to point out that comparing the expenses of different charities is not necessarily apples to apples: the Form 990 filed in the USA may not account for all the administrative expenses.

The UNICEF FAQ, however, does say the following: "When you make a donation to UNICEF, either on our website or by telephone (see above), you can choose to earmark your contribution for the tsunami relief effort or any other program. As each of UNICEF’s Country Offices have their own annual budget to cover their overhead costs, your donation can go solely to the relief effort."

Do you have any links to articles defending Carol Bellamy's administration of UNICEF? I'd love to offer any detailed opposing view.

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at January 3, 2005 03:40 PM

sifta, I have added IRW. Also added Sarvodaya, noted via the Science Fiction Writers of America newsletter.

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at January 3, 2005 04:56 PM

Stop by www.gfa.org/tsunami. This Christian organization keeps their administrative costs separate from designated donations. So 100% of your gift goes to the disaster relief. GFA was the first group on the site.

Check out this article by Christian Examiner.
https://www.christianexaminer.com/Articles/Articles%20Jan05/Art_Jan05_10.html

There is eternity.
ThinkOnIt

Posted by: DG at January 4, 2005 11:32 AM

You forgot Catholic Relief Services, which on December 30 announced a commitment of $25 million for emergency relief and long-term rehabilitation programs to assist people affected by the Dec. 26 tsunami. The amount represents one of the earliest and largest such commitments to date for the tsunami relief efforts. See www.catholicrelief.org

Posted by: at January 4, 2005 12:31 PM

Added Catholic Relief Services, and a comment urging people to consider giving beyond just funds earmarked for the tsunami.

Since I mentioned giving to Asha, I should add that I also gave to Sarvodaya, for somewhat similar reasons: grassroots organization, local employees, involved in more than just disaster relief. I don't have much data on its efficiency, but in this case I'm swayed by my regard for Arthur C. Clarke -- surely this can be forgiven of a science fiction writer! :-)

Posted by: Benjamin Rosenbaum at January 13, 2005 09:41 AM

Regards.
well I thakkar Dniesh am a socialworker willing to work with the NGOwhich is working for the Tsunami Victims in south india and so leaving this message for those who can help me contact those NGOs willing to employ my kinda socialworkers who really want to work for the society.
I have worked in local NGO for a year and now i would like to head for fresh challenges in order to utilize my potentials for the benefit of society and myself too.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Thanking you in anticipation.
God Be with you and Tsunami Victims.

Posted by: Thakkar Dinesh at February 6, 2005 01:06 AM

Great job, Mr Rosenbaum. It's a bit late in the day to say this, i know, but we were kinda snowed under at with the response to our blogs.

peter

(Found you via Blogpulse's study on the Tsunami, in case you were wondering.)

Posted by: Peter Griffin at March 2, 2005 03:48 PM