Monday, April 15, 2013
Are we entirely prepared to just give to one?
It is true, the time is nearing in which we as a team have to make a decision on where our grant money will go. We have spent more than 10 weeks preparing ourselves for this very day, but how prepared are we to make our decision? From all the readings that we have done, the presentations that we have observed etc. that was assigned to "prepare" us, I personally still feel a little uneasy on whom I would decide to give the money to. I believe that our site visits may bias each and everyone of our decisions on who the money should go to and with this being said, it will definitely make it hard for us to come to a concrete decision, don't you think. Also, I firmly believe that our grant money should be stretched as far as it can between the final organizations. First things first, they have made it thus far out of all the organizations that we had to chose from and secondly their missions are definitely near and dear to our hearts. We can definitely fund at least one program or need that each group has asked us to help fund. (aside from going to the site visits and hearing the remaining presentations, this is how I would decide to divide the grant money. I actually think the biggest challenge is deciding what specific need we will fund for these organizations, but I am not sure if anyone agrees with me.)
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I agree with many of the ideas you have posted about Jelissa, like how our site visits will bias us on choosing an organization. If people only get to visit one organization, then they won’t be able to truly compare the different organizations. And I envision a situation where everybody who saw an organization will vote for it because they will feel a much stronger connection to it. They will have seen how it helps, who it helps, and they will know some of its employees/volunteers causing them to feel obliged to vote. This is why I hope everybody actually listens to each other when we will describe our site visits and try to objectively compare the organizations.
ReplyDeleteIn class this week, when the representatives come, I am interested to see how persuasive they will try to be. If they are as persuasive as I imagine, I feel it will be so hard to not give money to every organization. How will we be able to say that one of the organizations were simply not worthy enough of our money? But then is it right to spread our money to thin and not have as big of an impact on each organization? These are the questions I still have and I hope a couple of the organizations really stand out so we can all feel proud of our decision.
Hi Jelissa! I think that at this point in our grant making process, it would be a bigger issue if anyone felt confident on exactly how the money should be divided. Contrary to feeling like the site visits are going to bias our decisions, I think that they will help us to give us a better understanding of the organizations and thus make educated decisions regarding money allocation. That being said, I do believe that everyone should strive to attend as many site visits as possible, otherwise bias may very well become a prominent issue. Many of us have come into this class with established issue areas that we feel very passionate about, but for this process it is important that we are all willing to open ourselves up to other issues. I think that seeing each issue first hand would truly help all of us to understand the perspectives of others. Additionally, it would certainly help to have as many people informed about each organization as possible, so that everyone can make comparisons more effectively. Choosing to support an organization without knowing much about any others is like voting in an election after only hearing one candidate speak – you may believe a convincing cause has been presented, but you have no way of knowing if it is really the best option for everyone.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, at this point in the process, I am also inclined to offer at least some degree of support to each organization. However, in his article Charitable Giving : Why Fewer Is More, Dean Karlan offers an interesting explanation as to why this may not be best for the organizations involved. Karlan explains that due to transaction fees, a certain percentage of charitable giving will be lost in each donation. He provides a mathematical breakdown demonstrating this issue, thus proving that the more we split our donations, the more money will not be going directly to our causes. While the amount lost to transaction fees may not be significantly high and thus not be a cause for great concern, I think it is still important to be aware of, especially when considering very small donations.
Finally, despite Karlan’s argument, I believe that it will still be beneficial for our class to split the money. Not only do I believe that it would be near impossible to reach universal agreement in our highly opinioned class, but I also support making an impact in several issue areas of Broome County. However, I intend to keep Karlan’s article in mind when it comes to deciding how much we will give. While I would love for this class to make an impact on as many organizations as possible, if we start giving away trivial amounts of money to avoid hurt feelings, it may be time to reevaluate our priorities. Thus, I believe that once we are all sufficiently informed about each organization’s needs, we should strive to meet as many of them as possible, while avoiding giving away nominal amounts due to pity.
If you would like to read more about transaction fees on charitable donations, Karlan’s article can be found at http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/12/06/charitable-giving-why-fewer-is-more/ .
Hi Jelissa,
ReplyDeleteI disagree with the point you make about our site visits creating bias towards a certain organization, or at least that the presence of bias in our decision is a bad thing. I believe that visiting the organizations we have declared as finalists is crucial to understanding how they work from day to day. Some programs that we would be funding may look much better on paper than they actually are in practice. If this is the case, then it may actually be possible that one or more of the visitors have a bias against that organization. In my opinion this is a good thing. We are going to need as much debate in class as possible when determining the organizations we will fund. I feel that a relatively small amount of debate during our initial selection may have been the reason that some of our peers were not completely satisfied with the outcome of finalists.
