Sponsoring Kids

I’m with guys that said give your time not your money. I run a youth sports league and I have roughly 10 coaches for over 400 kids. Every season I gotta guilt parents to step up and coach. I have 4-5 guys that volunteer even though they have no kids. You could be one of these guys.

If you want to make sure your donation goes straight to the people who need it, either donate time or food. Your local food bank will accept just about any food donation – all food banks are in need of good quality meat/protein. They love hunting season when they get tons of venison. If you hunt, donate a deer to the food bank. Local churches usually have a list of shut-ins, disabled, or temporarily put out individuals, and they’ll get you in contact with them. Some people need shingles hammered back down, a dog house repaired, a garden tilled so they can have food, hanging gutters nailed up, etc.

I have a 1 acre personal garden, and I donate 2/3rds of the produce I get (about 600lbs), as well as a dozen bushels of fruit from the trees over the course of the summer. They treat the fresh produce like gold. I got to see it given away once, this family got a basket full of plums and apples and strawberries, and one of them just started crying. 98% of the time they just get dusty cans of yams and stale macaroni people dig out of the back of their pantries.

Also, toothpaste, those cheap 5 Pack t-shirt in solid neutral colors, infant/children’s medicine, gloves and socks in the winter are always in demand. We once has a family show up at our church at around 11PM, we were only there because we were doing repairs, it was a family of 4 (husband, wife, two little kids), both the kids were sick with fevers. They’d lost their house, were living out of the car, etc. None of the shelters had children’s meds, they couldn’t find anything anywhere. They showed up at the church out of desperation, luckily the store next door was still open for 10 minutes, so we got them meds to tie them over.

Another thing we’ve done is made ‘kits’ in gallon baggies with gloves, socks, combs, mouthwash, water-less soap, jerky and dried fruit, toothbrushes and toothpaste, deodorant, etc. and a bottle of water. Just go walking around an area you know to have homeless and hand them out. They’ll appreciate it.

If you get creative, there’s a lot of ways you can help.

PS: at the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, I highly recommend you bring a weapon with you if you do the back-alley passing out kits thing. Most homeless people are perfectly respectable, grateful individuals, but there are some bad dudes out there, and they’ll make a winter coat our of your skin if they can. Giant bowie knives tend to scare them away faster than guns.

Just a quick comment for people talking about donating time or food vs money.

That works VERY well for local charities. It (often) does NOT work well for humanitarian aid and international development for a number of reasons.

  1. Food aid can destroy local economies. While food aid is often very much needed during a natural disaster, continued use of food aid undercuts the market for food. Think supply and demand: food aid increases supply, lowering the price and forcing producers out. It’s not that food aid is “bad,” it’s very good. It’s just that money can help in ways that food cannot. Basically, the argument goes that there is NOT a shortage of food. There is a shortage of economic prosperity allowing for people to have money to buy food at certain locations. I’ve just finished my coffee, so I’m not sure if I’m making sense here. Let me know if this doesn’t make sense.

  2. Donating time is great. I think if you fly to a place where they are doing “international development” and donate your time, you will be doing an amazing thing. In fact, if you’re interested, check out GlobalGiving and a variety of other places. That being said, most people can’t or don’t want to fly to (for example) rural Uganda. And people probably shouldn’t go to some parts of the Central African Republic. Donating money to professionals who do work in this field is a good alternative.

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]NinjaBoots23 wrote:

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:
I’ve always wanted to do one of those “feed the children” type things but have always been met with skepticism…“its a scam”, mainly.

So, anyone have any experience with them? I just don’t trust anything from the TV so I’m looking for some real life testimony.

You all as adults will stuff suffer greatly…kids get a free pass. =)[/quote]

Okay, I’m back for a bit. First off, good on you for helping out. Donating even a LITTLE money is a HUGE help.

Sponsoring a child is a great way to get involved and “feel” involved. Earlier I wrote about CARE and world Vision (WV). Both of which are amazing organizations that do amazing Humanitarian work with the poorest of the poor. (Ever hear of a “care package”? yep, that’s from CARE). WV is a “strong” christian organization if you’re into that. Care isn’t overtly christian if you’d prefer to go that route.

