Give.org says Watsi did not want to be evaluated by the BBB's standards for charity accountability[0]. I never donate to anyone without good numbers on Give.org and I recommend everyone check out Give.org when considering donating to any charity.
> This charitable organization either has not responded to written BBB requests for information or has declined to be evaluated in relation to BBB Standards for Charity Accountability.
Hard to read anything into this, tbh. BBB isn't exactly the most meaningful signal in the first place and it's hard to blame organizations for not playing along.
Hi, I am Sonam, and I work at Watsi. We'll start with the BBB review soon. We hadn't previously because of the fee, but that is only for the seal, so we'd love to have Watsi listed with them in the future. In the meantime, you can check us out on Charity Navigator, Candid, or see all of our financials in our Transparency Doc that we publish.
Yet there is no accountability or 'reporting' under the tab 'Total Revenue and Expenses' about how much went into 'administration costs'/fundraising and how much that is in relation to donations.
Given wikimedia's ranking on this website, I am not so certain it's worth engaging. Obviously the "did not share info therefore guilty" mantra is somewhat true for charities. But "did share info therefore not guilty" is even more silly.
For an organization begging so aggressively for donations, Wikimedia got $150M in donations during July 1, 2020—June 30, 2021. They spend 2M on hosting, 67M on salaries, with 9M of it going to management, and pocketed 50M. Moreover, it's not clear how the 50M they spent on Programs is
split between:
1) building the technological and operating platform that enables the Foundation to function sustainably as a top global internet organization
(2) strengthening, growing, and increasing diversity of the Wikimedia communities
(3) accelerating impact by investing in key geographic areas, mobile application development, and bottom-up innovation, all of which support Wikipedia and other wiki-based projects
I do not think they need my money, and I am suspicious most of it will not go towards keeping wikipedia alive.
I expect the people asking for money to do good, to show that they are doing the good they said they'd do. I am essentially giving them money with almost no liability, I want them to show me that they are not wasting/splurging it. Perhaps I'm too harsh, but given the prevalence of grifters/scammers these days, I find non-transparent charities trustworthy.
> I want them to show me that they are not wasting/splurging it.
Why don't you apply this same attitude to for-profit organizations, which are by definition wasting your money?
This is just idle curiousity—non-profits play a very odd role in our society, and I don't generally give to any of them in lieu of direct donations. Obviously that doesn't scale....
Because I can judge the return of for-profit companies. At least the ones selling a product, especially a physical one. The ones that don't sell a gauge-able product should, to my judgement, ascribe to the level of transparency that charities should provide.
How does that work? How can they buy into a non-profit?
It's an intriguing idea though, it would be cool to see more non-profits being supported. Non-profit doesn't have to mean being terrible and inefficient.
