What Percentage of My Donation Goes to the Actual Charity?

2015-01-12 09:50:08 am

Caution: This user contains Kana ^_^

One of my colleagues, a postdoc, is working on a natural product that might be able to help against cancer. If you want to ensure that 100 % of your donation goes towards preventing cancer, just give her the money. Oh wait, she buys food and drink and rents an appartment, too. Sorry.

</irony><move type="on" />

Antilles58

2015-01-12 10:28:48 am

#FailFish

Yeah - let's think about this. If you give money to a charity, you're actually just giving money to the people doing the charity's work. What does it mean to give money to people? Supporting them financially so they can do the work you want while not having to spend their time on other things to have a living.

Giving money just doesn't mean once there's enough money in a bucket, cancer is cured. It means that we're providing a way for people to give their time to research/teaching/etc...

If they WEREN'T receiving any money, there's no way they'd be able to invest the time and mental/emotional energy necessary to do the work, since regular jobs are draining.

Billnye_Fan

2015-01-12 12:33:48 pm

I think a lot of the concern is not how much of the money goes to the charity but how the money is used. From what I can tell on their IRS990 form is that their total revenue last year was $5.6 million and they spent over $2 million on salaries, compensation and other employee expenses. Since PCF controls where all the money goes. That is over 35% of money coming in went to salaries. Compare this to an organization like the Susan G. Komen who had a total revenue of $123 million and spent over $24 million on salaries, compensation and other employee expenses, which is roughly 19.5% of their revenue.

Onin

2015-01-12 12:36:29 pm

Yeah let's just put a few arbitrary percentages side by side without giving a crap about context.

Supreme

2015-01-12 12:52:12 pm

Dixie Kong Fan Club

I don't think those can really be compared given the size of Susan G. Komen compared to PCF. If PCF is a smaller institution, they can't just pay people below the poverty line just to make the percentages match. It's not like 4 people are pulling in $250k a piece and laughing all the way to the bank. There needs to be a deeper look (how much is the average PCF contractor/worker being paid, is the charity overstaffed, etc.) that will give you a better context.

presjpolk

2015-01-12 08:59:29 pm

HELLO!

The really huge charities are a terrible comparison because of economies of scale.

Reed

Edit history:

Reed: 2015-01-13 11:46:46 pm

2015-01-13 11:44:33 pm

@tiburonCS

Quote from kirbymastah:

Oh boy another one of these! Let's get the popcorn and accuse mike uyama of being a selfish prick who steals money without understanding how charities work! Actually, let's accuse all of PCF staff for stealing money! I mean it's not like the PCF staff need to make a living right? They can put in all their time and not make a living and go die for all we care!!!!! We can totally have a charity without staff workers!!! Curse you PCF for giving 100% of our donations to mike uyama! You jerk!

The fact is, none of your money goes to charity. They're stealing! Why do we have AGDQ? We should riot and sue PCF and make sure there can't be any PCF workers. Heck, do that for Doctors without Borders too! The DoB doctors get paid! The DoB staff and organizers get paid! Curse PCF and DoB for requiring money to even run and exist in the first place!

Quote from kirbymastah:

But but he's getting money! He's a sellout! He should be kicked out of the community and never allowed to organize AGDQ again! What a jerk! That's not efficient, that should be 0%!!!

Can they stop spending money for food and put that to charity too? It means we're stealing. kthx.

Is it a speedrunner thing to act like this, or is it just a you thing?

Embarrassing

[quote="kirbymastah"]Oh boy another one of these! Let's get the popcorn and accuse mike uyama of being a selfish prick who steals money without understanding how charities work! Actually, let's accuse all of PCF staff for stealing money! I mean it's not like the PCF staff need to make a living right? They can put in all their time and not make a living and go die for all we care!!!!! We can totally have a charity without staff workers!!! Curse you PCF for giving 100% of our donations to mike uyama! You jerk!

