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June 25, 2009, 09:13 AM ET
Avoiding "Useless" Charities
Thinking of starting a charity?
Brendan Baker, a Canadian engineer who has logged significant time in Africa working for Engineers Without Borders (an international charity that assists with engineering projects in the developing world), has some advice. On his blog Cashewman he recommends that to avoid creating more “useless” charities, people interested in starting new nonprofit groups ask themselves three questions first:
- Do I want to actually change things or just make myself feel good?
- What are the root problems?
- Is somebody already doing this better?
Mr. Baker (rather harshly) applies his three questions rule to Pixel Equality, a start-up charity in New York that provides free video games to young people who can’t afford them. He is dubious of the undertaking from the get-go: “You know what might help more?” Mr. Baker writes. “Exposing kids to actual, real-life cultures, and actually communicating with people.”
The second question is all about getting beyond “surface indications.”
“Kids can’t afford video games but want them—Why?” Mr. Baker writes. “Because they have less disposal income. Why? Maybe because they have one parent who works hard for minimum wage. Or their parents have recently become unemployed. Or they happen to be trapped in a socioeconomic poverty cycle.”
And how does he see the video-games-for-poor-kids scheme fare with his third question? Not well …
“No, nobody is doing it because it’s a stupid waste of time and goodwill,” Mr. Baker writes.
(Interestingly, Mr. Baker launched his own charitable cause of sorts last year, when he attempted to raise the $90,000 he needed to attend an MBA program at Oxford focused on social entrepreneurship by soliciting $3 donations from 30,000 people over the Internet; donors were promised a small fragment of his eventual diploma. The effort fell short and the $11,000 he raised was ultimately given to Engineers Without Borders and Medecins Sans Frontiers.)
What do you think about Mr. Baker’s observations? Join the debate by clicking on the comments link below.
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