by pw on 5/24/22, 2:26 AM with 257 comments
by habosa on 5/24/22, 7:01 AM
If your company matches donations, take them up on that. That means for $1 pre-tax (~$0.60 out of your pocket) you can give $2.00 to an organization that could use the money. That’s almost 3.5x force multiplication.
Also I promise it will feel good, and if you choose a local organization that doesn’t have mega donors (not that the big ones are all bad) they will truly notice your help.
by krzysiek on 5/24/22, 7:50 AM
Well, this is just not true.
Americans give 2.1% of GDP to charity [1] while the whole world gives just under 3% [2]. Also when you take a look at a comparison between countries [3] you can see that the US is far behind (percentage-wise, not rank-wise) countries like Netherlands (14%) or Switzerland (13.3%)
1. https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&...
2. https://www.privatebank.citibank.com/newcpb-media/media/docu...
3. https://www.axios.com/2019/11/30/most-charitable-countries-w...
by dredmorbius on 5/24/22, 3:10 PM
I've submitted a few episodes to HN in the past (with little pick-up). The issue of donor-induced bias and misdirection is a frequent one.
Unfortunately, both the podcast and its host, Amy Costello, seem to have gone dark as of this past December. I've written the organisation, the NonProfit Quarterly, several times, and made inquiries elsewhere, but have received no word on what's going on.
The back-catalogue remains available and excellent however.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/tiny-spark/
by beefield on 5/24/22, 8:03 AM
Let's take econ 101 and revealed preferences. It is obvious that if you give 100 bucks to a charity you get utility worth more than that 100 bucks. Otherwise you would not do that. And there is zero difference on the mechanics there if you compare to buying a movie ticket. Watching the movie gives you more utility than what the ticket costs. So, from the point of view of the donor we can think charity nothing more, nothing less than entertainment, and the question is, why one type of entertainment is tax deductible while another is not?
If we compare these transactions not only from the donor's point of view, we notice a clear distinction in power balance between those. The movie ticket transaction is relatively power neutral. Both sides have roughly equal say in the contract, both are taking part of a balanced business transaction. Charity then, is far from being power neutral, the donor has all the power in their hands. Not exactly a reason for charity being the tax-subsidized transaction here.
But charity makes good things. Like... creating a job for a movie teather cashier is somehow not a good thing? Nope, not convincing either.
As said, I have a blind spot here. I find no serious reason why charity should be subsidized. Yes, it feels good and makes good, but so do normal business transactions. If you think that charity is somehow better way to organize social security for the poor than government-tax-mandated social security, think again. (hint: prisoners' dilemma) If you think that you would like to support poor voluntarily, but not by force, you do not understand (or want to understand) that that does not result to sufficient support for the poor.
by somethoughts on 5/24/22, 4:40 AM
I think it'd be an interesting experiment to celebrate the highest tax payers the same way we celebrate those in the Forbes 500 with magazine covers and the way non-profits celebrate their biggest donors with gala dinners.
Celebrating tax contributions and rewarding the contributor (on an opt in basis) could be hugely beneficial for certain types of wealthy individuals. Often times wealthy people enjoy being on these lists as it helps their business, PR, etc. in addition to recognition.
I think it would lead to healthier discourse as the tax contributor would be effectively be saying - of all the philanthropic causes I could support, I am purposely choosing to give up that right and instead contribute it via taxes to my country because I believe in its people to vote intelligently and the elected politicians to act in the best interests of those people.
by tbrownaw on 5/24/22, 3:59 AM
by mistrial9 on 5/24/22, 3:16 PM
Most of the comments here are more aligned with the problems of "Cancer Inc" or "Red Cross" sorts of non-profits, where the mission is real but the massive insititution is decades old and owns a lot of property and equipment, and the executive branch really is in a different world, and people are hired to do boring jobs.
Lastly, it is famously true that huge, huge groups are non-profits, where a lot of money changes hands.. and those kinds of setups are closed to your questions, e.g. hospitals and big league sports. ok one more - the "royalty" of those like the Bishop Museum or the Playboy Golf Championship in the 1980s, which both devolved into giant, serious scams where people actually, eventually went to jail. have fun with your non-profits! others did...
by lmm on 5/24/22, 3:09 AM
by ThrowITout4321 on 5/24/22, 4:00 AM
Charitable foundations should have a finite number of years to do their work.
by xg15 on 5/24/22, 7:58 AM
Yeah, and I'm sure those research centers will be completely unbiased and unafraid to bite the hand that feeds them...
by ccbccccbbcccbb on 5/24/22, 10:43 AM
by jagtesh on 5/24/22, 4:51 AM
To me, that means an elected body that decides through representation what is the best use of funds. It does so with no direct oversight, or “unacceptable paternalism”.
Sounds an awful lot like a government, doesn’t it? How does a government raise funds? Through taxes (simplified view for the sake of argument. Ignore printing money and selling treasury bonds for a moment).
