Philanthropy: Humankind and Loving It

some money. He's growing on facial here to help a charitable organization engage in really important scientific research. That's right. And you can go to mobro dot c O slash Charles Bryant and that's my page, or just go to the November site. Type in Charles Bryan in the search bar and look for the picture of me. There's only a couple of ups out there. Check's wearing a red shirt. That's right. Yeah, um, so what is that again? That's mo bro dot CEO slash Charles Bryant. Yes, thank you

in advance. Yeah, that's nice chucking All right, let's get to it, hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Oh, hold on a second, buddy, Yeah, I think you've got something you need to say. Oh yeah, um, let's go ahead and plug our buddies over at Science Channel, our other home. Yeah. Uh. Then they're airing punkin Chunking, the annual awesome fest of shooting pumpkins through the air as far as you can

and then making them explode on contact. It's pretty great. Yeah, it's a it's a real thing. Uh. And then Science Shane ghosts every year and films it and they air it as what's become a Thanksgiving tradition. So they're gonna air it this Thanksgiving November twenty two and a pm. Right, that's right. And we are still waiting to get invited to go chunk punkins ourselves. We got invited last year, did we? I think so? Oh yeah, but it was like you guys can come if you want, if you

happen to be in the Northeast. Yeah, but it wasn't like, uh, I wanted a formal invitation to participate. Okay, I got you. Um, and uh, if you are in the punkin Chunking, Uh, then you might want to go online to check out the road to punk and Chunking. That's already up. There's some great video to search punkin p U n k I N chunking c h U n k I n and science in your favorite search engine and it'll bring

that right up. Uh, and don't forget November twenty two, this Thanksgiving at a p m. On Science Channel, punkin Chunking the tradition. Yes, all right, you ready now, I'm ready, okay. Back today is our good friend and longtime producer Jerry. Yeah, I alins we had the class machine. Yeah. Well, people are slow clapping all across the world right now, right, very sar Jerry, We're so like you're back so much. Just let know a slow clap is meaningful, yeah, but

can very easily be turned sarcastic. Just kind of cut your head, decide. And I wonder what the first slow clap was in a movie? You know, such a trope at this point, but I wonder who invented it. A bet of that information is out there. I want to know, don't you want to know? I'm sure some movie website is probably tracked this down. First slow clap. Let's find it, everybody. Well wait, oh wait, uh, we should probably just go

ahead and do let's do it, Um Chuck. Yes, have you ever given money to somebody who did nothing for you in return? Maybe didn't sell you a good or service. I just gave him the money. What do you mean just like uh someone panhandler, charitable organization? That's philanthropy. You're a philanthropist. Did you know that? Like that's all it takes. And even better, this is the bright shiny episode. In my opinion, I'm proud of this one. Um, have answer,

p works. You don't even need money, donate your time. Your time is very valuable, Chuck. Yeah, And I think, well, I can't say this because I'm just speculating, but it seems to me that people are either like you know, my my time is too valuable, but like I can write someone to check yeah, or like I'm a little

light but I can't give my time. Or you can put it like, well, the government doesn't let me deduct time that i've donated, but they will let me deduct the hundreds of thousands of dollars i've donated this year. They should let you deduct time because they've actually figured out I have like averages, like an hourly wage, volunteerism. Yeah, nice, that would be awesome. Let's get that in the tax code.

That's a great idea. UM. You can, however, like if you were, say, um, donating your time by going down to like Louisiana to help clean up after a hurricane, or Kansas or Missouri to help clean up after a tornado, and you like bought a bus ticket or you drove, you can deduct transportation and costs. But once you get there, the government doesn't care about you. But you candiduc money as far as transportation. Oh and just regular contributions, right.

It depending on on who you give to. And we have a very thrilling segment in this episode about the tax code, um, the ins and outs of it. Chuck is not very excited about it. I think this is kind of neat um. But we're talking about philanthropy and it's kind of become I don't want to say vogue.

