Giving to Charity

I'd like to make a correction. A few days ago Dave make a post about Bono and his call to care for the poor. You can read the discussion here. I made the comment that I didn't agree with "mainstream child sponsorship as most of the funds go to the organisation's running costs and not to the individual." I don't know where I got this but I said it as fact which was wrong.

Dave's promise to follow it up spurred me to check it out myself. I found an organisation that rates heaps of charities called Give.org. It covers mostly American charities but a couple of majors like World Vision and Starlight Foundation are there too. It gives a little transparency to these massive NFPO's eg. World Vision spends over $8million on advertising and pay their CEO $407k but spend over $750million on their programs. This doesn't specifiy what ammount gets to the individual but you can check out their Financial Statement 2006 if you want.