I've seen the insides of charities first hand. They weren't 'useless' charities at all but the bigger ones do seem to hit a point where they somehow go corporate - even if they're populated purely by volunteers.

I think some charities' fundraising and advertizing get taken on by former businesspeople who volunteer and adopt professional advertizing and fundraising techniques - or at least trained by them. Obviously when a charity gets really big, it's not volunteers, it's professionals.

The smaller organizations seem to come out unscathed as they don't go down that route. However, those that do, for me, can't help but lose some of their character.

My happiest memories of helping out at a charity have been the one where it was almost anonymous to the public and to it's clients. No notice, no sign, no desire for praise or acclaim. The founders' wonderful personality sold it to supermarkets to donate the food that was about to go bad (the charity was a mobile soup kitchen). Happily, the stores really didn't want the fact that they were donating the food - I can't quite remember why, but it made sense. Our unmarked vans didn't have the charities name emblazoned on the side (they were very vanilla in fact) nor did we have the donor's names.

The people we met appreciated our down to earth style and said it contrasted with local church soup kitchens who expected everyone to join in with a large prayer service before the meal was served obviously as a missionary work.

The experience still keeps with me, I saw many sights, plus I've had my own brush with homelessness too. But that was, thankfully, a long time ago.

I hope this helps 🧡

Unless there's some real effort and sweat on the ground (caring for needy / special needs children, spending time doing errands for/with the old), most charities are basically tax avoidance schemes for wealthier families. I'm not saying charity isn't worth it, it is but you need to do research on where your money goes. So many charities (even "respected" ones) are spending the majority of money on "admin".

I didn't used to be so cynical but then my friend (whose family has multi-generational wealth but not super famous family or anything) told me about his family's trust and the totally nonsense charity they use to avoid taxes. Also a good way to give influence / pay your own family when it comes to the salaried jobs.

Fiat incentives have changed universities primary purpose from preparing students for the world to extracting tuition from them.