Am Curious about these people asking for donations

Do any of you get flyers to help the homeless?

Am just curious if the CEO's get the most of our donations!

Some are indeed scams.

contact me for a donation, seems to me they sell addresses!

You do seem to have issues.

When it seems they are selling addresses that is a big no-no.

So check them

Sorry for not being clearer.

whole fricking societies mail you unsolicited messages! And then I got tired of receiving postcards, threw them in the recycle!

We donate through work, much easier.

for donations. Enough said ... Lies, deceit and no transparency!

Locally we support a local food kitchen with direct donations and the food bank.

much the corruption goes on in the international circle, especially the UN.

Not just to our government. Some of these fine folks come from places where the corruption is just more open.

This is why OWS is global.

Dare I say it? Class Consciousness.

all the best, No matter the protests, the police will disable the crowd, especially since Winter is around the corner.

Dark and also exciting days ahead. I've been to my local occupy and the energy is unlike anything I've seen. The PD, they don't know it, are the pr department. Every time they raid...more people show.

a renewal of democratic possibility, a 'new birth of freedom' (as Abraham Lincoln put it). I wish I could be there full-time, 24-7.

American dream come through. Do you think they will be on your side, hell no! It is just the working class people trying to get ahead!

small donor mailings. The companies try to get permission to use the mailing list for their other charities. At least that is the way it used to be. A mailing list is worth money and is a means for a nonprofit to increase its revenue just a bit.

I was just paging through the site of The American Institute of Philanthropy a couple nights ago. There's a lot there from A to Z, and good general advice as well:

http://www.charitywatch.org/azlist.html

On edit, here's a breakdown by catagory.
http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/articles.html

make a monthly donatation to the Cancer Society. By no means am rich, am just trying to help!

Our budget was complex and in the millions. Most of our money came from state and federal sources. Some came from our own business enterprises. Some came from foundations and wealthy donors. Some came from ordinary people.

My boss was fairly well paid, but her pay was far, far, far less than it would have been for a comparable job running a company in the private sector, even a small company with a budget the size of ours.

I had a responsible position. I did budgets, managed complex spread sheets, wrote grants, fundraising letters, answered the phone, prepared board minutes, wrote reports on grant performance and many other things. I had to write well and be top-notch at math. Those are not inexpensive qualifications in the LA job market of that time. Considering my degrees and professional versatility, I earned far less than I would have earned teaching school and or applying my skills in a private company.

I did what I did out of compassion for the homeless and concern for society and justice. After about 8 years, I left that job, burned out because the homeless just kept coming, the poverty at the lower end of the pay scale just got worse and worse.

A well-run non-profit has to pay its managers decent salaries. If they don't, you get people who work for cheap but don't do a good job, don't get grant money, don't report on the grant money, don't track where the money goes -- and sometimes you get people who embezzle.

At one time, we hired someone who was supposed to accept donations and payments of various kinds. I was tracking that money and discovered by watching the pattern of receipts that the employee was stealing from the company. That is what happens if you don't pay employees enough to live decently. (We did not pay this person well enough to keep him going.)

Non-profits don't need to pay their managers exorbitant salaries, but they should pay decent wages. Depends on the location of the non-profit. Actually, I doubt that responsible donors, say state and federal agencies, would fund an agency that did not have staff at the management level that was fairly well paid.

This thing about how too much money goes to the management at non-profits is nonsense. It does happen but not that often.

blows my mind. But one cannot whistle blow unless you are ready to retire!

Whistle blowers are never protected!

once during all the years I was there and that was to lobby and politic for funding. It might have been more, but that was her job. We did go to local meetings about grants and other aspects of fund-raising, and the head honcho and top staff has to hob-nob with a lot of influential people -- again because it is part of the public relations and fundraising side of the non-profit. You cannot provide services for free or less than cost to the people you serve unless you have enough money. It is a really tough balance to find. Depends on the non-profit.

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I just take a few bucks and some groceries over to the local shelter/rooming house and their attached soup kitchen.

they leave a bag taped to the door with a note saying that for just one day they'll be on my street collecting any used clothing/shoes/household items/toys I'd care to donate to some nebulous organization. There are also more and more "collection bins" popping up around town, and some of them are fronts for for-profit groups.

When I have them, I give household items and clothing to St. Vincent de Paul because even though I disagree with their parent organization they are part of a local shelter network and the items end up with families in need.