The Alms Trade

[Hermit]

Jimmy Carr has a look at it, and making good money while doing so.



More seriously, the alms industry can be quite problematic, even if we ignore outright fraudsters and unscrupulous opportunists like prominent sports people who ask for $3 million in order to sting their ex-employer for $10 million after they were sacked for breaking their contractual obligations.

Take The Fred Hollows Foundation, for instance. Founded by associate professor of ophthalmology, Frederick Cossom Hollows, who did a heap of pro bono work, stopping thousands of trachoma sufferers among Aborigines and the poor in Africa and Asia from going blind. He also organised the building of intraocular lens laboratories in Eritrea and Nepal to manufacture and provide lenses at cost, which was about A$10 (US$7.50) each.

Hollows died in 1993, but his foundation kept up doing the good work, but it seems to have lost its way somewhat. It is being run by people more interested in making money than doing charity work, and that did not always pan out that well. In late 2009, it was claimed that in the previous year the Foundation lost more than $2 million with the investment bank Goldman Sachs JBWere. The foundation denied it. Just the same, the value of its investments had been written down by $1.6 million by end of 2008.

A few months ago I retrieved a large, thick envelope from my mailbox. It was a letter from The Hollows Foundation asking for a donation. When I say "letter" I actually mean an expensive looking production in the style of a major company proposing to become listed on the stock exchange: Lots of promotional looking colour photographs printed on expensive looking thick and glossy paper. Even the accompanying payment form was glossy. I thought my letter cost $5, or more. Then I wondered how many hundred thousand of those letters were mailed out. Then I wondered who owned the business that produced the IPO looking thing. The cousin of one of the foundation's board members, perhaps? Then I wondered what percentage of donations finish up in unjustifiable running costs of the foundation. Finally, I wondered how many charitable foundations become milking cows for the people running it, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science came to mind. They did nothing illegal, to be sure, but the ratio of income to charitable outgoings was truly atrocious. O well, someone got a swimming pool out of it, so it wasn't a dead loss.

[laklak]

I just change my FB pic whenever there's some sort of disaster. We're all fucking Charlie or something. I'm all woke and shit, but they aint' gettin' my dosh. Momma didn't raise no fool here.

[JimC]

Being charitable, I'm giving 7.7/10 to this parody...

[Hermit]

Being charitable, I'm giving 7.7/10 to this parody...

Where 7.7 stands for 7.7 million US dollars. You are welcome to keep the other 2.3.

Trust me, it's for a worthy cause: My personal welfare.