How charities earn

We all often see various advertisements of organizations involved in helping the disabled, orphans and animals. On the streets, promoters are handing out leaflets calling for help to clean up the fading nature, posters with the texts “let’s save children with rare diseases” flicker in subway cars. It just so happened in our society that most people do not trust charitable foundations or simply do not believe in their honest work.

We will not analyze why such stereotypes have arisen, although this is already so obvious – there are really many scammers among such companies, so people simply do not believe in them anymore. We have already written about how charitable foundations are created. Today we will talk about how they earn. After all, such organizations are also businesses, although they bear the title of “non-commercial activities”.

How charities earn
Charitable organizations are companies with the status of a legal entity that carry out non-commercial activities. According to the law, 70-80% of all funds received from free donations, such funds are required to spend on their main non-profit purpose – in fact, helping those in need, restoring historical buildings, improving the environment, and so on. Charity has many directions. The remaining 20-30% (the figure is inaccurate, since this percentage can vary in different countries) the organization has the right to spend on itself. That is, for salaries to employees, for the maintenance of the office, for advertising needs, and so on. It turns out that the more the company receives donations, the larger the amount it can take for itself. And it is absolutely in its interests to attract as much money from the population as possible.

The turnover of large charitable foundations that solve various social problems, and which successful businessmen periodically help, contains serious amounts. And employees of such organizations can receive quite good salaries, not to mention the founders and leaders. Sometimes they use various tricks to get as many donations as possible. This is either outright fraud or tricks that mislead people, but in fact they do not violate the law.

Ways to raise funds

One way to get money from unsuspecting people is through regular pay stubs. Rather, they are only seemingly ordinary, but in fact with a “surprise”. Leaflets are printed that are as similar as possible to utility bills – in size, font, text layout, paper type, etc. The amount indicated is not at all significant – up to about 80-100 Russian rubles. Requisites for payment, of course, a charitable foundation. In order not to break the law, it is written on the receipt “not obligatory for payment.” Naturally, in the smallest font. It is not advisable to indicate the time frame for payment. Of course, there are many people who want to study this receipt in detail, and find out that this is just a trick of the company, and it is not at all necessary to run to the cashier with this piece of paper. But there are those who will take a quick look at the appearance of the receipt and the amount indicated in it, and thoughtlessly go to pay allegedly for “utilities”. And the money will go straight to the fund account.

Whether this is a scam is debatable. Even if the fund complies with all the “rules” according to which they allegedly do not violate the law, we all understand that this method of raising funds is not transparently fair. Another thing is when the residents of the city are given or mailed pieces of paper with a request to donate an arbitrary amount to a charity. Payment details are also indicated, but you can enter any amount you want. The payer of such a receipt is not delusional and clearly understands that his money will go to the account of a charitable organization and that he has the right to simply ignore this piece of paper and he will not get anything for it. This method of attracting money is the most honest, it’s only a pity that most people who receive such a receipt simply throw it in the trash.

Another weakness of aid organizations is kickbacks. For example, the foundation decided to help a shelter or nursing home in buying some kind of equipment or furniture. These items are bought at a higher price than the publicly advertised price, and the difference is simply returned by the supplier or seller to the charity in an envelope.

How charities earn
The most common charitable foundations now are raising money for the treatment of people with serious illnesses. But diseases are also incurable. If you indicate that this patient has an incurable disease or is already in a neglected condition, that he has no chance of being saved (alas, this happens), it is unlikely that many people will want to donate money for his treatment.