Recently I watched this TED talk about charity, and how to measure effectiveness of what’s being done in the not-for-profit space.
There are some great ideas contained there. There’s a commonly held notion that the percentage of donation income that covers overhead the single number that you need to read, to know which charity is good or bad. The lower the number, the better the charity.
But there’s more to a charity than just the overhead number. Only when the size of the charity reaches a certain point can a full-scale national advertising campaign become viable. If you just put fliers up at the local laundromat, you can raise a small amount of money, but if you want to grow beyond a small size, there’s a lot of extra money that needs to be invested in overhead.
Donors always want to put their money towards the most tangible efforts of a charity. No-one wants to spend the money on the salary of the person who looks after the head office, or the equipment they need to keep the charity ticking over.
I found it a convincing argument. Enough to chip in to buy this photocopier. Convinced? You should chip in too.