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Sharon Schneider
Chicago, IL
Recent Activity
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Sharon signed the petition | -
Sharon signed the petition | -
Sharon commented on the article |I have been contemplating a post on "why I hate online contests" like this but you laid it out perfectly. I don't like that they sell themselves as "trying to find a great charity" or something else philanthropic when they're more accurately described publicity grabbers for the contest organizer.
The contests are not only tough for international organizations, but for anyone less than an Internet superstar. We're rewarding fantastic Internet organizing abilities, which is a helpful skill for a nonprofit to thrive, but I am often concerned that we are confusing that one focused skill with effectiveness or other measures of a high-impact charity. -
Sharon commented on the article |Michelle,Two thoughts. First, there is a school of thought among foundations who explicitly exclude staff salaries from their funding as they only want money to go for "hard costs," essentially supplies. They figure it's the nonprofit's responsibility to sustain itself (which means, with other people's contributions) and should be responsible for staff salaries. They will only pay for books and supplies and no "overhead." Second, the carving up of staff salaries to make as much as possible fit into "program" instead of "administration" is one of the unfortunate games that are a complete waste of time but completely necessary for nonprofits who want to avoid bad press or low-star ratings. What about the CEO salary? What about the Development Director? I've seen some pretty creative reasoning among nonprofits to justify putting as much as possible into program categories. For more thoughts, check out this new post on this very topic: http://philanthropy.com/giveandtake/article/1044/the-costs-of-rating-charities-on-overhead-expenses
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Sharon commented on the article |
Leigh--You're right on. I actually intended to place the blame for that low overhead emphasis squarely on the shoulders of the donors. In my subsequent editing, that bit came out. The post was originally titled "All donors should read this raging debate" because I think most donors don't understand the broad consequences of their funding choices. Thanks for clarifying that--I'll edit my post to say "the current emphasis among donors on 'low overhead'..."
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Sharon commented on the article |Interestingly, Alanna, I don't doubt that they could do their work better, but as Jim @Cashel, Chairman of Forum One Communications, tweeted "Lancet's criticism of Gates Foundation: reasonable suggestions based on embarrassingly weak analysis -
It's like they had some criticisms of Gates funding priorities and process that they wanted to get published so they made up a poorly constructed study to hang it off of.
