And a lot of Turkeys will end up in the dumpster as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I mean, the sum of human misery in this world is vast - how someone individually feels about how they contribute is somewhat irrelevant if it only manages to break even on the management overhead they create to the system as the whole.

I assume when purchasing the foodbank can standardize and become much more effective. E.g. A family of 4 gets package type A, a family with a newborn gets package B, etc.

When dealing with donations you can't do any of that as every request is going to be a custom assemblage of food stuffs.

Please do not donate food that is past its marked best by date. You're wasting everyone's time and effort.

Sure. Where are you storing the cans in the interim? Who is paying for that warehouse space? Wouldn't it make more sense to just receive monetary donations which can be stored for free and converted into food when needed?

sigh

> Frankly, they use money for other things like keeping the lights on and paying bills. The food (and other needs like children's items) is donated by the community.

Money is fungible.

If people donate cash instead of cans, it becomes practical for someone to spend their time buying. (there is nothing evil about paying someone to do the work in addition to using volunteers, and plenty of churches operate that way) If the efficiencies sited in the article are anywhere close to being correct, it's worthwhile.

    By the time you cut that out you are only going to get two cans worth.

For some real data, I typed in "food bank" on Charity Navigator and picked the first result:

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

97.3% spent on programs and services delivered.

Even then the one donated can is becoming two if people just donate the cash equivalent! Even in your example donating cash would be better and the money that doesn't go directly to services but instead to advertising and management expenses will also hopefully bring in more donations. But again even in your example if we ignore 100% of the benefits of advertisement and good management 1 can is /still/ becoming 2 cans!

I find that there's always someone willing to clamor that CEO's are with their weight in gold, but I find it excruciatingly difficult to find an elucidation of how what a CEO does is dependent on a particular person rather than to an arbitrary individual making a decision based off of high level information collected about the state of the company.

I'm really curious, because it bugs me that everywhere I go I never seem to be able to jive this view of CEO's as unique in their own right, with the fact that what they are doing is just enabled by carte blanche access to the internal state and business affairs of the company in question.

Like, really?

I'm not saying there isn't any excessive pay in some charities. But the management needs of an organization are not determined by the goods or services being supplied by that organization so much as by the complexity of the organization. It's not somehow fundamentally easier to manage a charity than it is a product company of similar scale and size.

Now, there can be unwarranted complexity of course, but some of this is a natural outgrowth of scaling and reach. So just like in private sector, charity organizations have a huge range of needs. Running MSF is very different than running a local independent food bank.

From my limited personal experience, charity sector executives tend to be paid a fair bit less than they would in private sector work, but still at a reasonable scale for experience an skills.

This is exactly what you want: someone capable of doing the work well, who demonstrably cares enough about it that it as made a financial impact on them. Otherwise you are effectively suggesting that it is better for the organization to be inefficient and waste its donations, so long as the people heading it are also "donating" their time. You can hope for somebody good who is financially secure and doesn't need the salary, but it would be foolish to count on.

There is one other issue, which is the question of whether or not larger scale charity organizations are (or can be) more efficient at delivering meaningful impact than smaller, localized one. That seems like a good target for some proper research. If the answer is that larger organizations are better at it, then clearly there is a benefit to having them run well. And caring about the impact is nowhere near enough qualification to do that.

On the other hand a small non-profit with a half a dozen employees probably has greater need of a competent accountant.

They've already taken a 75% paycut, at a certain point you're not going to attract the talent necessary to do great work. The difference between an A-player and a C-player is vast, and sometimes you need to compensate higher to attract the A-players that will have a transformative impact on the charity.

My experience with non-profits (granted, not 'pro' since I wasn't being paid) is that organizations that limit their capacity to amateurs and volunteers also significantly limit their impact.

Are there bad methods with good missions? Yes. Are there bad missions with good methods? Yes (most for-profit companies fit here).

