I got to the Mountain View building about ten minutes early. (Yes, they did move into the part of town that probably has a higher percentage of clients of the non-profits they serve, putting their money and their jobs where their mouth is.) The parking lot was full and I saw the sign. New snow plays tricks. But at least I knew there was additional parking and the other side of the building was the most likely place.
The Foraker Group is an offshoot of the Anchorage United Way. From their website:
In 1998, the United Way of Anchorage surveyed its agencies to determine what services they needed and would be willing to use in a pooled organization. Their initial list was long, but the four highest demands were assistance in fundraising, planned giving, finance and technology. A model was developed based on a concept of sharing these four resources under one nonprofit umbrella, thereby helping other organizations afford these services which are often beyond their budgets. This model is The Foraker Group.
Today, The Foraker Group offers a wide range of services, training and educational opportunities that help assure the success of Alaska's nonprofit organizations. [I left out all the corporate logos they had up. An advantage of underwriting my own blog is I don't have to post any ads.]
The back of the building was in bright sunshine and made for a much better picture than the front. Avocado has long been out as a color for appliances. Maybe it's back now for buildings.
I'm on the steering committee of Healing Racism in Anchorage (HRA), which joined Foraker this year. Our steering committee chair and our part time staff person went to a meeting with Foraker and the whole steering committee went to a strategic planning meeting this summer.
So now Foraker is having focus groups with representatives of its member groups to see how they are doing and detect future needs. I was available yesterday, so HRA sent me.
I walked around to the front, cleaned the snow off the sign (both sides) and went in to the meeting.
Around the table were people from a diverse set of organizations - Volunteers of America, The Holy Rosary Academy, Friends of Alaska CASA, Kincaid Project Group, me, and the Sitka Music Festival.
We spent a short time going over Foraker's sustainability model for nonprofits. Basically it's about making sure that the money, the personnel, and the organizational purpose are all three healthy and working in a collaborative community.
We did some exercises to give Foraker feedback on how well they are serving their members.
What I got most out of this meeting was the chance to talk with and hear from people from other nonprofits. It was interesting to hear their issues and experiences.
I also learned that while foundation and corporate donations were down, individual donations were holding relatively steady.
Dennis McMillian who is head of Foraker is seen by many folks as a man who walks on water. I know Dennis and I too think he has pretty extraordinary skills. It's been one of his goals to improve the nonprofit sector in Anchorage in part by fostering collaboration across organizations, professionalizing the way nonprofits are run, and encouraging greater philanthropy. But whenever a group is successful, some folks are likely to become disgruntled.
The collaboration of United Way, Foraker, and the Rasmussen Foundation in some ways has become the 400 pound nonprofit gorilla in Anchorage. I tend to be pretty much out of the gossip loop, so I can't tell how big a deal that is. I know that the people running the three organizations are very competent and pretty driven so I suspect they could seem pretty formidable to organizations outside the network. My sense though is that they acknowledge that not everyone wants to do it their way and that they wish them no ill will. But looking around on line, I can't find online about these organizations that isn't glowing. What I'm tiptoeing around is the notion that these organizations seem to have been treated by the media with kid gloves.
I'm pretty sure that what they are doing is basically for the benefit of Alaska and particularly Alaska's needy. I personally have no knowledge of anything negative. But I also think they are big enough players in town that the media ought to pay more critical attention to what they are doing. Just to make sure they keep doing the right things. Alaska media has had a tendency to be overly respectful of those in power, especially when they dole out money. I'm not in any way suggesting that there is anything untoward going on, but journalists should always have some healthy skepticism.
The name of this blog is What Do I Know? in part to call attention to the fact that we know things, often the same things, differently. The stories in our heads cause us to focus on different facts in the same situation and interpret the same situation differently. And to be totally blind to the what others see that conflicts with what we see.
Here are a couple of stories on Exxon/Mobile getting contracts for oil in Iraq. In respect for the sources, I'll just offer the beginning of each piece. You can click on the links to see the rest of each of these.
