Absurdism corner

Why?


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YASS is a town in Australia. Along the highway as you approach YASS, there is this sign


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Yesterday I decided to do a search since a small group of people I know insists that dogwoods stink, and yet they smell like typical flowering trees to me and most people I ask to smell them (usually the flowers). The results (from Google using 'dogwood smell') make me think they might be smelling pear trees, which it seems have an odor like semen, and think it is the dogwoods since both have white flowers.

Maybe I should inform them that Wikipedia suggests a dogwood tree can be identified by its distinctive bark. ;)
 
Woof woof!

I've never noticed a smell coming from dogwood, but then I've never actually noticed ours in flower. It only grows on some of the banks down here, out of sight. Plus we might have different varieties of dogwoods to be fair.
 

I can corroborate this. Sad and true. But at least they build 6 houses!
Here in the Netherlands we have Stichting Care. 100% of their donations is used inside (for their staff). They then take the job of writing money requests (projects) for charity and those get funded by Cordaid (the bigger organization with the money).

The overhead of our charities is over 60% (which means, from 1 euro donated, less than 40 cents go to do a good deed).
 
Judging the effectiveness of a charity on its overhead is tempting, but it's not necessarily the best approach.

First there's the fundraising: if for every dollar you invest in fundraising (organizing events, sending letters, etc.) you get three dollars, then you might rather invest $10K in fundraising and get $20K for your project than spend the $10K on your projects. So the question is not "what % the charity is spending on fundraising" but "what's the return on investment of the charity's fundraising?". Some charities do waste money on a lot of expensive fundraisers that just pay for themselves, while others got a much higher budget thanks to some clever use of fundraising.

Second there are the infrastructure. When you work in corrupt countries, if you don't have a good infrastructure, all your money will go in the pockets of corrupt officials. You need contacts, you need good relationships with officials and other powerful individuals, etc. And it's not always nice and clean. Some NGO have to deal with arms dealers, dictators, mafia bosses and other unsavory people to make sure that their help will get to the people who need it.

Of course there are charities that are completely inefficient. There are charities that pay more to their board of directors than they pay for their projects, but if you want to check how efficient a charity is, you need to look beyond the overhead.
 
I can corroborate this. Sad and true. But at least they build 6 houses!
Here in the Netherlands we have Stichting Care. 100% of their donations is used inside (for their staff). They then take the job of writing money requests (projects) for charity and those get funded by Cordaid (the bigger organization with the money).

The overhead of our charities is over 60% (which means, from 1 euro donated, less than 40 cents go to do a good deed).

Judging the effectiveness of a charity on its overhead is tempting, but it's not necessarily the best approach.

First there's the fundraising: if for every dollar you invest in fundraising (organizing events, sending letters, etc.) you get three dollars, then you might rather invest $10K in fundraising and get $20K for your project than spend the $10K on your projects. So the question is not "what % the charity is spending on fundraising" but "what's the return on investment of the charity's fundraising?". Some charities do waste money on a lot of expensive fundraisers that just pay for themselves, while others got a much higher budget thanks to some clever use of fundraising.

Second there are the infrastructure. When you work in corrupt countries, if you don't have a good infrastructure, all your money will go in the pockets of corrupt officials. You need contacts, you need good relationships with officials and other powerful individuals, etc. And it's not always nice and clean. Some NGO have to deal with arms dealers, dictators, mafia bosses and other unsavory people to make sure that their help will get to the people who need it.

Of course there are charities that are completely inefficient. There are charities that pay more to their board of directors than they pay for their projects, but if you want to check how efficient a charity is, you need to look beyond the overhead.

https://www.charitywatch.org/home

Here is an article about the lack of transparency and the insane money hoarding of two of the biggest ones here namely Caritas (catholic) and Diakonisches Werk (protestant).
80% of their money comes directly from the state and nobody knows where it goes, only that they made 55 billion € profit.
www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/caritas-co-die-heimlichen-geschaefte-der-wohltaeter-1382329.html
Then there's the Treberhilfe Berlin (charity for the homeless) that is infamous for its boss speeding with his company car - a 400PS Maserati - and sueing against the order to make a driver's log.
www.spiegel.de/panorama/kritik-an-400-ps-sportwagen-maserati-mann-empoert-obdachlosenhelfer-a-678856.html

I don't donate to a big organisation and rather do it directly somewhere, atm mostly to OpenSource devs.
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