Maybe it has for the ultra rich, some of the richest people in the world, at least the richest people in America, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett yea to sign a pledge that Bill Gates created, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation created this thing. Saying, hey, we're going to donate at least half of our vast wealth, and they're trying to sign billionaires up to agree to this and

then we'll just be super super super wealthy. Well, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is this like superstar foundation that was like in the assets that controls is like the GDP of several nations. That's pretty amazing. It's like thirty seven billion dollars in assets right now. You can do a lot of good with that. And one of the people they signed on was Warren Buffett, and he's

worth forty nine billion dollars right now. He's pledged of his fortune to the Gates Foundation afterward after he's dead, which I mean he's getting up there. So they may have about eighty billion dollars in assets in their control, which is a well, I was gonna say that's almost as much. It's about three quarters of the assets are the value the capital value of the most valuable corporation in the world, Apple, which ironically had a founder who

may have never given a cent to charity. Oh really, Steve Jobs died without officially having given any money to charity at all. Any He was notoriously stingy, and after his death there is a lot of talk like, Okay, did he did he really amass an eight billion dollar fortune and not donate any of it, And a lot of people were like, you know what, even if he didn't, you know, to heck with you, he gave this technology to the world and people are using it to better humanity. Well,

he doesn't need to give money. And other people are like, yeah, if you have eight billion dollars in personal wealth, you need to give some of that for other things like water and stuff that you can't use an iPhone app for, right, Sure, I guess it depends on how you feel about it all. And then there was another camp that was saying, hey, it's totally possible that he was just not a jerk and he donated a lot of money, But he did anonymously.

He didn't want a bunch of glory or he didn't want a bunch of charities knocking down his door like, hey, hey, give us some too, for whatever reason. But you're saying that did not happen. He didn't give anonymously. No one knows. It's a mystery. Oh, I thought you said for sure he didn't give any money ever, because he was so cheap on paper. Oh there is no no record of him ever giving a cent to charity, but it's pretty pretty interesting, Like I can't imagine having a billion dollars

and not giving any of it away. But he Bill Gates approached him and he's like, nah, I'm not signing that pledge, and will you pick up the check? Right? Exactly right? Yeah, it's like I don't validate parking you again. I remember um Ted Turner kind of was one of the original guys to give a ton of money. When he gave the billion to the un I remember that was a really big deal at the time. Yeah, I don't know that he gave it to the u N

What do they do with it? I don't know, because just they went in the general fun I guess so. But it was a big deal of the time. This was a long time ago, but like in the seventies or eighties, no nineties. I don't have to look, but it was long enough to go. I go such that it was a really big deal that someone gave a billion, A personal individual gave a billion dollars. I think at the time it might have been the largest individual donation.

That's crazy. That's neat. I like that though, cool guy. Yeah. Um. But this whole thing, this trend that's going on among the uber wealthy um is kind of this throwback to the beginning of the last century when like the Rockefellers, um and the Carnegies were setting up foundations that are still around today. Yeah, the Ford Foundation, the UM what the Rockefeller they created like a bunch of different trusts

Dirty Rock. Yeah, University of Chicago. That was another thing that was invokes setting up huge universities, Cornell, Sanford, all those were rich people endowing universities. It was like there wasn't a university. Therefore, now there is. What's the one you always here on NPR, the Ford Foundation, the Joseph and Catherine. Man, it's so in my consciousness, I can't believe.

I can't just split it up. You know, one of us will shout it in about forty five Yeah, exactly, okay, But anyway, so um, Yeah, you usually associate philanthropy with the uber wealthy, but it doesn't have to be. You can be poor and as a matter of fact, the poorest Americans contribute the highest percentage of their income of any income bracket in the country. Did you know that? Yeah?

