All Charities Abolished in Favor of One Charity

There are a million different charity organizations out there. Pretty much, if a condition exists, there's a charity for. AIDS, cerebral palsy, birth defects, cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer, etc. All have a different charity (some have more than one).

Many charities earn money for research, so that the condition can be studied and a cure can be found. But isn't this messed up? With a million charities, the money is going to be spread so thin that no organization will be able to find a cure. Wouldn't it be better to tackle one disease or condition at a time? Imagine if all the money donated to charities in a year went to AIDS research. They could, quite possibly, be able to find a cure. Right? After all, that's why people are donating. Right?

So I'm thinking, why don't we do that? Instead of having a March of Dimes bucket beside a cash register, we just have a Grand Charity Research Organization bucket. And all the money that people donate to any organization for research of a horrible disease or condition goes to this grand organization, and the group decides to focus on one problem at a time. When that problem is solved, or it is deemed impossible for the time being, they start working on a different problem.

In short, if your car's tail light is out, the transmission is fucked, and the tires need to be replaced, why portion out your money to each need? Why not focus on one problem at a time and get it fixed (or do all you can for it) before moving on to the next problem?

Would you be in favor of a grand charity over the million charities that we currently have?

I predict corruption if all the money goes to a single organization. Each person donates to which organization suits them. For example, person that has had a relative die with aids would want his charity money going to an aids research organization, and not an organization for any other disease. Or if he did donate for another disease investigation, he would put it in second place.

Also, the more the investiment doesn't exactly mean they'll find a cure faster. It just increases the chance.

I liked this thread for some reason.

Well, it should be like the forum rules here on Fakku!; no repeating topics - no repeating charity organizations in this case.

^

Yarr, I agree with your opinion.

Ok I agree that corruption is the main problem most charities are corrupt today sad to say, and putting all that money into one pocket could be a serious problem.

Ruling that out though I have other problems with it.



First who decides what to devote all the people’s money to first? Will it be AIDS or cancer or some other disease? Will it be one person who decides what goes first or will it be a consensus? How many people will decide and for that matter how will it be done? Only people who donate or everyone can decide? What about the sick people who can’t donate due till their illness dose their vote just not count? Next would be the issue of when is it deemed impossible? How long do we devote our money to that one cause that seems hopeless? Then after it is thrown to the curb all research on a cure for that stops? How about all those sick people dying from that disease are they giving no chance? What if some break though comes along and all the money is focused on some other disease.

Then I ask you what about the people who what a cure for their disease now? Can they not be allowed to invest in that research? If we just let it run wild though most will just go back to the charity that they want and the big one will die fast. Eliminating people’s choice in the matter I feel will make many people angry if there’s nothing being done about their problem.



The problems that it brings out ways the pros in my opinion. I would be much more inclined for one charity for every disease. There eliminating many of the problems and still giving the people the choice that they oh so love. One charity for a specific thing is a more controlled idea in my opinion, but one for everything will cause to many complaints and too many problems.

The biggest problem with charities today isn't the number there are many different worthy causes. The problem is 90% of these "non-profit" groups keep 90% of the money for "adminastration costs" and only give out 10% to the actual cause it was collected for buying food, medical research, etc. I think its kind of ridiculas that a charity that things nothing of helping others can say that with a straight face all the while having a board filled with guys earning 6 and 7 figure salaries and still keep their non-profit status. Just because the orgination has even books at the end of the year doesn't mean people aren't profitting from it.

In addition to the questions of corruption of inefficiency, I think it would be harder to get people to give money to one universal charity that stood for some abstract greater good of helping the world. A lot of people have strong personal reasons for supporting a cause: an autistic child, a relative who died of cancer, etc. Their closeness and personal experience motivate them to invest significant resources on that cause. While one could conceivable argue the morality or rationality of letting intense personal experience determine what charitable causes are most deserving of one's resources or most likely to make an important difference, there is no doubt that this happens.

Ultimately, for many of these people as far as charity is concerned, their personal experience and devotion are an upside. Maybe they would still give some money and time, and perhaps even to a greater variety of causes, but for many, I think there would be less motivation and the cause would seem less important compared to life's other concerns.

Obviously, creating one autonomous supercharity takes away peoples' chances to advocate or expend resources on behalf of a specific cause. I suppose divisions could be established, but then the same problem of divergent goals arises.