The fact is, none of your money goes to charity. They're stealing! Why do we have AGDQ? We should riot and sue PCF and make sure there can't be any PCF workers. Heck, do that for Doctors without Borders too! The DoB doctors get paid! The DoB staff and organizers get paid! Curse PCF and DoB for requiring money to even run and exist in the first place![/quote]
[quote="kirbymastah"]
But but he's getting money! He's a sellout! He should be kicked out of the community and never allowed to organize AGDQ again! What a jerk! That's not efficient, that should be 0%!!!

Can they stop spending money for food and put that to charity too? It means we're stealing. kthx.[/quote]
Is it a speedrunner thing to act like this, or is it just a you thing?

Embarrassing

Naegleria

(user is banned)

2015-01-14 12:15:32 am

What is the average donation amount for AGDQ 2015, and is the average donation getting larger or smaller? This would effect how much money goes to paypal, I'm not sure if more or less is going to paypal per average donation over time.

Maxime

2015-01-14 12:24:51 am

Quote from Naegleria:

What is the average donation amount for AGDQ 2015, and is the average donation getting larger or smaller? This would effect how much money goes to paypal, I'm not sure if more or less is going to paypal per average donation over time.

The tracker actually have that information.

AGDQ 2011: 16.15$
SGDQ 2011: 19.14$
AGDQ 2012: 25.38$
SGDQ 2012: 21.13$
AGDQ 2013: 27.50$
SGDQ 2013: 23.86$
AGDQ 2014: 36.67$
SGDQ 2014: 37.60$
ADGQ 2015: 39.90$

Naegleria

(user is banned)

Naegleria

Edit history:

Naegleria: 2015-01-14 12:53:33 am

2015-01-14 12:52:14 am

Paypal's fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 for each donation, with an average of 39.90$, would give 3.65% per average donation going to paypal. ~$55k of 1.5 million.

It's cool that the average donation is increasing that much, though the extreme outliers (thanks notch) could shift the average a bit. Does the tracker offer a median donation amount?

Maxime

2015-01-14 02:15:56 am

Quote from Naegleria:

Paypal's fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 for each donation, with an average of 39.90$, would give 3.65% per average donation going to paypal. ~$55k of 1.5 million.

It's cool that the average donation is increasing that much, though the extreme outliers (thanks notch) could shift the average a bit. Does the tracker offer a median donation amount?

No, no median, but it might be calculated roughly, I think, by sorting them by amount and checking the middle ranked page. Probably won't be exact, but better than nothing. Most outliers are The Yetee and Humble Bundle donations (one huge 200000$ donation for HB).

AGDQ 2011: 6.00$
SGDQ 2011: 10.00$ (it raised 21000$! Hard to believe today)
AGDQ 2012: 10.00$
SGDQ 2012: 10.00$
AGDQ 2013: 15.00$
SGDQ 2013: 15.00$
AGDQ 2014: 20.00$
SGDQ 2014: 20.00$
ADGQ 2015: 20.00$

People tend to give round amounts (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30...).

Antilles58

2015-01-14 09:22:37 am

#FailFish

I wasn't aware paypal charged .30 per transaction as well as a percentage. I thought it was just the latter.

In future marathons, I will give larger sums but fewer times.

UraniumAnchor

2015-01-14 10:27:56 am

Not a walrus

According to:

https://merchant.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant%2Fdonations (click on the pricing tab)

It's $0.30 and 2.2% for eligible non profits.

Alko

2015-01-14 10:55:47 am

Caution: This user contains Kana ^_^

If the average counts as a per month over the entire year, PCF is over the $100,000 monthly ($1.5M > $1.2M = 12 · $0.1M) even when assuming that no non-AGDQ donations come in via PayPal. It may be even cheaper now.

Naegleria

(user is banned)

2015-01-14 04:18:18 pm

Quote from UraniumAnchor:

According to:

https://merchant.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant%2Fdonations (click on the pricing tab)

It's $0.30 and 2.2% for eligible non profits.

Ah, I thought it was the same across the board. Using $20 as the median, that would come to 3.7% going to paypal.

