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Making charitable donations

  
 
All Acting Regiment
12:08 / 27.10.06
So, I'm thinking of donating some money to the Mapuche International Link. However, I'm wary, as I want to help these people but I want to know more about where the money would be going. Do any of you know where I could find out?

Or, would I be better donating to Oxfam or simmilar?

Do you have any advice? What are your experiences with charities?
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
12:34 / 27.10.06
A quick review of the site has led me to two salient points.

1) MIL is a voluntary organisation and not a charity. Not a bad thing per se but worth considering. Ostensibly it could mean there there is an absence of audiability and accountability. However, I'm not going to accuse them of anything without evidence, it's just a general point that you may with to consider. Incidentally, charities are not usually allowed to engage in political activity.

2) MIL's main focus would appear to be campaigning and lobbying. Again not a bad thing but is it something that you want to support?

When it comes to donating to charities then I'm of the opinion that you should be a bit savvy about who gets your money. This means verifying their credentials and researching their activities.

Credentials are easy. Ask for their charity number and check it against the national charities registration body.

Activities are a bit more in depth but not that complicated. Charities usually release reports on activity and policy of finance streams unless they are very small, in which case it's not that difficult to work out what they are doing anyway.

The same usually applies to not for profit organsiations like MIL.
 
 
Not in the Face
12:46 / 27.10.06
I was about to say much the same with the proviso that MIL may not have been able to secure charitable status because of their campaigning nature. Its a rather fine distinction in charity law but charities are ostensibly not supposed to engage in political activity as a primary purpose i.e. campaign for a change in the law etc - organisations working overseas are under greater scrutiny because of the differences in legal systems.

So the organisation may be perfectly commendable and run well but unable to register as a charity in which case they would be barred from a range of possible funding sources and proportionally need your money more. Also unless Oxfam or a similar charity are running an camapaign expressly for the Mapuche people then your support is unlikely to reach them, so if it is the specific cause you care about then supporting this group is the way to go.

I'd be a little concerned that they give no information about their accounts and who else funds them and definetly take the opportunity to quiz them. Alternatively you could wait, the new charities act should become law next year and groups such as this should be able to register at which point a lot more information about them will be available.
 
 
Quantum
13:03 / 27.10.06
Contact them, the details are at the bottom of the 'about us' page. Give them a call and ask, and if you're still concerned they'll send you a copy of their spending.

I can pretty much guarantee your cash will go on campaigning and lobbying though. I work in the charity sector and I'd advise helping smaller charities that specifically do what you agree with, rather than huge orgs that have millions of supporters.
 
 
Quantum
13:05 / 27.10.06
charities are not usually allowed to engage in political activity.

Greenpeace isn't a charity, for that reason- you can't have charitable status if you criticise the gov't.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
14:03 / 27.10.06
I'm pretty suspicious of charities and NGO's, but here are a few leftish ethical considerations you could take into account. I'm also talking from a perspective of having run and been involved in many community organisations which rely on volunteer work, mutual aid, occasional donations and funding. Most of these haven't been charities, because in Australia you have to be a certain (large) size before you can get charity status.

1. Pick a small organisation that works on a small and/or limited project. Small organisations may do less, but they'll probably have less administrative costs than huge orgs, so more of your cash will get to the people/projects you want it to. Cut out the middleman! Small organisations are also more accountable to their donors, because the organisers will probably develop social relationships with donors, rather than it being a faceless mass exchange of cash for good feeling. Plus, small organisations find it more difficult to get money than large ones: they generally have less resources, and can do less publicity, so they'll probably be in more need of help.

2. Local is better, always. Research projects that are happening in your local community, near where you live -- projects you might be able to donate more than just your money towards. It's all very well donating money to indigenous people in Chile, but you'll never meet them, never see the products of your aid for yourself, other than on the website and through email. You'll never know for sure if the organisation you're donating to is ethically or politically respectable. If it's local, you can also donate sociality, which is, I think, a huge and important part of changing the world. You and the other people involved will all feel less alienated, and you'll be participating more in informal 'aid' networks and less through capitalism.

3. For the reasons I gave above, think seriously about giving something more than just money. Do you have skills a local project might benefit from? Can you volunteer some time occasionally? Money is great, but as I said above, contributing sociality to projects can be even more helpful. That way you also break down the divide between the 'rich' donor and the 'poor' donee: you are no longer alienated from the people you may help, and they are no longer alienated from your relative privilege/affluence.

4. I'm a big fan of organisations that are explicit about the politics of the work they do, especially anti-capitalist politics. If that excludes charities, so be it. At least explicitly political organisations are honest about the conditions they're working in, and trying to change the conditions, rather than stop the gaps in the current unworkable system.

5. Don't be afraid to ask hard questions of a project, organisation or charity you want to help. Don't be afraid to ask questions about politics which have nothing to do, supposedly, with the particular project you're giving money to. Ie, you can ask charities about their policies on feminism, queerness, migration, World Bank loans, structural adjustment, Bush, etc. Definitely ask about working and pay conditions for staff, volunteers, etc, and if it's a transnational organisation, ask whether the staff in one country are paid on a rate comparable with staff in another country. (Ie, are the indigenous aid workers in, say, Venezuela being paid according to British pay standards, across the board? Don't give money to an organisation that pays its staff in 'third-world' nations less than what it pays people in 'first world' nations.) You'd be surprised at how much crappy industrial relations takes place in charities. The Big Issue in Oz, for example, doesn't let its homeless street vendors use the same toilets as the magazine editorial staff. This totally sucks.

