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Charities - the Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Aug. 4th, 2006 02:23 pmI recently posted about Blogathon and how I liked how it worked. That has generated some discussion on good charities and bad charities. I know that many of you who read my LJ are active in various groups that do some amazing things.
So, the question I have is what charities do you think are worthy (or not) of donations and why?
For example, I will not give any money to PETA. While the name of the group sounds good on the surface (ethical treatment is a GoodThing), the group is a radical animal rights group (as opposed to welfare) and seems to end up causing a fair amount of real harm to animals (it is never a good thing to free a herd of horses next to an interstate) and their main goal seems to be removing all human/animal contact. I suspect that they think that spaying/neutering is cruel.
I do however give money to Children's National Medical Center where the money can be used to either pay the bill for a family with a sick child who cannot pay the bill ... or the money can be used to buy a sleeper chair so that a parent can stay in the room with the sick child.
I prefer to give disaster money to the United Methodist Church (shocking I know) because the UM church pays all the administrative stuff out of their regular budget so any disaster money goes where it is needed (ask my Mom sometime about how inefficient at actually getting stuff to the people who need it the Red Cross is ... prepare to spend some time listening).
If the cause is not tax-deductable that you know of, please include that information. (There are a lot of good things out there that are not 501(c)3 or whatever).
So, the question I have is what charities do you think are worthy (or not) of donations and why?
For example, I will not give any money to PETA. While the name of the group sounds good on the surface (ethical treatment is a GoodThing), the group is a radical animal rights group (as opposed to welfare) and seems to end up causing a fair amount of real harm to animals (it is never a good thing to free a herd of horses next to an interstate) and their main goal seems to be removing all human/animal contact. I suspect that they think that spaying/neutering is cruel.
I do however give money to Children's National Medical Center where the money can be used to either pay the bill for a family with a sick child who cannot pay the bill ... or the money can be used to buy a sleeper chair so that a parent can stay in the room with the sick child.
I prefer to give disaster money to the United Methodist Church (shocking I know) because the UM church pays all the administrative stuff out of their regular budget so any disaster money goes where it is needed (ask my Mom sometime about how inefficient at actually getting stuff to the people who need it the Red Cross is ... prepare to spend some time listening).
If the cause is not tax-deductable that you know of, please include that information. (There are a lot of good things out there that are not 501(c)3 or whatever).