I believe that Pam and I are pretty charitable people. We tithed our income to our local church, support some other ministries, regularly give to Word Vision and Baptist Global Response (World Vision is our personal favorite way to give – I’ve seen their work first hand and I believe in how they do things), and support and regularly give to lots of other people/projects/oragnizations – both short term and long term. That is part of why the truth of this list upsets me. I saw this list of America’s Worst Charities via the Dead Kennedys‘ Facebook page. This list is amazing to me. I can’t believe how much is raised and how little is actually used for the the need the money is supposedly raised for.
Anyhow here’s the list of top ten worst offenders.
| Rank | Charity name | Total raised by solicitors | Paid to solicitors | % spent on direct cash aid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kids Wish Network | $127.8 million | $109.8 million | 2.5% |
| 2 | Cancer Fund of America | $98.0 million | $80.4 million | 0.9% |
| 3 | Children’s Wish Foundation International | $96.8 million | $63.6 million | 10.8% |
| 4 | American Breast Cancer Foundation | $80.8 million | $59.8 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | Firefighters Charitable Foundation | $63.8 million | $54.7 million | 8.4% |
| 6 | Breast Cancer Relief Foundation | $63.9 million | $44.8 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO | $57.2 million | $41.4 million | 0.5% |
| 8 | National Veterans Service Fund | $70.2 million | $36.9 million | 7.8% |
| 9 | American Association of State Troopers | $45.0 million | $36.0 million | 8.6% |
| 10 | Children’s Cancer Fund of America | $37.5 million | $29.2 million | 5.3% |
SIDE NOTE – every now and then people will post or email out the following image concerning charities and their CEO salaries. This list, unlike the list above, is mainly malarkey. You can find the details all over the web but snopes is the easiest source.
I can’t verify the truth of most of these figures, but I know that the stated origin of “March of Dimes” is absolutely false. The campaign was started in the 1930s, and people were asked to send in dimes to donate to it. Even then, when a dime was worth more than today, it was felt that most people would be able to afford it, and thousands of people send letters and cards (to the White House, if I remember correctly) with dimes taped to them.
Please do better fact checking.
Please read the post before commenting. 🙂
If you look at what I wrote before the image that contains the false information concerning the March of Dimes you will see that I was commenting that the info in that image was mainly false, “This list, unlike the list above, is mainly malarkey.” I even posted to a link to a snopes article describing the false accusations against the charities listed in the image.