ExxonMobil wins $50bn contract to develop West Qurna oilfield
The American energy giant ExxonMobil today won the right to develop one of the world's most prized untapped oil reserves, in a $50bn (£30bn) deal that will entrench the company as one of the largest players in postwar Iraq.
Exxon was awarded a contract to extract oil from the West Qurna reservoir near Basra in Iraq's south during an extended tender process that has seen the Iraqi government partner foreign firms in a bid to get its reserves of oil out of the ground as cheaply and quickly as possible.
West Qurna was considered the jewel in the nine Iraqi oil and gas fields up for grabs, with verified reserves of 15bn barrels and a strong chance that exploration will reveal significantly more.
Iraqi oil minister Hussain Shahristani said the contract stipulated a $25bn investment and $25bn more in operating fees. It is also expected to yield up to 100,000 jobs in the impoverished deep south of the country that was heavily blighted by insurgency throughout the past five years.
"Iraq will get great benefits from developing the sector and providing services for the people," said Shahristani in Baghdad's oil ministry. "After decades of oppression and tyranny, Iraq is getting back its riches for this generation and for the next."
The awarding of development rights over the huge West Qurna oilfield in southern Iraq to Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell last Thursday once again underscores the criminal character of the continuing US-led occupation. As the direct result of the Iraq war, major American and other transnational energy conglomerates are now gaining control over some the largest oilfields in the world.
West Qurna has proven reserves of 8.7 billion barrels of oil. Iraq’s total reserves are currently put at 115 billion barrels, though dozens of potential fields have not been explored adequately. Before the US invasion in 2003, rights over West Qurna had been awarded by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein to the Russian oil firm, Lukoil. The pro-US puppet regime in Baghdad has torn up all pre-war contracts.
Exxon-Mobil is the first US-based oil giant to benefit. Under the terms of a 20-year contract, Exxon-Mobil and Shell plan to boost daily production at West Qurna from less than 300,000 barrels to 2.3 million barrels per day over the next six years. As well as the Iraqi government compensating the companies for the cost of upgrading the field—which may run as high as $50 billion—they will be paid $1.90 for each barrel extracted, or some $1.5 billion per year. Exxon-Mobil holds an 80 percent stake and Shell the remaining 20 percent.
BAGHDAD—The Iraqi Oil Ministry on Thursday said it has awarded a consortium led by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC the right to develop the West Qurna-1 oil field, representing the first American-led team gaining access to the country's oil patch.
The pact is the latest in a series of deals Iraq has recently signed or initialed with some of the world's biggest oil companies. Earlier this week, Iraqi officials completed a final agreement with BP PLC and China National Petroleum Corp. and an initial agreement with a consortium led by Italy's Eni SpA. U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp. participated as a junior partner in the Eni-led team.
The Exxon-Shell team, combining two of the world's biggest publicly listed oil companies, had been seen as the favorite to win the contract, which calls for the consortium to boost production at the already-pumping field in southern Iraq in exchange for a per-barrel fee. Among the three competitors, it offered the highest production target for the field, the Oil Ministry said.
An initial pact is expected to be signed on Thursday. The deal will then go to the Iraqi cabinet for approval before a final agreement can be signed, Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.
01/15/04: Forget for a moment about quagmire, the growing heaps of U.S. and Iraqi dead, and the rebellious population. George Bush, Paul Bremer, and gang have pulled off the biggest heist in history. They and no one else own 100 billion barrels of crude oil—a windfall of at least $3 trillion—along with the entire assets and resources of Iraq.
Since March 2003, a series of executive orders by Bush, UN documents, and regulations and orders issued by Iraqi Proconsol Paul Bremer have put the U.S. in absolute control of the state of Iraq, its oil industry and monies, all while lifting barriers to repatriating profits.
In the name of reconstruction and security, the Bush administration has essentially granted itself the power to use the wealth of the Iraqi people as it sees fit. Never mind that the new “fiscal matrix” in Iraq violates international law: a fact of little concern to the White House when the war was illegal to begin with.
The largest contracts have gone to corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, and Fluor, which are big contributors to the Republicans and now enjoy oversight of their Iraq activities by former executives who now sit in the Bush administration. Furthermore, Bush has given the corporate victors the ultimate protection: indemnifying them from liability for any and all activities related to Iraqi oil.
To top it all off, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq is using money from oil sales to help pay for the counterinsurgency campaign. So not only are U.S. corporations reaping billions off the conflict in sweetheart deals with legal impunity, but Iraqis are being forced to pay for the very war being waged against them.
The story begins in February 2003 when the U.S. Agency for International Development secretly asked six companies to bid on a reconstruction contract worth, at minimum, $900 million. The six—Bechtel, Fluor, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, Louis Berger Group, Parsons, and Washington Group International—were all generous supporters of the Republicans, having given them a combined $2.3 million between 1999 and 2002. . .
We tend to interpret the world in ways that justify our advantages and show that our problems are someone else's fault. But it's only true some of the time.
We saw the movie Crude: The Real Price of Petroleum last night at the Bear Tooth Theater Pub. It starts out with the woman in the picture singing a song of the death that oil meant to her Equadorian environment - death to people in her family, to the river, to their way of life.
There is a problem inherent in commenting on a documentary film. While a film reviewer should first be reviewing the quality of the film as film, you can't help but be drawn into subject of the film as well.
The dilemma for me was this. Part of me is outraged. I know that this is not an isolated situation. Anyone who was in Alaska in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez fouled Prince William Sound and stayed around to see how Exxon has dragged this case out for 20 years until a number of the plaintiffs have died, can't help but recognize Chevron's tactics in Ecuador. And I've read enough to know that multi-national corporations ultimately are about making money, and while there may be people who consider themselves moral who work for these companies, that morality is compartmentalized so they can justify their continued work there, and ultimately, collectively, the corporations are totally amoral if not immoral. Confessions of an Economic Hitman spells this all out. The author even writes about going into the jungles of the Amazon to convince the indigenous peoples that the oil company would do them good. So my basic reaction is to believe that - despite gaps in the arguments - ultimately this movie tells us what is basically the 'right' interpretation of events.
But as I blog, I recognize that people who have different world views from mine, may read this. Since I don't have knowledge beyond the film about this particular situation (though I do in general) I feel a need to be able to justify however I come down on the film. And there were parts of the film that made me groan.
The duck lying on its back, its feet quivering in what look like death throes, as the narrator talks about the water killing the villagers' animals just looked way too staged. The point was probably true and they may well have seen this duck, but it was over the top for me. And the kid holding the two dead chickens by the feet and then taking them into the brush and tossing them because they were contaminated - well in my mind I could hear the director creating the scene and telling the kid, "OK, that's far enough, now toss them." Yes, you use these kinds of visuals to make your points, but these just looked too staged for me. (Hey, maybe they weren't staged at all, but they looked like it.)
The director as an advocate rather than an objective observer isn't bad. As an advocate, the film makers did offer the voices of 'the other side' as well as the voices they were supporting. And I'd note that the short oil industry produced videos featured within the film were far more one sided than Crude.
I was particularly struck by one Chevron scientist in Houston who, in her very nice green dress, kept telling us there was no evidence that linked the illnesses to Texaco oil, that Texaco had cleaned up its sites before turning things over to the Ecuadorian petroleum company, and that if there had been any evidence of wrong doing, she would have let her bosses know immediately because she had the phone number of one of the key vice presidents. In terms of scientific data, the film makers never disputed what she said. But in terms of visuals and testimonials of villagers, one couldn't imagine that this scientist was anything but a shill for Chevron. They never - in the film - asked her if she had ever been to the villages. She didn't look like she had. Did they cut out the parts where she talked about visiting the villages and seeing the leftover oil damage?
The film raises important questions about how a party 'proves' damage. As one Chevron spokesperson said, there's no tool for dating whether this oil is from the time of Texaco or from the time of the Ecuadorian oil consortium. What happens when there is no scientifically definitive way to prove something? On the other hand, the film offers a great deal of anecdotal data to connect Texaco to the damage. But the almost total lack of numbers supporting the villagers' case raises questions about whether these numbers exist. Did they feel the numbers were too complicated to present in a film? Do the numbers simply not exist? (For example, they say the rate of cancer has increased greatly since the oil. Chevron disputes this and says, in any case it's not the oil that's causing it. Probably in this remote region there wasn't much data on the incidence of cancer, certainly not before oil. But nobody says even this.)
Winning in court isn't necessarily about justice. It's about how good your lawyers are. It's about how provable your side of the case is. It's about the political environment. For many years, government officials could be manipulated (and still can be) by multinational corporations backed by the World Bank's criteria for granting loans, and ultimately, by the CIA. (Read Economic Hitman.) Raising the hopes of the plaintiffs was the election of President Rafael Correa, who became the first president of Ecuador to visit the oil disaster area.
So my evaluation of the film really does hinge on how convincingly Berlinger made the argument. He definitely made the case that damage had been done and that the indigenous villagers individual lives and probably way of life had been destroyed. But the question is not totally convincing - to the skeptical viewer - that Texaco (and thus current owner Chevron) is the responsible party.
The film focused on the plaintiff's attorneys, a New Yorker and a local Ecuadorian, as they worked to build their case, raise money, and get publicity, including a spread in Vanity Fair and enlisting Sting and his wife Trudie Styler - who visited the villages - to raise money and awareness for them.
Perhaps the lack of Hollywood slickness in the film redeems its faults. After all, this was clearly made in passionate belief in the cause, much in contrast to the cold, calculating style of the attorneys and other spokespersons for Chevron. Chevron focuses on legal and scientific technicalities. Berlinger presents personal local witnesses along with the visual evidence of the damage done. You know, as you watch, that each Chevron spokesperson's annual income is more than all the villagers have made in their lifetimes and that they spend enough on one or two nights' hotel bills to pay the $500 cancer treatments a mother and daughter in the film get after an 18 hour bus ride each way to the clinic.
You can get a sense of what I'm talking about in the official trailer:
So, I've been mulling this around. I didn't feel satisfied at the end of the movie. This wasn't a high budget Hollywood movie. Even Michael Moore surely had far more money for his latest few movies. You can't compare this movie to one that cost 10 or 20 times as much. But I haven't been able to find any mention of the cost of the movie.
Most reviews online seem to be uncritically supportive of the cause. The most 'establishment' comments I could find were in an interview of the director Joe Berlinger in Foreign Policy, a journal that doesn't normally review movies. He said he originally didn't notify Chevron because he was working in a very lawless area near the Columbian border, and while he didn't think Chevron would hire a hit man, there were other locals with an interest in their Chevron salaries who might.
[Since I contacted Chevron,] our relationship has been interesting. Initially, they did not believe [I was trying] to do a fair and balanced film.
I tried to get them to let me do other things like sit in on their meetings. I said, "Hey, take me on the toxi-tour" -- everyone calls it the toxi-tour, including Chevron -- "from the Chevron perspective and I would love to be on the ground with you at these sites, and you explain to me whose responsibility this is and how this happened." They denied that. Literally up until the [eleventh] hour they were friendly but not granting any interviews.
[The Sundance Film Festival deadline] motivated them, and [Chevron] agreed to do interviews. It was their idea to provide me with Ricardo Raez Vega, the legal architect of this case, and provide me with Sarah MacMillan [Chevron's chief environmental scientist].(brackets in the original)
He goes on to say that when he did the interviews, a Chevron film crew showed up to film him doing the interviews. Another quote from the Foreign Policy interview caught my eye:
The filmmaker saw a chance to tell a story he thinks addresses a "moral responsibility" that transcends even the best legal argument.
