The Concept:
The little girl Elizabeth needs new shoes; she has leprosy. They cost only 10 dollars. Will you help? An aid organization makes the request. Now, there are three billion Elizabeths. Not all with leprosy of course, but all in dire need of aid. About a billion wake up each morning wondering where they will find food that day. Of course everyone understands that Elizabeth may not even exist, and that costs are involved in getting the 10 dollars to people like Elizabeth.
Ark Aid, a Dutch based charity watchdog has been doing research over a number of years in order to determine how much actually gets to Elizabeth, and in what context. And they were unhappily surprised that in many cases very little actually finds its way to the recipients of the given gifts. On the other hand, there are also many charities that are very proficient, professional, have a very low overhead, and distribute the gifts in a loving Christian manner.
Because billions of dollars given as donations for the poor never reaches them, the idea arose to advise donors to give through the most efficient aid organizations. But which ones are they? The sites on the internet to help donors make the right choices are for the most part very inadequate. Therefore we posted this web site and request your help.
But there is a more fundamental reason for wanting to help others make proper donations. The sovereign Lord desires that we give in a responsible way. Giving to the poor is an important theme in the Bible. Giving to them is giving to Him (Matthew 25:31-46). It all has to do with the glory of the Great King. To summarize, if we do it right many tens of millions will be going to the abject poor that otherwise would have gone to the rich. In this the King of glory is glorified. And that's the only important thing.
This activity of evaluating and comparing should be done not only because donors will choose aid organizations with better ratings, but, when charities see that they are getting less because donors are becoming more critical and are now giving to the better charities, they will want to revise their methods, salaries, transparency, running costs, etc, to reestablish trust by the donating public.
Now, at the outset we are confronted with a problem. Presenting the cold facts about an aid organizations means, that in many cases, we hang out the dirty laundry for the world to see resulting in a probable general skepticism, not only of the particular organization under consideration, but also of the other ones as well. Will our endeavors not lead to the opposite of what we want to achieve? We believe not. On the contrary, we believe that as the trust factor grows with respect to the better charities, and as the lower rated organizations revise their standards, in the long run more money will be given. At the moment many are hesitant to give because there is no clarity as to the effectiveness of giving aid.
But, there are tens of thousands of aid organizations (more than 1.5 million in the USA alone in 2009 with assets of more then 2000 billion dollars!). We can't pretend to even make a dent in the evaluation of a majority of them. We want, therefore, to restrict our endeavors to organizations that are involved with poverty alleviation, and have budgets of over a million dollars per year (10 million in the USA), and then, only the ones that claim that they are operating from within Christian principles. This means that for most countries about 50 to 100 charities need evaluation. But these larger charities account, in most cases, for more than 90% of donations going to poverty alleviation by Christians. 85% of the total revenues given for nonprofits in the USA goes to only 1.3% of these nonprofits. Estimates show that if we can make a difference on the decision making of donors because of our advice, evaluations, and comparisons, so that on average 10% of their gifts are redirected to the better charities, then that will mean many millions more will go to those who really need it. Estimates for the Netherlands are well over 30 million more per year, and for the USA it is many times that amount. For other countries a similar effect is to be anticipated. It is worth it to spend some effort to achieve these results.
When we say that we are restricting our endeavors to Christian organizations involved with poverty alleviation, we make no judgment about the relative importance of this area of aid in comparison to other areas focusing on the more well to do, such as those areas of giving in health care, media, missions, evangelism, churches, Bible distribution, education, environment, and the like. We do however have a bias for aid in these areas going to where the need is the greatest. As well, we have an even bigger bias that aid be given to organizations that are truly Christian. We would welcome others doing what we are doing for other areas of comparative studies involving other types of aid organizations. Our efforts should be regarded as complementary to other endeavors that do similar research and rating.
So, here’s the plan. We want to set up a professional web page (including the use of social media, apps, forums, etc) to facilitate giving, especially for Christians. Being the only watchdog organization in the world providing free information about Christian charities involved specifically in poverty alleviation in this way, it can be expected that recognition of our efforts will rapidly spread.