I did. And in fact, if the richest people contributed that same percentage, then um, there would be fewer problems in the world. I would say, So, you know, but the rich people give the most because they have the most. Yeah, I've got stats, but we'll get to those later. Well, let's talk about a couple of stats. How many charities are there in the country. Well, this says six hundred thousand in the article. I think it's a little out

of date, is it? Because I found um, in two thousand eleven there are approximately one million, eighty thousand, one thirty charitable organizations. Um. This says that was a decrease from so maybe this counts. Maybe this only counted, although this is it counts foundations. Yeah, I think there was an enormal increase. Yeah, because I have the feeling that this article is written about two thousand three. Okay, well that that would be a real big increase in a

million a million plus. So, um, three hundred and fifty five of which are religious congregations, which we'll get into that three thousand, um, and then uh, in the United States and two thousand eleven charitable giving total two hundred ninety eight billion dollars. Yeah. Um, and that was an increase from two dozen ten, which saw two six billion dollars. Yeah, two hundred and seventeen from individuals, which is pretty amazing

that se of all charitable gifts are from people. And if you factor in bequests like people's leaving stuff in their wills, which is also individuals and family foundations, it rises to eighty eight percent and more than that, I think. And then I saw percent on philanthropy dot com, the Chronical of Philanthropy. Uh well, I have foundations at fourteen percent, bequest at eight percent, and in last place corporate donations at five mm. Apparently they get the least. And you

know what I just heard the other day. I don't know if this is true. Maybe we can get confirmation. You know, when you go to the grocery store and they ask you to would you like to donate to marchup dimes or whatever like on your thing? Yeah, where is this coming? A listener about this was that? Yeah?

I think maybe that was it. Someone said that they call those donations under their companies, under their corporation, and like like you know, the grocery store donated that money and gets the tllions of dollars and gets a text deduction. And so I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but it's just something to consider for sure. Let's say let's say you're like, no, I'm not giving a cent to March of Dimes. Premature babies can all like um, And

then but you really really care about muscular distrophe. So the time when they hit you up for that sham rock, be like, of course, not only will I give one dollar, will give five dollars? Well t s for you because you have no say whatsoever and where that money is going. Because they pull it all together in a plot that they shell out quarterly or annually, and then they take

the tax reexplot. Whoever wrote that in um, like, I've stopped all together giving it a grocery store now, like I don't even consider I don't even feel bad saying no, Now, yeah I have. I have kind of stopped doing that too, just because if you're gonna give money, that will explain you should take the time to research and do it in a way that you feel good about and it's responsible and that you know where the money is going

and all that stuff. Let's talk about that buddy. Um. Well, one thing they point out early in the in the article though, that we should say is that these days more and more nonprofits are seeking funds in different ways because um, a lot of government funding is declining and uh going away all together. So they need money more than ever. Uh and costs are going obviously. So that is why you will see websites and billboards and door to door and flyers and everything to get in touch

with the potential. Uh. Don't donate or don't or don't or right, that's a good thing. They wrote. A word means that. Uh. But like you said, philanthropy doesn't have to be just about money. No it doesn't. But the word philanthropy means that you love humans. Phil means loving anthrope or anthropo or anthropy is humankind. So you love human kind by giving money to it. That's how you're demonstrating your love of humankind. Um. Checking out charity. So this is a big one. It's a big deal. I

don't know how many people do this. I think, I don't know. I want to say I don't you know, but I mean, like normally the charitable giving I do is like, you know, whoever's bringing the Bell at that moment or something like that, or it was UM or it's on an individual basis, like it's not necessarily through charity, right,

I hear you. UM. They say there are a few guidelines you can look for if you're checking out a charity to judge whether or not you think they're you know, spending money wisely, UM generally fifty of every dollar should go to the actual work the charity work, right, and then the other remaining for operational marketing administrative costs. So I I from what I saw, that's a very generous towards the charities. Percentage I saw of your costs for

UM administration and fundraising should go to programs. But that's charity choices dot com that says that that's probably the ideal. Yeah, I'm sure. I think that the sixty cents is like anything less than this and you should really like examine. It means there's people at the top taking a big paycheck or they're not doing a very good job of managing their money. But it could also mean that if you look at the age of the charity or the size of the charity, like there's an economy of scale

in raising money. So if you, if you are established, you have an established name, or you've been doing this a while, your your phone raising costs are going to be lower than say a new charity or a radical charity that that does controversial work, because they're gonna have a harder time generating money. So just because their fundraising costs are high, it doesn't mean that they're all like