Furthermore, CEO salary is one of the most dismal metrics. UNICEF USA's CEO is often in chain-letter-type posts about CEO salary, yet UNICEF USA raises gobs of money for highly successful programs saving millions of lives per year in developing countries. UNICEF vaccinates somewhere near half of the worlds children. Half.

Somehow, hiring talent seems over-rated. This seems related to "efficiency" which is % of dollar going to "programming". Fine salaries paid to employees is cash they cannot hand out to homeless. I get it.

It's usually not those trade-offs that reduce "efficiency". There's a ton misunderstanding about what "programming" is. If a company installs a landing strip to fly in 10 years of supplies, have they spent that money on "programming" or "overhead"?

The worst offenders, in my opinion, are the tiniest hobby non-profits that do virtually nothing. If I fly to the third world and install a well for some people, have I done real good? Perhaps! If I hand out food once a year around thanksgiving, have I? yes! But that labor, effort, and money may have been better invested in policy changes or continuing-support programs. In almost all cases I've seen, the tiny non-profits bemoan the cost of doing this compared to the larger non-profits. Why are some programs more expensive when implemented at a larger non-profit? The main reason is they include this "extra" work such as publicity, policy, continuing support, and yes, hiring good people so they can do better next year with more money.

Any business-minded person will tell you that you must reinvest in your organization to do more. What that more is might be up for debate (the mission), but to avoid self-investment is to have a bad method.

Imagine a charity could hire someone that would 100x the amount of donations, whether that’s through more effective marketing, connections, etc. how much should a charity be willing to pay for that?

People donate a ton of money to churches.

The issue's core problem is the excessive pay of C-suite people in the US affecting the workforce. This bleeds quickly into charities, of course.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-f...

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Regarding your objection to leaders making an income on your donations (an objection I used to share), what if it could be proven that more people are helped more effectively that way? Would that change your mind?

From my vantage, it seems that the homeless community has gotten so large and so widespread that it could spawn and support its own economy. Is there anything that could be traded for services such as washed clothes, security patrol, food gathering, etc?

I keep imagining that assisting the creation of such self-supported services is something that the non-homeless could achieve. I would hope that this would scale naturally, and then naturally result in lifting these individuals out of homelessness. Meanwhile, it would mike homeless life much more comfortable.

Thoughts?

If the charity is a responsible one then you're wasting more money by forcing them to sort your cans, clothing and miscellaneous junk than the slim chance that someone's going to misuse those funds

Even if they don't reach that lofty level it's hard to beat a 5x multiplier between the money paid for a donated can and the amount a purchaser could get with that money.

Iphone of unknown origins ? Free WiFi around ? That could explain it.

Honestly, 90% of homeless people have psychological problems so I take the iphone lady over the grumpy drunkard any day :). Everyone has a different coping mechanism :/.

Now, "some beggars" is likely not "the majority".

Anyway, there are many different ways to help others (giving money to the lady so she can keep being by herself without annoying anyone, giving the social workers or ngo that will try to get to her through other means, etc.). I believe what is important is that we try do something from time to time and we don't forget these are humane beings.

My high-end Samsung phone to watch things on comes to $0.91/day. That's because I bought new. If bought second hand I'd expect to pay closer to $0.50/day.

So for $1.74/day, I can watch YouTube all day, on one of the most expensive devices, with a screen so high-end you can't see the pixels. It also gives me communication for free with anyone all around the world, real-time access to financial services, unlimited games, and access to various kinds of work.

It would be very difficult to eat or drink on $1.74/day, and it's vastly less than the cost of renting a home.

Does it really make sense to conclude the beggar women standing on the corner isn't struggling, because she can afford to watch YouTube on a nice phone?

This is the paradox of cheap technology next to expensive housing.

It makes sense to me to refuse to help individuals who seem to be abusing goodwill, but I think this is a poor excuse to refuse helping anyone who asks. I always give the benefit of the doubt to those in need.

If you don't want to give, that's your prerogative, but I don't think this is a good justification for that decision.

