World Vision

A close friend asked me the other day what percentage of each dollar donated to World Vision makes it to the child sponsored?

According to their 2006 annual report, World Vision spent 84.8% on their aid programs which means that for every dollar you donate, 85 cents effectively makes it to the village.

How do we actually know this? Could they just be lying?

No, they must be held accountable for their finances and to ensure this they are independantly audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers annualy. For details, check the financial statements for 2006 here, especially pages 6, 14. The rest goes to admin, advertising and fund raising campaigns.

A popular misconception

Their largest program is the child sponsorship program. You sponsor a child by donating $43 dollars a month. What people are often misled to believe is that the child or the family of that child receives that money directly. This misconception is deliberately fostered to play on the heart strings of the general public. In actuality, and this is not a secret, the money is distributed throughout the entire village by the leaders of the community (most often non governmental). This is obviously a far better way to finance the community`s development. There is still a personal tie with the child through letters and `progress reports`. The sponsored child serves as a poster child for the entire community.

Links

Homepage
Charity Navigator page
Annual Reports

Please post a question or comment if you would like to know more or tell us more about World Vision :)

One Laptop Per Child

In a Nutshell

Founded by Nicholas Negroponte, the goal of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is to provide children in developing countries with laptops. The objective is to educate the children.

Their product is a "$100 Laptop" which they call the XO laptop.

How to Help

A donation of $200 will pay for and deliver one XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, $400 will pay for and deliver two XO laptops, and so on.


Main Players

According to wikipedia, there are at least 10 sponsoring organisations who have donated 2 million dollars each. These are AMD, Brightstar Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, SES, Nortel Networks, Red Hat, and most recently Intel.

Web Sites

The home page

The founder of OLPC, Nicholas Negroponte giving a 20 minute TED.com presentation on the OLPC project (recommended)

What Do We Think?

Please tell us what you think of OLPC. Some people say that the money would be better spent on libraries and books and schools rather than laptops. Do you agree?

To be a contributor, simply email knowledge.based.giving@gmail.com