just enjoying lavish tuxedo based parties. And that's where all the money is based, rather than business casual based, rather than turtlenecks and jackets based. If you want to find out about a charity job in it, you can write a letter to the local charity registration office, usually within the state Attorney General's office, and six eight weeks later you might get a letter back. These days, you can go online and uh, I went online actually today and

registered with guide Star and there's a charity. No has the money started coming in? Um No. Guide Star is one of the places you can go to check out other charities, and you have to register to log in. And because I wanted to check out, you know, like our friends at Cooperative for Education. Yes, like all the records are there for what you're looking for. I looked at it text form, and you know what my first thought was, Man, I feel so bad that Joe and

those guys have to fill this thing out every year. Dude, it was so long, and but they don't have to file taxes. So yeah, true whatever, it's all awash, right, but you'll be glad to know they're you know, obviously doing great work. They're on the up and up. We knew that, Yeah, we definitely didn't know that. We saw it firsthand the the we checked those guys out personally, I stand behind Cohen. Uh. The Center for Better Better

Business Bureau, it's another place. The Foundation Center is another place, and you can get basically have access to the numbers if you really want to check it out thoroughly. Right, So the form is gonna have like a general description of the work they do, the programs they do, who's running the thing, where their money is going? Uh? And I think it gets a little more specific than just

like programs fundraising an administrative costs. Right, doesn't it break it down a little more like there's had all the different you know drives that they did, and it broke it down specifically to you know, if you were into looking all that stuff up. It's there, right, and I mean like if you really want to know, I mean if you give to like a mega charity like the Salvation Army in the United Way or something like that.

Like they have more than than just one program, so they may be doing work that you don't necessarily agree with. So there's another reason to go look at for um because you'll see what what programs they're carrying out, like all of them. Yeah, well that's what the Common Foundation got in hot water, remember with the whole plan parent a thing last year or was that early this year? It was so at some point in the recent past. Yeah, So that's you know, there's when you get that big.

There are other associations you might want to know about. Yeah, depending on your your affiliation, you're socio political affiliation, that's right. Uh. There's about three ways that they're going to be spending their money though program services, and these are what you want your money to be going to most. If you want to just feel better about yourself at night, you don't want to think paid the water bill there at the building. You want to think I've put a sandwich

in a needy kid's hand a good one too. Uh. Management operational costs is next. Like I said, it's a little less exciting to think about that, but they need to pay their rent and bills, definitely they need. And then you've got fundraising, yeah, which can really rack it up. I mean it's everything from like direct mailer's too lavish parties, um,

if you're courting celebrities and they like that kind of thing. Um. And a well run, well managed charity can take you know, X number of dollars whatever they're they're fundraising costs are and grow it exponentially, use it correctly. But there's also charities out there that don't know what they're doing and shouldn't get the same funding. If you've got over a million, there's bound to be a handful that aren't quite right, you know, and some that are outright scams. Yeah, unfortunately,

and I think we have one of those, don't. Well. There was a guy, um in this article, there's a guy in Texas who after a tornado I think hit Austin, he set up a charity that asked people the mail one dollar donations checks made out to cash and mail him too this po box and people did. He kept the money. Unsurprisingly, there's just there's a bad place for those people in their next life. Drifters. It's about the worst thing you can do. No one likes you when

you're a grifter. Other grifters don't like you. Sure they'll make movies about you, but I mean, like that's about it, Josh. How would you go about so listening money if you were a charity, if you're a nonprofit, well not for profit, Well, one of the things I would do is probably take some of my initial UM money, my initial capital, and um, I would buy some mailing lists of other donors from other charities, which is extremely common practice these days. Yeah,