The little girl Elizabeth needs new shoes; she has leprosy. They cost only 10 dollars. Will you help? An aid organization makes the request. Now, there are three billion Elizabeths. Not all with leprosy of course, but all in dire need of aid. About a billion wake up each morning wondering where they will find food that day. Of course everyone understands that Elizabeth may not even exist, and that costs are involved in getting the 10 dollars to people like Elizabeth.
Ark Aid, a Dutch based charity watchdog has been doing research over a number of years in order to determine how much actually gets to Elizabeth, and in what context. And they were unhappily surprised that in many cases very little actually finds its way to the recipients of the given gifts. On the other hand, there are also many charities that are very proficient, professional, have a very low overhead, and distribute the gifts in a loving Christian manner.
Because billions of dollars given as donations for the poor never reaches them, the idea arose to advise donors to give through the most efficient aid organizations. But which ones are they? The sites on the internet to help donors make the right choices are for the most part very inadequate. Therefore we posted this web site and request your help.
But there is a more fundamental reason for wanting to help others make proper donations. The sovereign Lord desires that we give in a responsible way. Giving to the poor is an important theme in the Bible. Giving to them is giving to Him (Matthew 25:31-46). It all has to do with the glory of the Great King. To summarize, if we do it right many tens of millions will be going to the abject poor that otherwise would have gone to the rich. In this the King of glory is glorified. And that's the only important thing.
This activity of evaluating and comparing should be done not only because donors will choose aid organizations with better ratings, but, when charities see that they are getting less because donors are becoming more critical and are now giving to the better charities, they will want to revise their methods, salaries, transparency, running costs, etc, to reestablish trust by the donating public.
Now, at the outset we are confronted with a problem. Presenting the cold facts about an aid organizations means, that in many cases, we hang out the dirty laundry for the world to see resulting in a probable general skepticism, not only of the particular organization under consideration, but also of the other ones as well. Will our endeavors not lead to the opposite of what we want to achieve? We believe not. On the contrary, we believe that as the trust factor grows with respect to the better charities, and as the lower rated organizations revise their standards, in the long run more money will be given. At the moment many are hesitant to give because there is no clarity as to the effectiveness of giving aid.
But, there are tens of thousands of aid organizations (more than 1.5 million in the USA alone in 2009 with assets of more then 2000 billion dollars!). We can't pretend to even make a dent in the evaluation of a majority of them. We want, therefore, to restrict our endeavors to organizations that are involved with poverty alleviation, and have budgets of over a million dollars per year (10 million in the USA), and then, only the ones that claim that they are operating from within Christian principles. This means that for most countries about 50 to 100 charities need evaluation. But these larger charities account, in most cases, for more than 90% of donations going to poverty alleviation by Christians. 85% of the total revenues given for nonprofits in the USA goes to only 1.3% of these nonprofits. Estimates show that if we can make a difference on the decision making of donors because of our advice, evaluations, and comparisons, so that on average 10% of their gifts are redirected to the better charities, then that will mean many millions more will go to those who really need it. Estimates for the Netherlands are well over 30 million more per year, and for the USA it is many times that amount. For other countries a similar effect is to be anticipated. It is worth it to spend some effort to achieve these results.
When we say that we are restricting our endeavors to Christian organizations involved with poverty alleviation, we make no judgment about the relative importance of this area of aid in comparison to other areas focusing on the more well to do, such as those areas of giving in health care, media, missions, evangelism, churches, Bible distribution, education, environment, and the like. We do however have a bias for aid in these areas going to where the need is the greatest. As well, we have an even bigger bias that aid be given to organizations that are truly Christian. We would welcome others doing what we are doing for other areas of comparative studies involving other types of aid organizations. Our efforts should be regarded as complementary to other endeavors that do similar research and rating.
So, here’s the plan. We want to set up a professional web page (including the use of social media, apps, forums, etc) to facilitate giving, especially for Christians. Being the only watchdog organization in the world providing free information about Christian charities involved specifically in poverty alleviation in this way, it can be expected that recognition of our efforts will rapidly spread.