<p>Hey! I was looking through a list of student organizations at Yale on the school website, and I couldn’t find any Amnesty International group… Does Yale not have one? Amnesty’s really important to me, and I am really interested in continuing to be an active member in college!</p>
<p>Yes, there is an active Yale chapter. Beware though that being active with Amnesty is fairly generic in college admissions…</p>
<p>Also, as someone who has done very extensive non-profit work, I fundamentally believe that some other NGO’s – both grassroots and even some larger ones – are far more effective than Amnesty. I’d recommend you look beyond any one organization…</p>
<p>yalie343, what types of NGO’s or organizations would you recommend?</p>
<p>Also, just to add - I did a quick search for non-profit organizations on the web, but most of them asked for donations. I’m in the same situation as the OP; if you think there are opportunities that are less generic than Amnesty International that I can take part in, please let me know.</p>
<p>Bump, can anybody answer my question?</p>
<p>The Yale chapter of Amnesty International is in Dwight Hall; the Dwight Hall main office number is: 203.432.2420. The Amnesty International at Yale PERSONAL AND INCORRECT INFORMATION REMOVED. Edwin (Ted) Everhart '09 is also a prominent member of the group.</p>
<p>“Also, as someone who has done very extensive non-profit work, I fundamentally believe that some other NGO’s – both grassroots and even some larger ones – are far more effective than Amnesty. I’d recommend you look beyond any one organization…”</p>
<p>yalie343, can you tell me which ones?</p>
<p>I would unfairly favor charities that I am involved with if I gave particular recommendations re: small NGO’s. I recommend charity sites though, e.g. [Charity</a> Navigator](<a href=“Popular Charities | Charity Navigator”>Popular Charities | Charity Navigator) so that you can gauge the efficacy of a particular charity and look for ones. Harvest Food Bank, Free (not feed) the Children, American Red Cross, and the American Civil Liberty Union (albeit clearly liberal) all do good work and are very efficient organizations. I don’t believe that CharityNavigator is 100% accurate, but it certainly gives you a gauge; to put things on a relative scale, Amnesty gets 2/4 stars for efficiency while all those mentioned get four (except the Canadian NGO Free the Children is unlisted). There are other similar sites where you can look up charity ratings – just google it.</p>
<p>The problem with NGO’s is that too many of them don’t offer bang for the buck. Sure, it is good to help others, but donating $1 to different organizations yields a highly variable impact: some organizations have 90 percent – $.90 on the dollar – or higher go to actual projects, whereas others may have 90 percent just go to administrative and fundraising costs.</p>