You could also ask questions about the autonomy of the people the organisation helps: do they make moral judgments about poor folks and limit their access to alcohol or certain types of food, for example? Is the orgaisation you're donating to connected in any way to a religious outfit? You could ask a queer HIV/AIDS organisation about their policy on helping out transpeople, or homeless queers, or people of colour. If you don't like the response, then don't help them out. Find a project that suits your own political goals/feelings.

6. Contribute to a project that's close to your heart, your interests, your 'passions'. Ie, if you're into IT, think about contributing to a media lab, or if you're into writing or art, contribute to a creative project. It will mean more, and the results will interest you more. You will value your own contributions more than if you were contributing to something with which you couldn't relate, and that will help you to keep contributing in the long-term.

7. Riffing off what I just wrote: try to build a long-term, consistent relationship with a project. There are all kinds of donors in the world, but people who stick around are doing more, I think, than people who give big donations of time or money in unpredictable bursts. This means being very clear about what you can contribute, and keeping it small if necessary. If you're giving time, don't be afraid to volunteer for two or three hours a month if that's all you can manage. Doing those two or three hours consistently, with no drama, will enamour you to the project workers far more than dropping a wad of cash every so often.

8. Oh yeah, and don't create drama. Despite good intentions, volunteer workers are often quite self-centred and want to use the time they volunteer to get attention, or feel that they deserve attention and praise because they're giving their time while the project workers are getting paid. If you feel that you're doing the equivalent of a paid job, then ask to be renumerated or cut back your contributions. But don't expect praise or attention. Just do your shit. The workers will love you.

Finding the right project or organisation may take a little time and effort. Certainly this will take longer than setting up a monthly direct debit to Oxfam. But do you really want your experiences of the benefit of your aid mediated by a huge organisation and its monthly reports? I'm assuming you can't just jet off to Africa and meet the child you might sponsor through Oxfam, of course. (If you can do that, then for chrissakes, fly to a 'poor village' and give them the cash directly.) But in making an effort to find something local that you feel a real sense of solidarity with, you'll get more out of this process yourself. Better, you may find that your contributions are more valued by the people or projects you help.

Hope this is food for thought and makes sense.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
14:28 / 27.10.06
Allecto: I also wanted to say something particular about supporting indigenous autonomy struggles. Sometimes it's really difficult to know the precise details of stuff around land struggles in places you can't visit. This is not to say you shouldn't help them out. But talking from experience, all kinds of dramas go on at a local level in terms of indigenous land/autonomy politics. Sometimes charities will be run by people who are advocating merely for one family group or village, who are engaged in a territorial struggle with people from another locality or family group... That's not to say that every indigenous autonomy project is so, or that they should be avoided, but it's actually pretty common. (As common as the same corporate territorial struggles within parliamentary politics, probably.)

The reason I'm saying this is my own odd encounters with an Australian indigenous group located a long way away from where I live. First, there was a big family blow-up that forced everyone involved in support work, even in capital cities, to take sides. This broke the project and created a lot of bad feeling. Second, one of the indigenous elders involved in this organisation came along to a protest at a migrant detention centre on her traditional lands. I was involved with both the indigenous land group and the detention centre protest at the time, and had negotiated with this elder for her to visit as the tribal representative. She turned up just after many of the detainees had escaped, and gave a press conference at which she said the protesters were irresponsible for letting people escape, and that the escaped detainees should hand themselves over to the police, as well as various other anti-migration sentiments. We couldn't just hand people over to the cops; but lots of people who were trying to be "supportive of indigenous rights" decided, suddenly, that this should happen. I had to decide very fast how to negotiate my own position around indigenous sovereignty versus anti-detention, and my responsibilities as an organiser. It was a big learning experience, but it mostly taught me that working with local people, who I can get to know and trust as associates, is better than donating time/effort/money to an organisation where I won't be able to get a grasp on internal politics. It's easier to find that stuff out when you're local, is all. (Some friends have moved to remote places to do work with indigenous media and land projects, which I respect totally, but that takes years. If you don't have years, bite off less.)
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
14:44 / 27.10.06
I'll make a counter-point here.

If we in the developed world (principally western) don't give and interact with any of the humanitarian crisis' that are happening right now (principally eastern and african) then who will?

I won't disagree with Disco who has made some incredibly good points and certainly reflects the need to look at local charity work, which is equally important as overseas work.

However, I will disagree with dissociation from charity work where you can't see the results in person. There are two things that are incredibly wrong with the idea going direct to famine stricken region to hand over cash direct. Firtly there are the costs involved. The money that you spend on going over there and having your presence in that region supported and managed is basically wasted. It acheives nothing more than creating an experience and memory for you that add no value to the situation and basically it would be better to give the additional money to aid work. On top of this environmental costs simply detract further from anything else that may be acheived. Secondly, whilst putting the cold hard cash directly into the hands of those who need aid eliminates the administrative costs of sending it through a charity, it will never benfit them as much. People who live in crisis areas simply lack the logistical capacity and resources to bring to themselves the aid that is needed. I'm not entirely sure what Disco imagines that they would do with a bundle of notes that would exceed the work done by people like Oxfam but it's shortsighted of the processes involved.

If we all thought like Disco then there would be some amazing work done locally. We might even see the eradication of some of the social failures that have arisen, but it would be at the expense of many thousands of lives. There needs to be a balance.
 
  
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