Small Scale Charity

In tracing how business happens, I been looking for answers on how exploitation happens. The offered answers never quite run true, or just too self-serving to be credible.

I link in the news roundup to Michael Maren, whose book I'll be reviewing later, but there is an interview where he lays it out.

Go back to Peter Drucker aplying management skills to the nonprofit organizations, and back in the 1980's for the first time charities were tested by an objective standard: what percent of your cash receipts go to overhead, what percent goes to "program" (meaning direct aid to the afflicted).

The Salvation Army embarrassed all other charities at the time by having about 12% overhead and of course 88% to the needy. Most were say 50/50 or far worse.

I link today in the news roundup to one charity that claims only 4% overhead. This is how that works:

Say the "charity" campaigns for cash and hauls in $40 million dollars in donations. This money goes to plush offices, fantastic compensation, world class amenities, and self-promotion. With so much money they then become an NGO, qualified to distribute USA grain through their charity.

This grain is the taxpayers subsidized grains, for shipment overseas. Say the charity is given $96 million worth of grain to distribute to the poor at no cost by the US government.

Now, the charity is allowed to claim they took in $100 million total, and their overhead is only 4%, when in fact they blew every donated dollar on themselves, their multiple mistresses, all the waste fraud and abuse you can imagine.

Things go downhill from there. The companies that get govt subsidies to grow grain, direct the shipments of the famine relief grain to ships they own, and bill USA three times the going ocean freight rates.

Then the goods are unloaded into "disaster zones." So much comes in that local farmers cannot compete. Soon most of what comes in is being stolen, and the people stealing and reselling need pistols to protect their loot. Then competitors get pistols too, then rifles, then RPGs. The violence spirals out of control. This is in essence the story of Somalia the last 20 years.

Somalia and Africa never had a problem feeding itself until we showed up and intervened. the fastest and best solution is to withdraw completely, immediately.

No one will starve, because no one was starving before.

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