A Charitable Rush, With Little Direction (New York Times) explained charitable organizations' limitation after Japan Earthquake happened. “ Wealthy Japan is not impoverished Haiti. Many groups are raising money without really knowing how it will be spent — or even if it will be needed.
” and "Few charitable organizations are actually at work in Japan yet...many of the groups raising money in Japan’s name are still uncertain to whom or to where the money will go."
One of the topics for next week class is the limits of nonprofit impact. I have not found the article on e-reserve, but I think this situation is a good example to show the limited impact. People who really want to support charitable organizations and good works should base it on a desire to support something they already understand and believe in. In the article, the author said the organizations solicit donations but they have no idea whether they are necessary or whether donations are going to be used for relief or recovery in Japan.
We cannot say those organizations are not great but I still think they should know what they are doing better. Non-profit organizations are not aiming to provide service to people who need. If they are not familiar with how to use the money, they may lose donors. We lean a lot of criteria for GREAT organizations, but slight differences may hurt their reputation.
Do you agree with me?
Hey, Just a heads-up: the article can be found on Blackboard by clicking on "course reserves" on the left column. It isn't in the "e-reserves" folder, but is listed right under the folder on the "course reserves" page with a little globe icon next to it. I hope that helps : )
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your blog, I also see the struggle between non-profit donations and emergency relief. I am remembering what it was like in the weeks and months after the Haiti earthquake when, after hearing that millions of dollars were raised for relief, the people had yet to see any type of real help. It is challenging because a lot of relief-type organizations who wish to step in after disasters, though well-intentioned and often well-managed and equipped, have no prior relationship with the country and therefore are unable to quickly and effectively bring aid to people, even when significant amounts of money have been donated. Because of the lack of prior relationship, the whole process is slowed down, which decreases overall organizational effectiveness. The disheartening part of all of this is that disasters are often difficult to predict and leave few options for non-profits to effectively coordinate relationships with countries beforehand.
Ying,
ReplyDeleteI think that both you and Kristen make relevant points here.
I do believe that if organizations are aware that they will not be able to use additional funds they should make that known. Having read recently that Doctors Without Borders decided to stop taking donations following the Tsunami in 2004 (because they would not be able to use the funds to support further efforts in the region) I would be more confident donating. I appreciate that they were aware of the specific event/area/cause that their donors wished to support, and personally, I would be increasingly comfortable donating to support their administrative costs alone because of that.
I also believe that Kristen made a good point about the relationships between organizations and other countries (or one country and another for that matter.) Unfortunately, this may be one of the weaknesses associated with donors who do not take more than 15 minutes to choose an organization to donate to. Because they are not making a real effort to learn about the organization (meaning they only check one website and visit for less than 15 minutes) they are not aware of these circumstances. This argument supports the notion that we not only need to build more effective evaluation tools and websites, but also more educated and effective consumers of the information collected, reviewed, and presented.