When my wife and I first sponsored a child years and years ago, we used WV. It was a great way to “feel involved” and it gave us a name, place, location, and all that to research. Catholic Relief services is also a great organization. http://crs.org/ So is the International committee of the Red Cross International Committee of the Red Cross

If you are interested in Development (rather than Humanitarian aid), I would look at AED http://www.aed.org/

If you are VERY worried about getting ripped off, check out Global Giving http://www.globalgiving.org/ or Kiva http://www.kiva.org/.

Global giving allows you to directly give to very small (or large) organizations doing EXACTLY what you’re interested in. It is essentially a platform that verifies the veracity of organizations and provides a way to search for organizations. Great stuff. Let’s say (for example) you’re interested in children’s development via sports in Kenya… just type it into the search and you’ll get results.

Kiva allows you to give microloans directly to individuals. If you are a HUGE libertarian, this is the organization for you. Directly provide capital to businessmen/women. It’s a loan, not a donation, so the money should be returned, allowing you to loan again. (Global giving probably is a good place for the libertarians as well).

ummm… I guess I’ll end my rant for now. If someone has a specific question, I can try to answer it.

[/quote]

I cannot recommend supporting the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

http://undhimmi.com/2010/05/26/red-cross-trains-taliban-in-first-aid/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/25/red-cross-first-aid-taliban[/quote]

Wow…you’re a douche bag. [/quote]

And why is that? I didn’t say don’t donate to charities, I stated that this organization - although I admit that the ICRC does a TON of important work and helps many people who aren’t undeserving - helps our enemy, the people that fight our men and women serving in the Mid East, members of the organization that claims responsibility for the attack on the Twin Towers, and terrorist cells in other areas as well.

I guess we should be helping Somali pirates and drug cartels too eh?

Don’t worry, this isn’t the end of the Red Cross because most people will never hear of these actions (let alone care). But there are better, less neutral, organizations out there.

If anyone wants to make a difference in the life of a disadvantaged powerlifter who must live everyday knowing that he hasn’t yet pulled a 600 deadlift, let me know. Some ideas to really make a difference in this young man’s life:

Send your leftover creatinez
Send him your leftover girlfriends
Donate motivational posters
Buy him a GHR

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
I know a fair amount about this stuff and will answer any questions if you want to send me a PM.

Essentially there are a LOT of very good organizations, and a few bad ones. I recommend checking out:

CARE: http://www.care.org/
World Vision: http://www.wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf

Sorry, I was going to write a long post, but I hate to take the wife to the hospital. I’ll try to remember this thread later, but feel free to PM any questions. [/quote]

I spent a fair bit of time looking into this a couple of years ago & found world vision to have the lowest percentage spent on admin fees.

[quote]sen say wrote:
I’m with guys that said give your time not your money. I run a youth sports league and I have roughly 10 coaches for over 400 kids. Every season I gotta guilt parents to step up and coach. I have 4-5 guys that volunteer even though they have no kids. You could be one of these guys.[/quote]

There’s no reason people can’t just give both. It only costs a bit over a dollar a day to sponsor a child.

I hear you on the youth sports though. Heaps of selfish parents seem to view sports coaches as free babysitters.

sorry but i immediately thought of this:

[quote]Regular Gonzalez wrote:

I spent a fair bit of time looking into this a couple of years ago & found world vision to have the lowest percentage spent on admin fees.[/quote]

I’ve noticed a few posters mention admin fees/costs/whatever and so I thought I might write my thoughts on it.

I don’t think they should be as major a factor in a donor’s decision-making process as they appear to be. This is, I think, particularly true for the Worldvisions/Cares/Catholic relief services of the field who work directly in the most difficult, most horrible places in the world.

I think donors should focus more on what the group is doing than if their admin fees are a little above or below 10%. This is not to say that admin fees shouldn’t be a consideration, just not the primary one. There are cases of abuse, and that should be looked out for. However, I don’t think you should base your decisions upon whether CARE or Worldvision has 9% or 8% admin fees.

Just my opinion, like.