Those of you who love to send money to charities. Think before you give anything to anybody. My advice has always been: If you want to donate money really bad, go and give it to someone who you know is struggling financially. Otherwise you might as well just throw it away. Sorry, it's a bit fuzzy and hard to read:
If they ask, the answer is no. They get extra negative points if: - They have any religious affiliation whatsoever. - They receive government support (YAY! I've already donated without having a choice!).
Also never give if they call you - those guys making the calls get paid out of your donation. There's a scam going down in NZ where a call centre company creates a "charity" which doesn't have to pay tax. They then phone asking for donations, selling xmas cards or whatever and then "donate" part of the profits to a real charity. The call centre wins because they can use any spare time their operators have rather than have them doing nothing. The real charity gets a donation so they're happy - and I guess the punter wins because they get the warm fuzzies from making a donation. I just don't think it's right.
My wife and her (my step) kids were sending money to some girl in Nicaragua through some dubious charity. Upon my research I found out that only 5 cents per each dollar was sent to the kids, the rest was kept by the charity. Some may say, "What's the the big deal? Charities need money too!" The big deal is when you translate this into millions of dollars, the charity gets millions and each kid gets very little. In my view, most global charities are run by scumbags.
Yep. It's just easier to give the funds to some homeless guy that I find wondering the streets. Not the best, but it's manageable that way.