As to the second point you bring up, I am not entirely sure how I would like our money split up just yet. It is true that we have a lot of money to work with and that a little funding can go a long way, but I feel that it is our responsibility to maximize the difference in the community and not the difference in the organizations. In other words, splitting the money into two $5000 donations may affect the needs of the community more effectively than 5 $2000 donations. We really need to pay attention to the student presentations to completely understand which organizations will bring most use out of every dollar. I think it is unfair to determine how we will split the money before we have as much information as possible. I am looking forward to hearing from the reps tomorrow to bring us a little farther down the path toward our goal.
Jelissa, I very much agree that we should keep in mind the possibility of splitting the money up over the different organizations if we find a reasonable way to do it. I agree with Laura and Dylan that giving little amounts to all of the organizations might not make the impact that we want to see in the community. Of course, each organization is trying to do good and better the community but our job is to decide which one(s) will use our money most efficiently.
ReplyDeleteIf we had chosen all organizations that supported education, like we all assumed would happen, then I would say to limit the number of organizations we give to because they are all trying to achieve the same goal and the community would benefit from a large donation to one organization. But since we chose finalists that cover health, poverty and education, money to each of those organizations would benefit the community in different ways, not just supporting one aspect of it. If we decide to split up the money, we need to look at what it's going to accomplish, is it going to have a short or long-term affect? What is going to benefit the community more? And it all depends on the size of the organization, $2,000 could do just as much for a small organization that $5,000 could do for a bigger one. Luckily, we have flexibility with our decision, but we need to look at every option.
I agree that this is a big decision, but I think making this choice is still part of the learning process. I don't think it is expected of us to have mastered everything and now we are to make the "perfect" decision with our money. Wherever we choose to donate, we can see how effective that money is as time passes, and whether we make a choice that has a very high impact or a choice that funds something that doesn't pan out so well, I think it will be a great learning experience for us all. This is (I hope) not the last time we will be deciding where to donate, and so the learning process is never really done. We can't amass all of the available knowledge to make the right decision, because I'm not sure there really is a right choice. I am personally very excited for the site visits, because it's not very often that we will get this opportunity. We have a lot of power and I think we shouldn't lose sight of that. I hope everyone is able to make an intelligent decision and not let the site visits bias us too much in terms of pulling at our emotions when another group could put our money to better use, maybe because they are more financially responsible or simply in greater need. No matter who we choose to donate to, I think we should look at this as an exciting opportunity and not something to worry over or regret afterward if things don't turn out perfectly.
ReplyDeleteHi Jelissa,
ReplyDeleteI certainly enjoyed reading your post, and I would have to agree with Adam too, in some respect. I do think that our site visits will cloud our judgements a little, but that would mean that every organization would have at least 4 or 5 advocates, so I think that this particular issue would balance out. Also, I am expecting that some people will be unexpectedly influenced by either the presentations, site visits, or both. I think that we need to wait a little bit, and see how everything plays out, and if people are as influenced by the presentations and site visits as we are expecting them to be.
As far as funding an organization, I don't think that we need to feel bad about not being able to fully fund a particular organization's request. That's simply what it is, a request, it is not a guarantee that they will be funded by any stretch of the imagination. I think that by giving them the chance to get some money fro their organization, we are doing them a service. That's just my take on the situation though.
I actually came into the course and into the discussions with the impression that we would be splitting the total money. I don't think it'll be feasible for us to agree on one organization with our diverse views and opinions on the organizations. While site visit bias could be a concern I think we all can be reasonable and objective in our analysis. What I would worry most is that I would believe in an organization which I don't visit and the members who have contrary views. I think we need to listen to other people's site visits and trust their input.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that our entire class will truly feel prepared to make the final decision. We all have different personal values and have a different stance on the organizations we have chosen as finalists. It is going to be hard to say no to organizations that have made it as far as the final 6, especially after making site visits and hearing presentations from them, and I do believe that we should split the money. However, not so much that we cannot help an organization reach their goal. I am very biased towards organizations that spelled out exactly what they needed, and I am hopeful that if we donate to those organizations, we will help them COMPLETE a project. Although some of the other organizations are promising, I don't want to give them money for one thing (that they then can't complete) and find them forced to use the money in another way because they didn't get all the funding that they needed. When splitting the money, I don't think that we should be spreading ourselves thin, I really want to make an impact on an organization.
ReplyDeleteALSO, I'm not sure if anyone saw my tweet this week, but The Boys and Girls Club of Binghamton just received a check from Binghamton Restaurant Week for over $7,000 and I am sure that is more than our class anticipates donating to them. Should we still consider them for our grant? Many of you may not agree with me and that's totally fine, but I think that we should focus on those who are NOT currently receiving funding/help from locals.