That being said, I'm not aware of any service that would take less. Having GDQs setup their own transaction methods would be reaaaaaally cumbersome and I don't think it would be beneficial in the long run.

Omnigamer

2015-01-14 04:51:35 pm

All the things

There's a significant loss of trust going to any other payment middleman as well. I know I would be a lot more hesitant about giving my banking/credit card information to a homegrown service. Security is not exactly simple, and just trusting that people do things right can only go so far.

As much as I'd like to skip out on covering PayPal fees and have the full amount go to the charity, I don't think it's something that is going away any time soon.

Komrade

2015-01-14 06:18:10 pm

Tl;dr

If you're concerned with where your money is going, then donate directly to the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Simple.

manufan

2015-01-15 04:19:06 am

Using anything other than one of the standard, reputable payment providers is not an option. Dealing with credit card or any other type of bank account/money transfer information is a very sensitive topic and organizations such as Paypal invest heavily in data security compliance programs. It would be a disaster for GDQ and/or PCF, if for the sake of "saving" some sort of % on the fee, there was a data breach associated with the organization. If you can find a reputable, well known payment provider that would charge less, you then need to consider ease of maintenance of the program to both PCF and GDQ (from a tracker standpoint). Would investing time and money in switching over to a new program result in a better return then sticking with the current system and spending this money/time on enhancing other components of the GDQ event infrastructure? I'm not on the staff so please know I have no specific knowledge of plans that GDQ or PCF have going forward, but payment processing fees are a reality of life and should be considered a cost of doing business with any form of payment other then cash.

Using anything other than one of the standard, reputable payment providers is not an option. Dealing with credit card or any other type of bank account/money transfer information is a very sensitive topic and organizations such as Paypal invest heavily in data security compliance programs. It would be a disaster for GDQ and/or PCF, if for the sake of "saving" some sort of % on the fee, there was a data breach associated with the organization.  If you can find a reputable, well known payment provider that would charge less, you then need to consider ease of maintenance of the program to both PCF and GDQ (from a tracker standpoint). Would investing time and money in switching over to a new program result in a better return then sticking with the current system and spending this money/time on enhancing other components of the GDQ event infrastructure? I'm not on the staff so please know I have no specific knowledge of plans that GDQ or PCF have going forward, but payment processing fees are a reality of life and should be considered a cost of doing business with any form of payment other then cash.

presjpolk

2015-01-15 07:34:47 am

HELLO!

There's really no such thing as 'direct credit card' payments unless you're a huge organization to work directly with banks. If PCF didn't use a managed service like Paypal (or Convio, which is how they usually take credit card donations online) they'd have to use some other merchant service (like Stripe or Square) and those are going to take fees, too.

ConHuevos

Edit history:

ConHuevos: 2015-01-15 09:17:46 am

2015-01-15 09:17:29 am

Ciento Dos Huevos

You need a hefty understanding of financial statements, financial reporting and other accounting knowledge to fully grasp the numbers behind the financial statements though. I'm not saying these are being misstated but when you actually work in the field and conduct an audit, you begin to understand that there is a bias put towards the audit. In Texas at least, all not for profit entities must provide an audit report if they receive any kind of government funding and usually when a firm bids for the audit, it's usually a five year contract. So the first two years spent auditing the company, the firm usually produces a loss because it's unknown what to expect of the company and how it operates, so you hire a team of accountants and auditors to ensure you have adequate manpower to perform the audit. Usually by year three you know how the company operates and can scale back manpower to a required level and this is when the firm begins to make money.

I mention all this because this process creates a bias that isn't supposed to be present when conducting an audit (it's one of the fundamentals of auditing to not be biased). After performing audits myself and discussing this with seasoned auditors and other firm partners they all mostly agreed there is a degree of bias towards the company because the loss created within the first two years produces a need to win the next bid after the contract expires, so you usually want to provide favorable results to the company the audit is being performed for because you've already invested a lot of money into this company and want to win another contract because you understand that organization.