It is also important to note also that many charities don't directly do research but rather will grant money to labs or universities researching their pet cause. Creating one supercharity doesn't create one superlab, and much research is varied enough that investment in different projects, even concerning the same disease, will create different results. It isn't as simple as focusing all the money in one place. What will successfully cure AIDS? Immunotherapy? Stem cell research? Nanomachines? Viral inhibitor chemicals? The answer is that while many avenues may seem to have potential, we don't really know. Putting all the funding in one place is only a good decision if that option pans out with reasonably efficient results. Obviously, this is difficult to predict and not very widely agreed upon.

In my opinion, here are some major problems with one "all-charity"(excluding corruption):
Order of Importance:
Who is to decide whether AIDs is more important to work on first, or cancer?
Case A: Deciding through personal matters("irrational").
Case B: Deciding through death-tolls("rational").

Example of Case A: Let us assume that the person deciding which problem to be worked on first has a wife diagnosed with cancer. Assuming he is a selfish human being, he will choose cancer as their first target. Even in a council, most people will be biased in one direction or another due to life experiences (friends, relatives, severity of disease in homeland, etc).
Example of Case B: Let us assume that AIDs has twice as many people in the year 2010 than cancer. And thus, let us assume that, despite his wife, the aforementioned person in charge decides to work towards AIDs. What about all the people who have lost people to cancer, or are currently afflicted with cancer? Do their contributions matter help others with cancer (assuming they contributed in the support of cancer research).
This leads to a second major problem:

Donations
Humans are generally selfish beings. That having been said, how many people with cancer-diagnosed relatives are going to donate to an association that won't focus on cancer, but may instead focus on autistic youth? After all, they don't have an autistic child, why should they care? However, keep in mind this problem is based off of the assumption that the would-be donators are selfish.
The benefit with single-cause charities is that the donators will know what they exactly they are helping, and so many people will be content with donating to their own interests. Wouldn't it throw people off from donating if they know that their concern isn't being specifically worked with?

Knowing when to stop

Exactly when is this finite line drawn? For example, which would be deemed more "impossible" than the other? AIDS or Cancer? Autism or helping the homeless(you can't get all of them)? Stopping child abuse or helping war-torn countries? All of the above cases have been worked on for a while, but none of the them have seen a definite solution. Is this where we draw the line? Or do we draw the line after several more years, thousands more failed attempts, millions in money being spent attempting to fix these problems?
When this line is drawn, and the focus towards the cause is cut, what about those who donated to this organization specifically for that cause? Wouldn't they feel betrayed?

I would prefer the millions of charities that we have at the moment, for the reasons stated above.

It's pretty much applicable to the old saying "Divide and conquer."

It is much better to have different charities tackle their own charitable causes. Not only are resources and priorities more organized and utilized, people will be more assured that their donations are more specifically used in the cause/s they would like to help to by donating.

And if supposedly "one" super-charity group can tackle one problem at a time, how is their response and answer time? Would it take months? Years? Can they solve poverty while millions of Africans die of AIDS every year? Time is of the essence, and if the gameplan is tackling one problem completely while ignoring the others completely, this "one" charity would have a very serious problem since the other problems get more and more serious by the tick of the clock.

The upside of having lots of charities is that we are also assured that more problems are being addressed to by good people. The more problems that a group can help and solve, the better. Each charity has their own specialty in which they have the resources, people and knowledge to address the problem.

In relation to "corruption" in charities, it is recommended that one globally-accepted group screens and monitors these charities instead, more like a governing body like the UN. Unmanaged charities tend to stray and rot, and clustering them is not good.

One subject not mention are charities that don't deal with disease or other illnesses. What about homeless charities? Habitat for Humanity, ASPCA are a couple off the top of my head.

List

Others have already mentioned the plethora of problems that would plague the decision process and money allocation. Would diseases with the highest number of cases take importance or would another criteria be the deciding factor such as lethality of the disease?

I adamantly agree with Whitelion about how a "supercharity" won't create a superlab. It is better to try different methods to reach a cure. This isn't as simple as getting from point A to point B.



The U.N. is possibly the most corrupt entity on the face of the planet. Why? Because they don't have to answer to anybody. Any large body of authority has corruption. Basic law of the universe. Last thing I want is some bureaucrat deciding which disease my dollar goes towards which I am perfectly capable of making a good decision.

Sorry, but I was not intending to refer to the UN as per se when I want a governing body to regulate these charities, more or less like I gave a example most people would associate and get a general idea of a "governing body". But maybe it's somehow my fault for being that vague in my sentence, do I?

I tink charities are like a bunch of kids in a carnival. Some go to the go-rounds, some go to the arcades, some go to the roller coasters. Unsupervised, these kids will get a little bit rowdy. Some people may hate the idea of a "large body of authority", but at least they serve a better purpose. And some or somebody will eventually, some day in the future, have the responsibility of keeping order of these charities.