It always pains me to see people convey that attitude. We spend on luxury items because they make us feel good, they give us a little endorphine hit when we buy / use / consume them.

I grew up in a poor family of four, like my first real job out of high school in the mid-90s at $20K was more than my step-father ever brought home. Having that "luxury" chocolate bar, or being able to save enough for a brand-new bicycle or Nintendo... that was a huge deal. Saying that poor people shouldn't have access to "luxuries" is saying that they shouldn't be allowed to spend money to feel good.

I was having a conversation with a friend of a mine who happens to be a doctor and she works for the red cross some days of the week. I happen to have another friend who works as a social worker in a refugee centre so we traded stories and impressions.

She told me that there were a lot of tensions between people and electricity in the air as time goes by.

Now, every few months workers there organize a party where refugees cook typical dishes to share with everyone. It does a lot for easing the tension and the weeks after those parties are easier on everyone, staff and refugees.

Now those parties have a lot of desserts (easier to bake and to store) which are for all intents and purposes a bit of luxury. I think there could be a bit of alcohol but don't quote me on that.

Would you say that was not money well spent in the end (the red cross is supported through donations and the government adds some at some point) ?

> I would never tell someone what to spend their money on. if I'm going to spend my money to help them out, I'd prefer it not go straight to a pint of liquor. is that unreasonable?

It really does depend upon your values. What if - alcoholism excluded - that money is going to buy a 15ç can of bad beer but it'd be only one beer. What if this is the alcohol in that can of beer that'll help the guy to muster the courage to spend all of his days panhandling so he can get food or pay for his spot under the bridge for the night ?

My point is that I don't believe that because I gave them some money I should have some control on them, or restrict the use of that money to my liking (shelters do that, with contracts and agreement put in place with the objective to lift people out of the street but that's another debate). Either that gift is free or it's not a gift, it's a salary for a behaviour I want the beggar to have. If I give money it becomes their money, if he can't dispose of it then it wasn't given.

I often wonder what would happen if I just said : "OK, I'll give you ten bucks if you help me move some stuff for an hour or help me with the garden". Then, what if he spend that money on booze, girls or WoW pre paid card ? At least he didn't mug anyone.

Anecdote: where I live, people on social welfare can get some small jobs (lawn mowing, paint jobs, that kind of things). They aren't paid in money. People give them some kind of social paper that is the equivalent of money and then they have to go the administration to get that turned into money into their account. Here's the catch: only people on welfare can get these jobs. And they are basically given monopoly money by people buying their services (who first bought these cheques from the government). These papers have validity dates, can't be used on the spot to buy something. Some money get lost this way. Why should people on welfare be paid with fake money ?

It reminds me of this news about beggars getting a qr code or a RFID chip. Mobile payments would go to the shelter they are affiliated with and that would be converted into housing and food.

> is that unreasonable?

To each its own, it just means we have different outlook and a different set of values (and by that I don't mean to imply I am better than you or correct).

edit: and of course, we live in many different cultures that have different subsets of values and people in it so what might be the righteous and the practical way to help beggars/homeless people might be different on a different continent... or over in the next town.

> Its always okay when its not your own money.

Are you trying to build an anti-socialist argument ?

You don’t need skilled and educated people to dig wells, build houses, stock shelves, fold clothing, serve food, etc. These jobs can be done for the minimum wage or by people outside of the workforce (youth and elderly).

I kind of disagree with charities that get so big that they need skilled workers. If your charity gets that big, it should just become a social program as part of the government. Like why is Red Cross a charity? That should be an arm of the UN, not a private entity.

Chrissake, you have no idea how much we deal with this working at nonprofits. "You are nefariously concealing information from me!!!!!" "Have you tried looking at our website?" The answer is basically always no.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/?c_src=WPAIDSEARCH

https://www.givewell.org/main?utm_expid=.Mr3umtjnSuel86Mlr0l...

https://www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities