People wishing to make contributions for tsunami victims can check the status of their charities with the charitywatch.org list of Top-Rated Charities According to the American Institute of Philanthropy
Accion International
Africare
American Friends Service Committee
American Near East Refugee Aid
American Refugee Committee
AmeriCares
CARE
Catholic Relief Services
Church World Service
Doctors of the World
Doctors Without Borders USA
FINCA International
International Rescue Committee
Lutheran World Relief
Mennonite Central Committee
Oxfam-America
Save the Children
U.S. Committee for Refugees
If your charity isn’t on this list, it’s not among the best in efficiency. The two highest-rated in International Relief and Development are Lutheran World Relief and the American Refugee Committee.
While this information might be useful, it’s important to remember that the true measure of efficiency is the amount of service – not dollars – delivered per donor dollar. A certain amount of infrastructure and planning/investment for the future is necessary to maximize that figure and make sure it stays maximized. Every dollar thus spent will reduce the “dollars out vs. dollars in” figure, creating a false appearance that some other dollar-dumping charity is more efficient. It also matters very much where and how the money is spent. For example, a dollar spent on vaccines or disease surveillance can be worth ten (or a hundred) spent later on treatment or burying the bodies. Persuading local officials to devote resources to prevention might require lobbying efforts that go into these figures as overhead, again reducing the purported figure of merit, even though the actual outcome per dollar is better.
By all means use these figures, but don’t think for a moment that they tell the whole story.
I was gonna post that which I came to via Link TV… BTW, Portland Based “Mercy Corps” didn’t make the cut.