I wonder what kind of money to make doing that. Well, that's that's one reason they do it. They they like a charity, will will compile a mailing list and they'll sell it to other charities for income. Um. Yes, and again it's kind of practice. Uh. They also, um will sell them not necessarily just for the money. They may swap them with other charities. Because if you've donated to a charity, you've separated yourself I imagined from a lot of other people. UM. And you're somebody who may be

willing to give money to a different charity. You two. Um. So that's one way I would do a direct mailing. I would hire a bunch of clean cut teenagers who are enthusiastic about the charity that they represented, and send him to the door clearly labeled through uniforms and possibly matching khaki pants uh as representatives of the charity, complete with identification, and lots of pamphlets about the programs that we have. Wow, you're like, you have the starter kit

ready to go. It's I'm ready. I just need some an injection of funding. I don't know the programs yet, but everything else I've got lined up. Um. As this article points out, if you are getting more solicitation than you like, you can right the letter to the organization requesting your name be removed. Um. It may or may not work, and keep a copy of that letter, or

you can just go to their website and unsubscribe. Well that was I think one of the things that gave this away was like, um, the it's saying like more and more charities are starting to go to the web now exactly, And I think the web was capitalized and maybe in quotation marks and then in parentheses afterwards it said the Worldwide Web. Um. Um, if you want to donate, you can give cash. If you're walking by a Salvation Army Santa Claus, you can't. I mean, it's a way

to go. You can throw your change in the bucket if you've done the work. Though you're looking at Form nine nineties and stuff like that, that's probably supplemental to the actual charitable giving you're doing. So if you are like really seriously philanthropic, like it's a pastime of yours or a tax strategy as we'll see, Um, you you will probably want to write checks because they're good records

that you want to keep. You might want to go down to your bank and get the canceled check after it's been cashed and um keep it in a safe deposit box. Yes, Or because seven you can donate on the internet with your credit card. Yeah, I hear. More and more charities are going to the web and they're just as many records as if you wrote that check,

and it's all very legit these days. UM, probably don't need to worry about it unless, I mean, if you can't tell the difference between a reputable website at this point, then you know you're one of those people that falls for the Nigerian scam, I guess, but I feel bad for these people if it's all like making fun, But well, go listen to the con Artists episode. That will be helpful.

Maybe that's a companion this one. Sadly, UM. You can also if you are loaded, or if you really don't like your family, you can leave UM money, land, goods, your oldsmobile, all those things to charities still take them. Maybe I'll will the my squatted land with that too. That would be very nice. Maybe like thanks for this thing that we can do nothing we have to mow this and Josh the final way, is UM really popular

these days donating UM old things that you don't use anymore? UM. And you know, we've been doing this forever in terms of like furniture and clothing and stuff like that, but nowadays things like computers, as we mentioned in a recent listener mail or an upcoming listener mail which you're still trying to get yeah about UM donating old computers to this group in Athens, Georgia. But there are lots of organizations that do that now. You can donate your car

right that off. UM office supplies, building materials, emergency supplies. Those are huge obviously when catastrophe hits. Yeah, when the poop hits the fan, that's right. And you can write most of this stuff off as well. You can't, um, you can write off the fair market value of it. And if you go to an auction and you pay way more than some something's worth, you can write off whatever you paid over and above the fair market value

of that thing. The sucker fee, I the philanthropic fee. Well, that's nice that they give it back, like, well, you were sorted an idiot for paying that much money, But go give it away and we'll at least let you write it off. Okay, you want to talk about tex stuff now? No, Well we're about to. So, uh there are two kinds of UM. Well, there's there's three kinds according to the UM I R S the tax Code,

the U S tax Code. There's three designations and then a few subdis designations which we'll get into to the letter. It's the sexiest publication on the planet, UM the tax code for a charitable organization, right, fifty shades of green, that is what they should call it the most Have you read that? Now? Emily didn't? What did she say? She likes sweating all the time. Yeah, I mean it was.

It was pretty racy. That's crazy. She blew through the series and you know, a couple of weeks that person was earning like a million dollars a day or something some crazy amount from that for weeks for writing smut. I guess good for her. It was a lady, right, Yeah, but she's got a man's name, Frank, no initials. That's very mask in my opinion. J. K. Rowling sounds like a dude. You think. I never really thought about it. And isn't it like P. D. James? It almost sounds

like pet anyway. UM. The three tax codes, yes, So the one that everybody's heard of, it, it's most familiar with is the five oh one C three. You know you've heard of a five oh one C three corporation. Don't pretend like you haven't, Like you're too cool to know about. There's the three, four, and five. Your favorite, I guess is the three. So the five one three, that's the Yeah, that's the that's the money organization. That's

