GiveMeaning Number Crunching

Giving Sounds Good - Let's Look at the Details

In the case of GiveMeaning, that overhead is disproportionately large. Of the $982,705 in total donations it received (and issued tax receipts for), GiveMeaning spent $666,070, or 68 per cent, on administrative expenses.

Those expenses included $199,043 for professional and consulting fees; $153,646 for salaries, wages and benefits; $28,433 for advertising and promotion; and $24,019 for travel.

I asked Williams whether he receives a salary. Well, yes, $90,000 per year. And his wife, country singer Jessie Farrell, who works part-time for the foundation "when she can," gets $30,000. So together they collect $120,000 per year, plus expenses.

After subtracting overhead costs, just over $300,000 was available for charitable purposes in 2006, but only $172,000 was actually given to charities (the remainder is still on the foundation's books). That $172,000 represents just 17.5 per cent of total donations.

But that's not the end of it. Many of the charities that receive money have their own overhead. So the net amount available for true charitable purposes is even less.

Williams insists that, whenever a person gives money for a particular charity, 100 per of that money gets to the named beneficiary. That may be true, but it does not mitigate the fact that the vast majority of the overall money collected during 2006 went to administration.

The writer of this piece blends together the money we raise online for projects posted at GiveMeaning.com and money we raise to pay our overheads which is absurd and irresponsible.

He called me on Friday telling me he was writing a piece for Saturday and seemed uninterested or incapable of understanding what is clearly said on our website in the About Us section. To quote directly from our About Page:

"We charge nothing for donations collected online and even cover the credit card costs associated with each donation. We rely on the support of generous donors and advertisers to provide this service." Can't get more clear than this.

But to reiterate, 100% of everything we collect through the GiveMeaning.com website for the projects listed on the site is forwarded to Implementing Organizations without charging their donors or the organizations a penny.

The donors who fund GiveMeaning Foundation's expenses do so specifically so that we don't have to charge any fees and do so with the knowledge of how their money is spent.

By lumping two totally separate activities together as one, the writer makes it appear as though we deduct money from projects, something that any of our project founders can tell you is clearly not the case.

We spend the money we do so that other charities don't have to invest in the infrastructure we provide for free. Infrastructure which dramatically lowers the cost of fundraising for charities of all sizes.

He also seems to think that a website runs itself and that more than 50,000 members and over 1500 fundraising pages happen without some serious investment required.

He also takes issue with the fact that many of the charitable foundations who have supported our work prefer to be anonymous. I offered him the opportunity to speak with some of our donors and he declined to do so.

Had he taken the time to understand the simple distinction between our operating costs and the funds we raise on behalf of our service, he wouldn't have had a story except that we have invested heavily to build a service for everyone to use free of charge.