Rob Tisinai, One of our regular readers and frequent critics, will be riding in the San Francisco to LA AIDS ride to raise money to fight this dreadful disease. Please join me in donating to sponsor his ride.
It is a worthy cause and something about which readers on both sides of the political divide can agree!
Fighting AIDS? Yes.
As you might guess however, I am all about spending my dollars efficiently. I use http://charitynavigator.org to find the charities that take the least overhead. Not to be a wet blanket but in general, these produced/sponsored type of events take a fair chunk of overhead.
Good luck to Rob. Thanks for the link Dan, I made a donation.
And DVS, I’m glad you have time to lob a personal criticism that (by your own admission – you’re not sure) may not even apply to what I said. Good luck to you, in life.
As for my general suggestion about making one’s AIDS-fighting dollars more powerful… actually it does kind of apply to AIDS/LifeCycle. And I knew it, but was trying to be nice (by not addressing AIDS/LifeCycle specifically). But since, now, you’ve brought it up: AIDS/LifeCycle had a notorious year or two where it couldn’t even produce net contributions for its charities. Its recent years have been better, but still, here is how one participant put it in 2008:
The charities I give to would consider 32% overhead as still kind of high. And it’s even higher, if the speaker meant that 32% was the AIDS Ride overhead… before contributions to actual AIDS charities who would then charge another 20% or 40% overhead of their own.
Just food for thought. If AIDS/LifeCycle is what gets you to contribute, then go for it. But if you’re a regular giver… take overhead into account, look for maximum effectiveness.
ILoveCapitalism, those bad years you mention were under the supervision of a hired promoter who was subsequently fired and the AIDS organizations took over the event themselves because of it.
Thanks to everyone who donates!
Rob, yes exactly. Good luck!
I’m glad DVS has the kind of money where he/she/it can toss it to anybody who comes along with a heart tugging named charity without a care.
Kudos.
ILC. Thank you for telling us about Charitynavigator.org. Practically all of my mail seem to to be requests for donation. I have gotten to the point where I give very little anymore because I don’t know what they are doing with it. The Republican Party seem to spend all the money that I give them asking for more.