(no subject)
Dec. 8th, 2004 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIf money can't buy happiness, why do we have the Make-A-Wish Foundation?
They've been advertising on the radio lately, since it's the season of giving. The radio spots they're running on my local radio are vignettes of happiness bought and paid for -- a trip to Disneyworld, a swim with dolphins, a shopping spree, and so forth. I think the message I'm supposed to be getting from the ads is how Make-A-Wish brings light and hope to the lives of critically-ill young people. That seems to be the general aim of the ads outside of the give us money angle. However, what the ads got me to thinking about was how much happiness costs. (I am not an easy person to advertise to.)
A bit of research on the internet determined that, as a responsible nonprofit, Make-A-Wish is pretty fiscally transparent. As a matter of fact, they've got detailed financial reports online, including their tax returns and their annual reports. A person interested in the price of happiness could download their Annual Report in .pdf and do the math.
What kind of sick bastard would do something like that? Me.
On page 11 (.pdf page #), the Letter from President and Chairman, it says 11538 wishes were granted for the 2003 fiscal year. On page 30 (actual page number is 28 but the .pdf document is page 30 of 40), the Combined Statement of Functional Expenses, we see that the direct costs of wishes was $68,107,157.00 for the 2003 fiscal year. So. Doing the math, we can see that happiness costs just about $5902.86 if you're doing it on a one-to-one basis without any corporate overhead. However, if you are buying happiness via a sizeable nonprofit foundation, happiness costs $11,638.90 a la carte due to administrative costs and other stuff. (For this, I used the total expenses number on pdf page 30, lower right corner of the table.)
So. Now you know.
They've been advertising on the radio lately, since it's the season of giving. The radio spots they're running on my local radio are vignettes of happiness bought and paid for -- a trip to Disneyworld, a swim with dolphins, a shopping spree, and so forth. I think the message I'm supposed to be getting from the ads is how Make-A-Wish brings light and hope to the lives of critically-ill young people. That seems to be the general aim of the ads outside of the give us money angle. However, what the ads got me to thinking about was how much happiness costs. (I am not an easy person to advertise to.)
A bit of research on the internet determined that, as a responsible nonprofit, Make-A-Wish is pretty fiscally transparent. As a matter of fact, they've got detailed financial reports online, including their tax returns and their annual reports. A person interested in the price of happiness could download their Annual Report in .pdf and do the math.
What kind of sick bastard would do something like that? Me.
On page 11 (.pdf page #), the Letter from President and Chairman, it says 11538 wishes were granted for the 2003 fiscal year. On page 30 (actual page number is 28 but the .pdf document is page 30 of 40), the Combined Statement of Functional Expenses, we see that the direct costs of wishes was $68,107,157.00 for the 2003 fiscal year. So. Doing the math, we can see that happiness costs just about $5902.86 if you're doing it on a one-to-one basis without any corporate overhead. However, if you are buying happiness via a sizeable nonprofit foundation, happiness costs $11,638.90 a la carte due to administrative costs and other stuff. (For this, I used the total expenses number on pdf page 30, lower right corner of the table.)
So. Now you know.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-08 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-08 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-09 12:47 am (UTC)It may be a non-attributable quote (this is a category of quotes that I have just now made up, consisting of things whose etymology has been lost in the mists of
Avalontime) but it's certainly been said before I said it. Can we blame the all-singing, all-dancing They? (You know, the They responsible for so many other things, the They that are the ultimate authority, the They that probably Jung was going on about. I think of Them as a Broadway chorus...)no subject
Date: 2004-12-09 01:19 am (UTC)...or maybe "rent" doesn't count as "happiness".
I wonder how much of that overhead is due to the fact that they take small donations? What if they said "fuck you" to anything under $500?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-09 04:48 am (UTC)Taking a small donation should be of very little cost as a fraction of the donation itself unless the donation is below, say, a dollar. My wife is a banker, and banks will bend over backwards to make you happy if you can deposit $68,107,157.00. In fact, at that point they probably want to use Electronic Data Interchange or something similar, which further lowers your long-term costs.
There was a big series of articles in Time or U.S. News and World Report or something of that sort back in the 1980s which showed just how much of the money given to national charities is wasted. A 50% wastage (using Ms. Chick's numbers above) isn't that bad, compared to some charities. One of them wasted 90% of the donations on getting more donations, sending the executives to exotic locales for conferences, and paying the executives to do their lovely charity work as executives. This is why I don't donate to national charities. Well, except for the "re-elect f---ing morons to Congress and the White House fund," better known as my US-1040.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-09 05:01 am (UTC)Anyway, the annual report is actually pretty interesting reading once you scroll past all the pictures of deathly-ill kids (not suggested for people who still use dialup).