the one that's like, UM, it covers that. Let's see prevention of cruelty to children or animals, those kind of organizations, UM educational UM, charities straight up charity charities that helped like the poor and the needy, religious charities, scientific organizations yea yeah, um favorite ones that support national or international

amateur sports, which is pretty sweet. Yeah, you can give like to the USK team, right if Don King's involved, though, do not you don't look for a text deduction at the organization. Um. And then uh testing related to public safety, which I was trying to figure out what that would be. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe an organization that goes around sitting off incendiary devices and fallout shelters to see if they

hold up. Yeah, I'm not sure. I was gonna say, like auto safety, but it seems like that would be the auto companies privately doing that. There are like the um, yeah, there are, That's what it is. So anyway, um, all of those except for the public safety one you can

write off like without thinking twice without prejudice. Yeah yeah right, Um, unless these any that that is a not for profit or nonprofit corporation that's overseas, yes, and it means that they're based overseas, uh not necessarily that they do most of their work overseas, right, that's where they're they're incorporated is overseas. Yeah, because COED for instance, that's why I mentioned it. They are based out of Cincinnati, even though the work they do is usually in Guatemala. Right, that's

an excellent point. Yeah. Um, so that's the five oh one C three. You've got public charity, UM, you've got the private foundation. And a private foundation is UM. It gets its income from investments, endowments, and then it's basically a charity for other charities yea. Then grants that to

whoever they see fit, right. And that's a good one to invest in UM because they are they usually know exactly what they're doing more than you you know, and they're like their whole their work is charity, so like they're looking for up and coming ones once they're doing really great work, that kind of stuff. What's well Mann that kind of thing. Uh. And then you have a private operating foundation, right, Yeah, and they donate to directly to the causes UM instead of granting uh grants to

other charities. The private foundation. If you give to one of those, you may not necessarily be able to deduct it, but a public charity or a private operating foundation, most of the time you'll you'll get the full deduction. I think that's up to about fifty of your adjusted gross income. So if you make fifty dollars and you donate five thousand, you can write that off. It'll take that right away.

That's that's a pretty good tax strategy. It is incorporations can um are allowed to deduct all contributions up to usually about ten percent of their taxable income, which that's where it ends. But I mean, think about it. What about corporations that like have zero taxable income, like because of their fancy accounting like to they donate at all? I don't know. I have a big question about that. And that was quite cynical there, and I don't like cynicism.

I said, that's probably where they stopped donating, is when they reach that threshold. Not necessarily true, but you know, maybe this well, you know, the the text the deductible charitable contributions as it stands now is kind of under threat actually because the Bush tax cuts are going to expire.

Possibly if the Bush tax cuts expire, then um for the for those highest income brackets, they'll lose about eight percent of their UM deduction abilities, which I would think would show a pretty steep drop in charitable giving in that tax bracket. Yeah, and even though it's only five that's you know, still how much was it? Like fourteen billion dollars? And then Obama has a proposal that I don't know if it's going anywhere or not to basically like set of your adjusted gross income is the maximum

you can deduct for higher income tax brackets. Yeah. I don't know if it will go anywhere though, but we may see charities like really getting hurt in the future. I'm so ambivalent right now, you're not You're angry behind the ambivalence. What about the C four Oh boy, the C four that that covers um that covers organizations that lobby on behalf of specific causes like social welfare and stuff like that. Uh yeah, so remember, um, there was a big how about but I can't remember. I couldn't

remember it before and I can't remember it now. It was a lobbying group that had five oh one C three status. No, but yeah, but it was they were lobbying from behalf of social values. Remember McDonald's got called out and like left, like all these huge corporation is like left this lobbying group. It was like a chamber of commerce, arm and somehow they have five three status. It was a big call for them to to go back or to be forced into which would mean a

lot they'd have to pay taxes. That also will include volunteer fire departments, which I thought was interesting, and civic organizations and they are not deductible at charitable donations UM to the C fours except for volunteer fire departments and UM Veterans Organization. Yeah, exactly, So I guess you up to the v A or the vf W v W or the American Legion, maybe even the not the French