That was, actually the sense I had. And I kept on looking for other things to help me out here. One could say that if I need to get all this background information, the movie itself didn't work on its own. As a piece of film I think it had its share of imperfections, but as a piece of advocacy, it imprinted memorable images in people's minds that will stick and will reshape what they think when they see the Chevron logo.
But what ultimately convinced me was hearing Joe Berlinger talk about the film on the Alex Jones show. (There are four YouTube videos. I took short clips for the audio from 2/4 and 3/4.) You can hear in his voice that this project was one he felt compelled to do because of a great injustice he saw. And he acknowledges that he doesn't know for sure all the legal technicalities, but says this is such an enormous moral issue, that the story had to be publicized. I really think the film would have been stronger had he inserted himself into either the beginning or the end of the film and said what he says on this clip. (Click on the yellow button with the black arrow.)
I'm not smart enough to figure out whether Chevron should win or lose the trial, you know, as you'll see in the film they've wrapped themselves up in enough legal arguments that who knows if the justice system can prevail, but from a moral standpoint it's just astounding that they would go into the backyard of these people and foul the place up. And you walk around these indigenous villages and it breaks your heart. [At this point he gets interrupted for a station break. The theme gets picked up later in the interview and I've added that after the break but didn't transcribe it.]
For me this helps explain what I saw as holes in the movie. He wasn't arguing this legally, that would happen in the courts. What he's doing is making the moral case that what Texaco/Chevron did is wrong and that they need to make amends, even if their lawyers were able to get Ecuadorian officials to sign off on their future liability.
In a post last Friday about the resignation letter of an American State Department employee in Afghanistan, I listed helping Afghan women as one of the goals of our presence in Afghanistan.
In a piece in Countercurrents, Cage Wagenvoort looks at American policy in Afghanistan and challenges that reason for being there. He argues that we in the West have regularly gone into other cultures under the banner of noble ideals. Unfortunately, he writes,
Ideals have the habit of coalescing into absolutes, and absolutes have a habit of shedding blood when one nation attempts to impose them on another. . .
We now see this same missionary zeal at work in Afghanistan where we are told that ours is an effort to liberate Afghan women from the yoke of oppression that has been placed on their shoulders by a misogynist regime. It has appeal because in truth, women in that country are treated as if they’re chattel.
The paradox, here, is that women’s rights will never ride into Afghanistan astride a drone. In Vietnam we destroyed villages to save them; in Afghanistan, we destroy wedding parties to free them.
You can read the whole piece here. (The "blind spot in the progressive vision" in the title of this post comes from the last sentence of Wagenvoord's piece.)
How is it that Americans feel outraged when non-Americans tell us what to do (remember how French fries and toast were banned after 9/11?), or tell us what is right and wrong, yet we can't understand why other cultures respond the same way when we tell them how to live?
The Mayor says we're in a bind financially and he has to make difficult choices. Maybe he just needs to be more creative in finding ways to fund the government services we take for granted.
Both public and private organizations offer memberships. You can be a member of the Anchorage Museum - at several levels. At each level of payment, you get an increasing number of benefits. For example:
(One individual and children or grandchildren 17 and younger)
Unlimited general admission for one year
10% Discount at the Anchorage Museum Shop and Café and the Science Store at the Imaginarium
Discounts on classes, films, lectures, and admission tickets to special exhibits as well as birthday parties and camp programs at the Imaginarium
Free admission to more than 400 science and technology museums around the world
Invitation to Members-only exhibition previews and special events
Annual subscription to Museum Today, award-winning newsletter
One year admission to family programs and activities, gallery talks and tours
100% of membership is tax-deductible
If you spend $125 you can be a sustaining member and add more benefits.
The Alaska Club has Basic, Silver, Gold, and Platinum memberships.
