A Philanthropic Problem for Funding Charities

Analytical Report Assignment: A Philanthropic Problem

Executive Summary

There are many organizations that have been trying to offer help to those who are in need. The type of organizations that work with charities have to be those that live upto the type of goals that organizations have. The charities that are working have to show that they can make use of the resources and finances that are made available to them without having some miscellaneous uses of the funds. The charities that are being examined here need to prove their capabilities and their financial statements to prove that they are worthy of the funding.

The Situation

There are a number of charities that have come up with the hope to help the less fortunate and, at the same time, to support a number of noble causes. It is necessary for the people who are in a position to offer the right type of help in terms of financial aid and other resources. The people who have been in various settings allow them to afford to meet the needs they have. Since the company is in a position to allow us to offer the right type of services and support to those who need it, the charities that are given the support must be deserving and able to show how well they can use the resources that they get. There are many charities set up by people and organizations who want to make their own financial gains from the good wishes of those who are willing or gullible enough. The charity’s authentic nature has to be established since this is the only way to make sure that any of the resources that are dispensed from the company have to go where they deserve. The people who are in a position that allows them to be able to help should be given a chance to know that they are helping those in need and not falling prey to scammers.

Children’s Wish Foundation

This is a charity that had been started to allow children who are in their death beds to experience the type of last wishes they have. This organization started a number of years ago, after the need for children to experience such joys would end up being something that they needed to experience. The charity hoped to extend this type of last wishes to the children across borders as a way to make it easier for them to accept the state of their lives. The foundation would look for resources from the rest of the willing donors who would be wanting to give children the chance to experience whatever it was that their lives wanted while they were still able to enjoy them (Hundley & Taggart, 2013).

The method in which they handled the finances that they had access to would result in many people questioning the intentions that the charity had. The organization had released its financial statements, showing that the most finances they had access to were enjoyed by private solicitors. This means that the largest amount of money they ended up collecting to help children across international borders was enjoyed by private users. They hoarded the finds and gave the terminally ill children only 600,000 dollars to help finance these projects. A staggering six million would end up being enjoyed privately, and the people who needed these funds ended up failing to access the resources that they needed (Hundley & Taggart, 2013). In the same year, it would also be recorded that the founder of the charity was taking home more than a quarter of a million dollars, and this should not have been the case. From this point, the people who were offering their own finances to the charity would end up seeing that their funds were no longer being used for their intended purpose and that they may never have been used correctly, to begin with(Hundley & Taggart, 2013). This may make it difficult for the charity to receive the finances that may help them further this goal since the trust was already lost.

Feeding America

This is a non-profit organization that was started to have the people of America to be able to eradicate the issue of hunger. There have been several pieces of research that have been conducted, which try to show that there is one in ten people end up staying hungry. There are many Americans who sleep hunger and are facing hunger issues, yet the country is rated as a first-world country (“Feeding America,” n.d.). The fact that the country can still offer help to other countries that need it makes it difficult for one to see why there should be people in the country who are still suffering from hunger within the borders.

Feeding America has been able to offer food to the people who need it, and in the year 2018 alone, they fed 46 million people. This makes it easy for one to see how well the organization has been doing since they have been able to offer the right type of domestic services to those who require feeding (“Feeding America,” n.d.). According to the finances that the charity has been able to record, they were able to offer about 2.8 billion dollars worth of food to those in need. This shows that the charity is able to make the right type of use of the resources that they have collected since they have consistently fed millions of people every year.

The charity has also been able to offer sufficient information to back up the use that they have of the resources that they get to collect from one source to the other. The finances that they collect are able to be kept an eye on, to allow one to see how well the charity has been able to show the people the use of the resources they have. Therefore, they have been able to prove to the donors that they are not misusing anything they get their hands on, which makes their operations more efficient (“Feeding America,” n.d.). Since they are able to show that they have efficient donors and efficient fundraising methods, they are a reliable charity for one to invest their resources in.

The Salvation Army

This is a non-profit organization that was started to help the poor get the type of basic services they required. The organization hoped that they could offer the poor and the needy the basic needs that all people require, such as food and clothing. The people in this organization knew that a large part of the people could not afford to feed themselves and pay the rest of the bills that they were required to pay. There were also many people who could not afford to pay for their dressing or similar basic needs (Salvation Army, 2020). Therefore, they knew that they could get the type of services they required and live a normal life like the rest of society. The organization has many purposes, such as being able to use their platform to spread the gospel and, at the same time, to give the people the chance to get resources and donations for the different services that they need.