Again, I'm not saying PCF financials are misstated or there is any funny business going on between SDA, Mike, and PCF. I'm just saying there's a lot of knowledge needed to truly understand those financial statements and income tax forms are seperate from GAAP accounting. I will say after auditing a couple not-for-profit organizations here in Texas (Women's shelter's and other charitable entities) they are some of the most profitable companies I've come across. Keep in mind... the NFL is also a not-for-profit entity.

Just food for thought.

You need a hefty understanding of financial statements, financial reporting and other accounting knowledge to fully grasp the numbers behind the financial statements though.  I'm not saying these are being misstated but when you actually work in the field and conduct an audit, you begin to understand that there is a bias put towards the audit.  In Texas at least, all not for profit entities must provide an audit report if they receive any kind of government funding and usually when a firm bids for the audit, it's usually a five year contract.  So the first two years spent auditing the company, the firm usually produces a loss because it's unknown what to expect of the company and how it operates, so you hire a team of accountants and auditors to ensure you have adequate manpower to perform the audit.  Usually by year three you know how the company operates and can scale back manpower to a required level and this is when the firm begins to make money.

I mention all this because this process creates a bias that isn't supposed to be present when conducting an audit (it's one of the fundamentals of auditing to not be biased).  After performing audits myself and discussing this with seasoned auditors and other firm partners they all mostly agreed there is a degree of bias towards the company because the loss created within the first two years produces a need to win the next bid after the contract expires, so you usually want to provide favorable results to the company the audit is being performed for because you've already invested a lot of money into this company and want to win another contract because you understand that organization.

Again, I'm not saying PCF financials are misstated or there is any funny business going on between SDA, Mike, and PCF.  I'm just saying there's a lot of knowledge needed to truly understand those financial statements and income tax forms are seperate from GAAP accounting.  I will say after auditing a couple not-for-profit organizations here in Texas (Women's shelter's and other charitable entities) they are some of the most profitable companies I've come across.  Keep in mind... the NFL is also a not-for-profit entity.

Just food for thought.

Antilles58

Edit history:

Antilles58: 2015-01-15 09:52:59 am

2015-01-15 09:52:45 am

#FailFish

Quote from ConHuevos:

Keep in mind... the NFL is also a not-for-profit entity.

Which is the biggest joke in the history of the world. The teams themselves aren't non-profits, but that the NFL itself is listed as a non-profit is un-freaking-believable.

(sorry, that's unrelated, but I needed to vent ;))

Cool Matty

2015-01-15 09:53:51 am

Crawlathon WR, get down on my level.

We use BrainTree on the registration (not donation) side of things, which is still ran by PayPal but a lot more pleasant to use. I would never, ever dare use a custom processing method, as it wouldn't save much money (doing processing yourself still results in a fee from the card company) and the cost of implementing PCI compliance would be FAR greater than just taking the 3% hit per transaction.

Not to mention, like any web designer who's been around a while, I know that there's no way in hell I'd be able to make a credit card processing system that's secure enough to protect our users. That's really why you use a processing service in the first place. You let them grab the credit card numbers, run the transactions, and then they give you the results of that transaction. Their systems are constantly checked via penetration testing and other expensive accounting and reporting services. Paying for such services is incredibly expensive, but they save because of economy of scale.

presjpolk

2015-01-15 10:22:48 am

HELLO!

Quote from Antilles58:

Quote from ConHuevos:

Keep in mind... the NFL is also a not-for-profit entity.

Which is the biggest joke in the history of the world. The teams themselves aren't non-profits, but that the NFL itself is listed as a non-profit is un-freaking-believable.

(sorry, that's unrelated, but I needed to vent ;))

Well teams are where the profit *goes*, not the league, so... there's not really anything to get mad about there, fortunately.

ConHuevos

2015-01-15 11:50:15 am

Ciento Dos Huevos

Well, not when you consider officer salaries :).

presjpolk

2015-01-15 12:33:54 pm

HELLO!

And they pay taxes, so you know. There's no there there. The real thing to get worked up about are all the sweetheart deals for stadiums *by* government to the for-profit teams, heh. OK I'll stop. Smiley