Foreign Legion though they're overseas. That's right. The C six, Josh, the C six, that's that's actually I guess it should be that that UM organ that lobbying group shouldn't be a five on three. It should be a C six because this covers trade associations and boards, chambers of commerce, UM, real estate. Yeah, we can't forget those, and you can't deduct any or any gifts to those as well. Basically

just five one three. And you want to make sure it's not a private foundation and that's a private operating and that's if you're donating money. But we mentioned you can donate your time is a volunteer, which I think it's kind of a neat way to go about it if you're into like, you know, grassroots, hitting the ground, getting your hands dirty. Um. They have figured out that actually this article is I don't know, I'm sorry, I have a new staff for that. They have figured out

that it is. UH. An estimated dollar value of volunteering time is twenty eight an hour in two thousand nine. Wow, that's great. And so in two thousand nine, the volunteer time totaled about hundred and sixty nine billion dollars. I wonder how much of that has wasted though, because there in this article they cite ups Survey UPS Foundation. UM. That was taken its back, but at the time they found that like volunteers said that they stopped volunteering because

they felt that their time was wasted volunteering. Yeah. I have had experience like that, UM, and I get it, you know, because if you don't have a lot of time, you're like, I want to give my time, you want to have it be used. And I don't want to call out who this was, but it was a group in town. Volunteer showed up and like they didn't know what to do with me, and I did it a couple of times. They didn't know what to do with me until Vince I was like, you know, I'm not

going to come back like sit around here. I'm gonna go find somewhere else or maybe you should get your act together a little bit more. Um. But it's tough, you know. I mean, it's easy to criticize, it's tough

to manage volunteers. It's one of the most difficult I think it said in the article one of the most difficult parts of running one a nonprofit is is managing and maintaining your volunteers because they Walton brand new and I'm sure they want to be the one doling out soup, you know, where we really need someone to lift those boxes in the back um, which is unglamorous. It's unglamorous, and so it's probably not the easiest thing in the world to manage expectations and what they're supposed to be

doing and training and the like. You know, I got some stats. Sixty of households give the charity UM average household contribution two thousand, two hundred and thirteen UM. Majority of charitable dollars went to religion, education percent, grant making, nine percent, human services. It just says percent. They're like making electricity with bodies. Yeah, I think that's exactly what it is. Um. Ninety eight percent of high net households give the charity, which is great, um and beneficial for

your tax status. I'm not saying it's why, but you know it's good that that's there at least. And then um six percent of people volunteer and those and religion leads away again at which leads us to did you read the article? I skimmed it. Yeah, let's hear what you got to say. Well, Mitt Romney was criticized recently because and this is criticism by Bill Maher, so take it with a grain of salt. Um. But he counted sixteen point five percent of his income his charitable donations, uh,

a lot of which went to the Mormon Church. So that brings up an important thing tithing. If you are a believer of the Bible, you were supposed to tie off the top. It's off the top, is it? According to the Reverend Wealth Joy? Okay, and UM, you can write that off, which I didn't under I didn't know that until today. I didn't either. Um, so Bill Maher says that, you know, some churches and like these well to do organizations like symphony orchestras, colleges and universities with

large endowments shouldn't count as charities any longer. So he's kind of slinging some harsh words there. Um, but that sort of says that the only people who can benefit from charity or the poor. And that's just not necessarily the case, because then you've got like hospitals and libraries and museums and these other things. Um, animal organizations. Uh, that would be thrown out under the Bill Maar model.

You know. Well, I mean all you need to do is inject a little capitalism, like make the Humane Society in the SPC a really kind of compete for money. Yeah, the one left standing is the one that gets to survive. Um. And uh, they did a study on church budgets and

two thousands, so this is not super updated. UM and Christian Today did this and found that an average church budget is about two dollars went to staff compensation for facilities, sixtent for missions, nine percent for church programs, six for admin and supplies, three percent for denominational fees, and three for other handling handling fees, and uh, one of the things that how much was that? How much of that

we really want to charity? Well, that's the thing though, the church itself qualifies as a charity with its non exempt status. So like I guess the six percent for mission work would be charity, nine percent for church programs, A lot of that could be charity. But one of the issues is that, but is that also like the music program. Well, that's what I'm saying. That's one of

the issues with with considering churches charities. And this is written by a Christian organization saying that churches need to get better about um connecting the giving to the outcome because people like knowing like the literal outcome of where I'm giving my money, whereas churches apparently are not very good at tying that together. And it's really just like it's your tithe it's just for everything, instead of it's for this program, in this program, it's used in this way.

