Imagine
According to statista.com, in the USA alone, non-profits reported expenses of 1.89 trillion U.S. dollars in 2009. I know in some cases a billion is a hundred million, instead of a thousand million (presumably so that some millionaires can call themselves billionaires to distinguish themselves from the riffraff). But that’s not the case here. A trillion is a one followed by 12 zeros, so in 2009, US non-profits’ expenses were
1,890,000,000,000 dollars.
How much is a trillion?
And that’s just the USA. We could safely double it for worldwide non-profits, and still be well below the actual figure. To be conservative, let’s say 3 trillion of our dollars each year goes on the kinds of projects that non-profits are allowed to do (essentially, making the world a better place). Think what you could do with just one million dollars. Now think of that times three million! Or imagine if three million people went out into the world, each with a million dollars to spend on projects beneficial to the community. Every year!
Of course, it wouldn’t work. Most of them would get a house, go on a cruise, buy a fancy car, I know. But that’s not the point. That’s how much non-profits have. What the hell have they done with all that money? In most places where poverty and malnutrition are rife, two thousand dollars a year per family would be more than enough to enable people to sort out whatever problems they have and convert their local community to abundance over three years. Three trillion divided by two thousand is one and a half billion There are about that many families on earth. And not all of them are poor. Imagine what we could do if our money was being used properly!
The people whom we allow to manage ‘aid’ for us are (to be polite) inept and we need to bypass them, urgently. Direct Sponsor is a proof of concept, and our aim is to prove that a better way is possible, by doing it.
When a hierarchy exists, it presents a focus of power that power-seeking individuals and cliques can over time turn to their advantage. …even volunteer organizations are subject to intrigues, power-grabs, covert arrangements, misallocation of funds, etc. The problem is made worse by the fact that those who most desire power, and who are the most ruthless, are the very ones who tend to work their way to the top of hierarchies.
Richard Moore
More Fun With Figures
Oxfam UK raised £318,000,000 in 2011. That’s around 450,000,000 euros. What could DS do with that kind of money? A project is, for a family, 120 per month = 1440 per year. 1440 / 450,000,000 = 312,500 families.
312,500 families, x 4 = 1,250,000 people would move from poverty into abundance every 3 years with the money that goes through Oxfam. Does Oxfam achieve anything like this with our money?
Oxfam UK is just one of many, many such charities, and is small fry when you look at things like USAid, which is going for 22.3 billion dollars in 2016. What could we do with that?
It’s about 21 billion euros, or 14,583,333 families. Well over 58 million people! Or, the entire population of Botswana, Namibia, Mauritania, Liberia, Rep. Congo, Central African Republic, Libya, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Togo and Guinea, combined. This is only to make a point, not to suggest that DS would ever achieve such numbers, only to show how wasteful and unproductive our present “aid” efforts really are.
Charities and governments waste our money. Some examples are shown in the News Blog (temporarily discontinued).