<p>“Do I donate directly to the earthquake relief organizations, or do I buy my kids artwork and hence donate to the non-earthquake related cause supported by daycare?”</p>
<p>Please give directly to organizations that you know to be reputable. I would spend as little as possible on administration (I work in efficiency in development and humanitarian organizations), which means giving directly.</p>
<p>I do not think you’re “over-thinking it” but then, my job is to think about that type of thing, LOL. It’s fine to give a little outside the box and to keep money for emergency giving, but there are a lot of fly-by-nights and even more organizations where they simply do not know what they are doing. In the case of a known emergency such as Japan, where the action needed is clear and the expert actors are in place, you can be sure to get a huge bang out of your buck. The expert actors being mainly the IFRCRCS, uh, better type that out, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and Red Cross Japan, in this case.</p>
<p>That said, mousegray’s advice is better parenting.</p>
<p>Art sale is done. Art was done by the classrooms as a group effort, so no pressure to buy baby’s artwork. Appreciated that. Art was hung up in community area for parents to enjoy, which every parent did as they picked up and dropped off their kids.</p>
<p>More than likely, the learning center gets some pressure from parents to do pretty artwork with the kids, but can’t possibly do enough to send some home with every parent. Having an annual silent auction lets them create one per classroom per year, and then one parent gets to take it home.</p>
<p>They posted the families that bought the artwork. One was the learning center director. Others were people on the council that represents parents (i.e., they would be the board of directors of a pta in an actual school), and that make sense. People on the board of directors are usually expected to contribute.</p>
<p>So all is well and I don’t have to worry - nor feel bad - about participating or not participating. And they are now moving onto the next regularly scheduled fundraisier.</p>
<p>Now, the cynic in me wonders: What are the “administrative costs” of administering all of these fundraisiers? They spent more than an insignificant amount of staff time on them, and I wonder what percentage they keep to cover their costs? Hmmm.</p>
<p>Do you really care about the administrative costs of this fundraiser–which are probably minimal–or do you just not approve of the charity that’s the recipient of the funds? In my experience, it’s rare that a school (public or private) doesn’t engage in some kind of charitable giving. It can be as simple as asking kids to bring cans of food for the local food pantry or something like kids jumping rope for X number of times and getting people to pledge money (based on the numbers) for the American Heart Association. This happens all the time. The kids are learning about social responsibility. I don’t think it’s negative. I suppose if it were extremely time consuming and took away from academic pursuits, it might be, but IME these don’t take up much time and the organizations that benefit are deserving. I think kids do learn from these kinds of activities.</p>
<p>Yes, I do care. I think it’s socially responsible of donors to consider the administrative costs of non-profits. There is a website called charitywatch.org that makes it easy to compare the overhead/administrative costs when making decisions on donating.</p>
<p>In this case, I’m pretty the costs are minimal enough to be incendential. And I’m pleased to see the directors name as one of the buyers, that makes me think that those who run the place also believe in the organization.</p>