So you know the solution to that, what's that? Charging admission to church? If you want to know more about philanthropy or philanthropy, if you say things like a weirdo, you can type that word into the search bar at how stuff Works dot com. P h I L A N T h R O p y philanthropy uh and I say a handy search bar or search bar or something like that, which means it's time for listener mayo

uh and live listener mail today. Oh goodness, since we're covering philanthropy, we're gonna support co ED because we haven't done it in a while. Okay, awesome, you want to tell them about the organization, Josh. For those of you who don't know, you can go back into the deep archives and find our Guatemala Adventure Part one and two. It's the I think one and only time you can clearly here Jerry speaking. But we went to Guatemala to

see firsthand with the Cooperative for Education does. And what they do is they take money UM from different donors, basically pile it all together and buy enough books for a class in Guatemala. Then those kids pay rent on those books something that's affordable. It's like two bucks a year or something like that UM that the average Guatemala and family can afford fairly easily, and that goes into

pool helping nes grow. And then at the end of that year or a couple of years or a few years when the books are worn out, that that school has the money to replace them. So it's a self sustaining model. Um And basically you can help a kid get out of poverty by getting an education where otherwise they would be working in the field and making tortillas, which we found out they do in addition to going to school normally. So they do great work. We've seen

it firsthand. We stand very firmly behind this this organization. Yeah, and not only they have a book program, any computer lab program, so some of your money can go to computer labs and and getting these kids not only computers, but training, which it's the same model. It's just what rather than like set a book, that's like a computer lab. Yeah, yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, I mean stuff these kids have never seen before, and they're and they're learning how to use computers,

getting better jobs. It's good stuff. Yeah. All right, So you can visit uh Cooperative for Education dot org and that's different from their old website. So go to Cooperative for Education dot org and you can there's a donate now button at the top right of the screen, or if you want to go down there, you can go on one of the tours. Tours, we've had some listeners

go yeah, um, Guatemala got under Jerry's skin. She she became very very much involved with the co ED after that first tripman returned several times and when she went, she would go and there'd be stuff you should know, listeners that went because they listened to the Guatemalan adventures. That's right, um, and they for you can go February nine or August six through eleventh to the Land of Eternal Spring and you will not regret it. And again,

what's the website again? Cooperative for Education dot org. Okay, cool? Yeah, go give your money is well spent there check out their form. Yeah, or volunteer or help somebody, help help a panhandler out who knows. Just be philanthropic not misanthropic. Right, we need a T shirt that says that, I bet there's one out there and hey chuck. Yeah, let's just

take this moment to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Seriously, I don't know if you have traditions like sitting around the table and like telling each other what you're thankful for. I like doing that. Maybe you don't even have family, yeah, maybe you have no one in the world. Surely there's something for you to be thankful for that. Yeah, dig digne people, I'm thankful for that wall in that carpet square. Deep,

that's awful. Deep. Are you ready so after Chuck's speel Uh yeah, whatever your tradition is, we hope you're safe and toasty and happy and you have the warmth of the Great Turkey in your spirit. That's good. Thanks. We should make that our sign off every year for Thanksgiving. Well, maybe we will, the great, great Warmth of the Turkey spirit, the great the warmth of the Great Turkey in your spirit or something like that. It could use a little

tinkering before we trade market. Agreed, let's get to work

on that. Okay. Well until then, Happy Thanksgiving everyone, be safe. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us to wish us Thanksgiving tidings, even if you're from Canada, which celebrates Thanksgiving us some preposterously early time, right, We'll still accept your tweets at s Y s K podcast, say hi on Facebook, Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, and as always, you can send us in electronic mail to Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com for more on

this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com, m