Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (210223)	12/12/2006 1:19:02 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Next I found out that the 75%/25% split was typical of such solicitation, I am not surprised. I think it is best to disregard almost all solicitations. I also think it is better to give to charities run by religious organizations like the Salvation Army, local interfaith ministries, etc. My goal is not to discourage people from giving to charity. Unfortunately that's the sentiment that I think will come across to most readers. Very few people have the time to go to charity board meetings and so forth. People are much more likely to conclude from things like you've presented that all charities are probably scams, donate nothing, and think it should all be the governments job. You've discouraged me from giving away goods to thrift type charities anymore. Re. #1 I know of very few rich hunters who give their trophies to a museum for a writeoff - I think thats pretty rare. It was the example used by Senator Grassley to attack the issue, not my creation. And I continue to think hunting trophies to museums is a pretty minor area of abuse and not something to get too concerned about. Re. #2 Do you know that thrift stores (there is one run by Northwest Area Ministries near me) really give only some of their sales to charity? Are the churches in Northwest Area Ministries really a bunch of scam artists? Sorry I don't believe they're making a profit off their thrift store. See above, I know quite a bit about thrift stores. Some indeed are meant primarily as a means of giving goods to the needy, such as perhaps your example, but most are now simply 2’nd hand stores frequented by all economic classes, and used primarily as fundraisers for charities, unless they are actually just for profit stories with no charity connection. I should also note that the rise of dollar stores in the USA is a newer entrant playing a somewhat related for profit angle, largely selling production overruns or 2’nds that are new. They are having an impact on the thrift store scene. Well, you've convinced me donating used stuff is pretty ineffective so maybe we won't do it anymore. We'll just have a garage sale and sell it cheap and let the garbagemen take whatever won't sell. My wife has given away stuff in the past, gotten those little receipts, and I can seldom ever find them or even remember what was donated come tax time. So I generally haven't taken deductions for those donations at all. Don't know how that experience figures in your calculations - I guess you're assuming every one itemizes, every one inflates the value of their donations, and conclude there is widespread "inequitable distributions" of tax expenditures or something like that and we ought to be pissed about that and gee, the government could do it more efficiently - assuming the government can do anything efficiently. I think it is more likely most people don't take all the deductions they could. Re #3 - I've had my kids in Christian schools and never encountered that. We paid our own tuition. No help from anyone. The churches did have a fund to pay for tuition for needy students but they weren't church members - they were minorities and really were needy. I went K-college that way as well. But later I was exposed to individual church congregations that implemented “every child” plans which worked as I described. I should note that the individual congregation did not own the school, they just had a “club” paying plan which met the IRS rules for charitable giving. To me it was unethical. I haven't seen that. As described it is unethical. However I'd let parents direct their school taxes to the school of their choice anyway. Re. #4 - I don't have personal experience with this but I've known people who did go to Panama and elsewhere in the area - they didn't go to resorts but to poor places and it wasn't a vacation but work. I don't know exactly what they did - this was years ago but I know it was work. Again, nothing illegal, but to me, I find the charitable giving efficiency of such practices to be shockingly low. Why not skip the vacation, send the money, and employ the unemployed locals? That would have reasonable efficiency. This “scam” is VERY common now in the USA. My local newspaper generally has a little blurb on all such trips (not much else in town) so I see how frequent they are. For many people I know, this is the only international travel they do, and it is all tax deductible charitable giving. I'm not sure that saying something is inefficient makes it a "scam". Nor am I convinced working in a third world country is really a "vacation"? This kind of thing doesn't go on just involving foreign countries - lots of churches in this country have sent church members to New Orleans to help in rebuilding churches or homes. And there's an organization - Habitat for Humanity - which builds affordable homes using donated labor and materials and arranges home sales to -poor families. Is this a scam? Or inefficient?