But this is how we function already. So in lieu of philanthropy, can we create a new class of voluntary tax? Or raise taxes on high income? Considering that philanthropy is a purely voluntary act - I think forcing anyone is against that spirit and a voluntary tax, or volunteering funding of govt projects could be the solution.
Having said that, I fail to see how this will not also get politicized and lead to greater influence for the donors.
I’m not sure if there’s a way to accomplish that while still keeping things voluntary, in the spirit of philanthropy.
by birksherty on 5/24/22, 3:26 AM
by spicyusername on 5/24/22, 12:05 PM
...And much isn't...
by jum1p on 5/24/22, 8:10 AM
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-w...
by adhesive_wombat on 5/24/22, 5:28 PM
Clement Attlee, 1920
by bstr_ on 5/25/22, 7:43 AM
by ge96 on 5/24/22, 2:29 AM
by throwaway14356 on 5/24/22, 2:14 PM
But im not sure how that would negatively affect budgeting
by jum1p on 5/24/22, 4:42 PM
english is beautiful
by dontbenebby on 5/24/22, 3:56 PM
The issue is they pay their executives $$$$$ while insisting low level employees take much less than they'd make as government employees while feeling entitled to shape someone's career for the rest of their LIFE if they leave the organization on bad terms.
Someone told me "no one gets fired on K street". I did. I moved in with my parents, learned to code, and signed a lease in line with my budget on an apartment in my home county, where yet another nonprofit profited from my knowledge while abusing me.
Ex: look at page 7 here:
https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/CDT-2015-990-FINA...
Then look here:
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
The entitlement of these entities is astounding.
You can only repeat the same confidence tricks so many times before men with guns come into your house like it's Belfast in the 80s or you have civil unrest on an unprecedented scale.
I've interviewed places that went on to full on unionize, then applied again after the unionization thinking I could discard my previous extremely disrespectful experiences that were hand waved away, only to have people conduct the process like I'm trying to order a vodka mate at Waterfall[6].
(As in conducting the interview with dripping sarcasm and a tone like they're going to try to put a cigarette out on me, which is not something I want done, though thanks for the hole in my best black t-shirt because I decided to go to the club they didn't write about in LA Times or whatever.)
I'm gonna swing back to a research project I'm working on in a moment, but it says everything about thew state of nonprofits all the world over that when back before the 2020 election, I asked my bank for a safe deposit box and a funeral home for a pointer on someone who can draw up a will that it felt like the entire planet lost their minds. (They didn't help with either, since I'm not a boomer, and so I closed my account. Enjoy the bank run and stock crash, you rude little woman!)
The insurrection was illegal, and murder is bad, but unfortunately I think it took events like that, or the power failure in Texas[2] or the condo collapse in Florida[3] are what it took to teach folks that pairing no income tax at the state level with hatred of "feds" and sales tax will end with you sitting alone in your McMansion or condo, wondering if it will collapse in on you due to an extreme weather event, or a nuclear strike conducted by a rouge state you insisted via your purposefully terrible voting be handled with kid gloves[4][5].
At the end of the day, the world we are seeing on the news today is the one that folks from generations prior to mine (including GenX) very violently insisted on.
I'm on the autistic spectrum -- I know people sometimes say one thing and mean another, so all I can do is try to put enough information out there that people can try to make good decisions under uncertainty.
(I wrote the above while pounding espresso that I put on my Capital One[8] card, since based on my interactions with their employees I don't think they care if I pay my bill, and there's no cash in MY wallet.)
[1] https://gizmodo.com/google-funded-think-tank-fires-google-cr... [2] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/17/968577281/what-went-wrong-wit... [3] https://www.npr.org/2021/08/26/1031245430/surfside-condo-col... [4] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/21/1100547908/russia-ends-natura... [5] https://www.npr.org/2022/01/15/1072385995/north-korea-is-tes... [6] http://water-gate.de/de/contact/location/location.html [7] I changed my SSID, you're not as smart as you think :-) [8] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/woman-accused-of...
by ZeroGravitas on 5/24/22, 12:22 PM
> If you’re used to thinking that our democratic system is in bad shape, that can sound jarring. But she’s working in the tradition of what philosophers call “ideal theory”; the aim is to sketch out what a good system would be, assuming that everyone fully complied with its rules.
I'm used to thinking that democracy is in poor shape because rich and powerful people prevent it from spreading further.
Which seems appropriate for this topic. But instead of diving into that, this author seems to take as a fairly key element of their argument that people getting stupid rich and then doing government type stuff without democratic oversight is good because the obvious alternative, democratic governance is fundamentally broken.
I'll check out the book by Emma Saunders-Hastings, “Private Virtues, Public Vices: Philanthropy and Democratic Equality” as its arguments sound pretty sensible.
by pw on 5/24/22, 6:29 AM
by christkv on 5/24/22, 5:11 AM