While the number of resources that they end up using has had the charity being considered low impact, it has been able to have a lasting impact on millions of people across borders. With the right type of financial backing, the organization can get the chance to impact more people and offer more services such as food, clothing, and shelter (Salvation Army, 2020). One of the main advantages that the organization has had is that it has been open with the finances that it has and the resources they have access to. Therefore, charity is an organization that can provide stability to a large number of people who need it.

Many people have been hoping to contribute to the need to offer the right type of services for the people who cannot afford them. There is a need for people to know that if they are willing to offer their hard-earned resources, they should be sure of where they are going. People need to be given the opportunity to review the charities’ finances that they are helping them see the type of impact they are having on the people in need (Salvation Army, 2020). If the finances are not clear and readily available, then the motive of the charity is then questionable. The type of finances that the Children’s Wish Foundation had were not readily available. This makes it difficult for the company to work towards collaborating with them and helping finance their charities. This has to be done for people to know how to avoid the negative implications of working with such an organization since it has proven to be unreliable in the past.

Being low impact can also make it very difficult to have the charity get the type of resources they need from the company. This is because the charity may not have the chance to offer a positive contribution towards having the charity meet its needs. The company can invest with a charity that is not as high impact as they expect and then help contribute towards the creation of more effective methods of operation to help them reduce the amount that they are using on the expenses (Salvation Army, 2020). Once the expenses have been handled, the charity can begin to be more impactful since they will have some backing for the type of needs they want to fulfill.

Method of choosing the charity

The method of choosing the charities to support will be solely based on the performance that the charities have been registering. The different charities will have to be given the opportunity to prove that they have been performing according to the type of information that they have been registering. The amount of resources that they end up registering from the different donors has to be clearly listed, and this shows the type of reliability that the charity has (Hyndman & McConville, 2016). If there are records that show that there were some resources that were given and were misappropriated, then the charity is already unreliable.

Another thing that will need to be done is that the charities will have to provide the right type of documentation to support the work they have been doing. They need to show all the history of their operations while showing how they were getting the resources they have been accessing and how they could get the type of resources they wanted to use (Tremblay-Boire & Prakash, 2015). The different charities that are being considered have to show that they know they can adequately manage the resources they end up having access to convince the company to invest with them.

Another measure to be used is that which has the charities providing accurate auditing of the different projects they have been able to complete with the resources they get from those in a position to help. Meticulous record-keeping allows potential donors to see that the charity is organized (Tremblay‐Boire, Prakash & Gugerty, 2016). This is important since it shows that the charities can trace any in that they need the donors to be further convinced of the individual charities’ goals.

At the end of the day, it will be necessary to have the company’s goals and objectives aligning with those of the charities they end up supporting. If the organization is not well versed with the charity, it may have a harder time picking that particular charity to work with. The charities are also going to be dealing with various needs that the people have . Therefore, the resources that they are provided with by the organization can be divided to serve the needs that the people have.

Recommendation

The first recommendation is that the company should not even consider working with the Children’s Wish Foundation. Based on the type of records and history that this particular charity has, it is going to be very difficult for them to make use of the resources they get correctly since the issue stems from the chief executive officer (Hyndman & McConville, 2016). One charity that should be considered is Feeding America since the company has shown that there are many things that they have achieved by making complete and effective use of the resources that people and organizations offer them. This charity has been able to provide clear financial documentation that shows how they have been using the resources that they get and how they go about attracting donors.

The fact that there is a high level of transparency shows that they are not making any unscrupulous deals with the resources that people have accorded them with. The charity has also been one with a high impact level, which is seen through the millions of people they feed within the country. The Salvation Army is also a good candidate to be considered for funding due to the type of work that the organization has been able to do over the many decades that it has been in operation (Hyndman & McConville, 2016). Though its expenses are sometimes high, they can still provide a large amount of help to those who need it, be it in terms of shelter and food. Therefore, the two charities that will get the funding they need will be Feeding America and the Salvation Army. One is an international charity, while the other deals with the country’s domestic issue of hunger.

Conclusion

There are many charities that have been started to make easy money and take advantage of people who are willing to help those in need. The courses that they follow are said to be genuine, but there has to be a large amount of research being conducted to find out the authenticity of a charity, especially before such a large company offers them some form of funding. This ensures that the company knows it is helping give back to the community through partnering with a charity that shares similar work ethics and goals. This type of thorough investigation into the charity’s operations helps paint a clear picture of what the charity is about.