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Comment by nytesky | Hacker News Reader

yeah, this is been one of the most difficult parts about becoming an adult was realizing that so many nonprofits are basically just self-serving jobs programs.

especially when the CEO can be paid "market rate."

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I stopped donating to a very well known charity organization when I found that 85% of the annual costs were administrative, 10% we're property costs, and only 5% went to actual programs. This may be just the way the local chapter is set up, but it's fucking greasy.

Why do people post comments like this and not name the offenders?

Do you really need an answer or are you as guilty as they are?

It's a reasonable request. Readers who see the charity to be named named may also donate to them, and seeing such a claim would make readers think twice and perhaps make their donations elsewhere.

There is almost a zero percent chance of other people here being from the small town I'm from.

Naming them doesn't do any good, because the national charity does really good work in a lot of places.

It’s not a request, it’s a rhetorical question with the same intent as the comment it’s responding to: signaling outrage.

Both are self-serving and harmful to the actual cause. Despite being on the same side of the issue, neither actually affect any change. Even worse, they both probably feel like they’ve done something to help by posting a comment on a social media site and are now less likely to take any real action

To be fair, without evidence such name-calling would not be helpful. Not talking about a specific local chapter of a single charity and instead focusing on the problem in general seems to be more helpful in this context.

Exactly. And the national charity for this example does really good work in a lot of places. Like I said, I think it's just how the local chapter is organized.

(1) Because shaming a small-scale offender misses the point. And to avoid the perception of libel.

(2) Now that you know this type of fraud is a possibility, nothing stops YOU from checking Charity Navigator before donating.

I worked in the space for a couple of years and I will never give a penny to any of them after what I saw. The organizations are a mess of petty squabbling between people who could never get real jobs, there's a complete misalignment of incentives between the people giving, vs the people doing, vs the recipients that leads to all sorts of absurd inefficiencies with zero pressure to fix them. Fundraising ("development") is where the real horrors are. If a charity can raise $1000 at a cost of $990 that's a free $10 for them, so most do not care at all except to the extent that it hypothetically exhausts the potential pool of donor dollars.

There are also those nonprofits that are run by rich people that are basically a mechanism to reduce taxes on activities they would already do

The tax code is a reading comprehension game.

The 400 section specifies tax deferral programs (ie. 401(k), there are other subsections)

The 500 section specifies tax exempt programs (ie. 501(c)(3), there are other subsections)

The offices within the IRS dedicated to those sections help you. As opposed to the adversarial relationship that low income tax credit people have. My point is that its not an accident or attempt to pull a fast one on the tax authority. The government is telling you what to do.

And to give prestigious jobs to family members.

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