what ngo's offer most bang for your buck

[peppy5]

would like to find the ngo's that pay out the most.

for example, worldvision, unicef, red cross etc, which ones and what percentages actually go to who they say it will go to after all the advertisements, salaries for the employees etc.

heard years ago the ronald mcdonald fund every dollar you gave would go to children they were helping

[abu_sme]

I don't know about the best, but the worst by far is united way.

[robertalan]

This is a very good thing to be suspicious about. One should also ask what sort of strings are attached to accepting their help, such as subtle incitements to join specific religions. I salute your research.

[slowpoke]

A year or so ago I heard on the radio a former exectutive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) saying that if you donate say $100 over the phone to them, the telemarketer gets $75 of that. I don't know if that's still the case.

[bujanx]

St. John Ambulance is one of the worst (in Canada at least) I worked there for about 8 months and they are flat broke. Every single dollar donated is used to try and dig them out of a massive hole or to fly the board of directors to locations across canada for 'meetings' (they signed a few bad bad bad contracts with big holes in them and got taken to the cleaners by the companies)

[onetruguju]

A year or so ago I heard on the radio a former exectutive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) saying that if you donate say $100 over the phone to them, the telemarketer gets $75 of that. I don't know if that's still the case.

hence why they've been shut down for a while.

to my knowledge, all the major charities (Red Cross, World Vision (will never donate here)) all take about 40% as an admin fee.

[illyas]

Although it's US based, you can get a general idea here:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.alpha

For example MADD:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4129

[Chigu]

There are some organizations out there that state that all administrative costs/overhead etc, are covered by corporate donations. Look for these charities. Another thing to do is look for smaller charities which are made up of volunteers etc. I know of one through the Indian (south asian) community that has operating expenses of only 3% of their revenues.

[danns]

Had a salvation army representative come to our class stating she earns $90,000/year just from donations.

I have since lost faith in charity

[Natsuiro]

The world food program only has a 10% overhead.

[gmark2000]

Doctors without Borders