Why not revise our Municipal Property tax into a multi-level Property Tax/Municipal Membership? It might look something like this:
Basic level:
Members at the basic level have free access to the following services:
Travel on the streets, sidewalks, trail systems (does not include busiest intersections during peak traffic hours)
Children may attend school free, but must pay for books
Free entry into libraries (but may not check out items or use the internet)
Two free police or fire calls per year
Silver level has all the benefits of Basic level plus:
Free access to choice of five busiest intersections during rush hours
10% discount on first traffic ticket and parking ticket
Three family passes to visit a park in Anchorage
Library card
Free books for children at school, free after school activity (ie sports, etc.) for one child per semester
Five free police or fire calls per year.
20% discount on Municipal Utilities bills
Gold level has all the benefits of Silver level plus:
Total free access on all streets at all times
25 hours of free parking in downtown parking lots
50% discount on first traffic or parking ticket
Free access to all parks, including special park availability for Gold level and above members
Unlimited police or fire calls
Unlimited after school activities for kids in school
50% discount on Municipal Utilities
Free basic Museum membership
Platinum level has all the benefits of Gold level plus:
Priority snow plowing for neighborhoods that are >80% Platinum level members
Free parking downtown
70% discount on all Municipal fees or charges
10% discounts at events in MOA facilities
This is just a first quick draft, but I think it could work. You'd have to set the normal property tax at a reasonable level, and then let people pay for premium levels. Like paying for ski trail grooming, and museum membership; it would be about pride in your city with some extra privileges over people who pay the minimum. It would also help to highlight what people all get from Municipal government and take for granted.
The only real problem is that much of government is a public good. It's something where everyone benefits and excluding non-payers is hard - like city streets, using parks, clean air, etc.
That's why you'd still have to have a minimum charge everyone pays. Cars could have stickers that show what level they pay. And with new technology used in other cities, you could track who use the busy intersections at what times of the day.
You'd have to go through all the city services and see which ones could have premium levels or discounts. You'd also have to calculate what to charge for each level so that enough revenue would come in. And work out something for renters. Since they already pay property tax through their rent, perhaps they could just pay extra for the premium levels. And what about people who don't live in Anchorage but work in town? They could buy guest memberships. Lots of possibilities here.
Maybe there'd have to be a cafeteria plan, where you could pick a few from a list of possible benefits. The higher your level, the more you could pick. It would also allow people who don't think they use city services to just pay the minimum (but would they quit complaining about the things they don't pay for?)
Of course, there's no telling how many people would choose which level, but with the right mix of incentives, it could work.
Members of Anchorage's Indian community and guests celebrated Diwali Saturday night at Northwood Elementary School.
The word दीपावली(Dipavali) literally translates as a row of lamps in Sanskrit[1]. It is traditional for adherents of Diwali-celebrating faiths to light small clay lamps (or Deep in Sanskrit: दीप) filled with oil to signify the triumph of good over evil within an individual. During Diwali, many wear new clothes and share sweets/snacks with each other. Some Indian business communities start their financial year by opening new account books on the first day of Diwali for good luck the following year.
In Hinduism, Diwali marks the return of Lord Raama to his kingdom Ayodhya after defeating Ravana (the Demon Kin, and also the demons KING) - the ruler of Lanka in the epic story of Ramayana. It also celebrates the slaying of the demon king Narakasura by Lord Krishna. Both signifying the victory of good over evil. In Jainism, Diwali marks the attainment of moksa by Mahavira in 527 BC.[2][3] . In Sikhism, Diwali commemorates the return of Guru Har Gobind Ji to Amritsar after freeing 52 other Hindu kings imprisoned in Fort Gwalior by Emperor Jahangir. He was welcomed by the people who lit candles and divas to celebrate his return. Which is why Sikhs also refer to Diwali also as Bandi Chhorh Divas meaning "the day of release of detainees".
Diwali is considered to be a national festival in India and Nepal. The aesthetic aspect of the festival is enjoyed around the world regardless of faith. (From Wikipedia, where you can get a lot more about Diwali.)
The video gives a little sense of the liveliness of the evening.
An AP story that runs in today's Anchorage Daily News says, in part:
The jobless rate rocketed to 10.2 percent in October, the highest since early 1983, dealing a psychological blow to Americans as they prepare holiday shopping lists.
This story and others on this topic that I've read all point to a media conspiracy clearly orchestrated by Conservatives. None of the stories I've seen have mentioned that in 1983 Ronald Reagan was into his third year as president. None of these stories has highlighted the fact that the US reached double digit unemployment in only 10 months after Obama was sworn into office while it took Conservative hero Reagan two full years to reach that level.
None of the Conservatives want to acknowledge that Obama has bested their hero by over a year, despite the fact that he had to turn around the legacy of eight prior years of Republicans. Before Reagan, the Democrats only had four years to mess with the economy leaving Reagan with far less to undo. In fact Conservatives are even criticizing Obama for repeating Reagan's achievement.
Clearly, the mention of 1983 without mentioning the fact that Reagan was president at the time, shows how much influence the Conservatives have over the news. They did not want to draw attention to Obama's ability to reach double digit unemployment over a year faster than Reagan. They did not want their hero to be shown to be so soundly beaten by Obama on achieving this milestone. Strangely, it was the purportedly liberal New York Times that pointed out the 1983 level (though they didn't mention Reagan) was actually 10.8%, significantly higher than Obama's 10.2%. But OBama has time to get the unemployment higher than Reagan got it.
This is another example of shameless Conservative manipulation of the news to forward their ideological, and not objective, news standards.
[Original title was "Unemployment - Facts - Context - Ideology." I guess irony should have been in there too.]
The Seva Foundation catalogue arrived the other day. For a donation of $50 you pay for
"one cataract surgery with a vision-correcting lens implant, post-operative care and medications."
You can buy another sweater or a ticket to the opera or a dinner out or you can buy someone their eyesight. People claim they would help the poor around the world, but they just don't know how. But there are many charities that will help you do those good deeds.
How do you know that $50 will really go to that operation? Well, you can't be certain. It would be hard to trace your check to a clinic in Nepal and I'd bet it all gets mixed up with everyone else's checks. Probably $50 is what it costs them to do that sort of operation and this is just clever marketing. But you can check how a charitable organization is rated.
Charity Navigator is one of the online ways to check out a charity before you give. I checked out SEVA and they only got 3 stars out of four. Their administrative costs are a little higher than other agencies is part of the reason. Their administrator gets paid $160,000 a year. That seems a bit steep for a charity that raises only $4 million a year.
But as you can see, Charity Navigator compares SEVA to other charities with similar missions. There are three that have four stars and higher efficiency ratings. I liked Physicians for Peace.
In any case, as you start thinking about holiday gifts, especially for people who have everything, think about giving a gift of service such as a cataract operation in someone's name. It seems to me that for Christians, this would fit right into the message that Christ spread. It's easy, it's affordable, it doesn't clutter up the giftee's house, and it can change a person's life.
Think if you were living on a meager income who needed a prosthetic or polio inoculations for your children and you knew there were rich people in another country who spent more money to watch a movie and go to dinner than you needed to save the life of your child?
Most of the people who read this probably can do the dinner and movie AND make a donation without noticing it. And you can use Charity Navigator to find an organization which uses the donations efficiently and effectively.
Today, The Foraker Group offers a wide range of services, training and educational opportunities that help assure the success of Alaska's nonprofit organizations. [I left out all the corporate logos they had up. An advantage of underwriting my own blog is I don't have to post any ads.]
We spent a short time going over Foraker's sustainability model for nonprofits. Basically it's about making sure that the money, the personnel, and the organizational purpose are all three healthy and working in a collaborative community.
