D.J., my 14 year old Dachshund

Since 2008, they have provided 268,720 bowls of food. In addition, they have a low cost and no cost spay and neutering services and a program that provide pet oxygen masks to local fire departments and EMT’s, who are prevented by law from using state funding to purchase supplies that don’t specifically save human lives.

We like this organization because it is 100% volunteer and for the last several years they have been passionately committed to helping the pet owners in their community. They are also a small organization, and we knew that our $600 donation was going to make a huge impact for them. And we were right, they were just thrilled when we called to let them know they won our vote.

How You Can Help

I’m happy to say that Companion Animal Advocates is cheap, and they want to buy as much pet food as possible. So, they have recruited volunteers to contact Purina for coupons for $1.00 off. If you’re interested in helping with that endeavor, call Purina at 1-800-778-7462 and request two $1 coupons for Purina products (Purina will accept a coupon request once every 4-6 weeks). Upon receipt of the coupons, please mail them to Companion Animal Advocates, P.O. Box 61, Hillsdale NJ 07642. To sign up to receive a monthly e-mail reminder to call Purina for the two $1 coupons, send an e-mail to Info@CompanionAnimalAdvocates.org. Include your First and Last name, your town and state and they will send you a reminder around the middle of each month to call for coupons.

How do you know they were a good choice?

The donation committee researched the organization and asked questions like

• Is the program well-designed?
• Is it making an impact?
• How does the leadership of the organization?
• Are the financial documents reflecting appropriate activity?
• Are they using their existing funding wisely and do they have room to handle more funding?

If you’re not asking these questions before you donate, don’t feel too bad. I wasn’t either. But the donation committee does the hard work so that we can feel great about where we donate.

Donate Better. Donate With Others.

You’re invited to be a part of our giving circle and make a big impact with small bucks.

According to Poor Economics, each year of education increases earnings more or less proportionally. So, if we’re interested in ending poverty, then we’re interested in people getting educated.

In the developing world, enrollment in primary school keeps increasing, but absenteeism is high due in part to treatable illnesses. In fact, over 600 million school-age children are infected with parasitic worms. Parasitic worm infections can cause immediate illnesses, but as the worms accumulate and grow they steal more and nutrients from their hosts causing long-term illnesses and fatigue, too. Children with parasitic infections are much less likely at attend school and to do well in school. And since there is a direct relationship between a child’s education and their future income, keeping children in school helps break the cycle of poverty.

According to Deworm The World, the benefits of school-based deworming are both immediate and enduring. Regular treatment can reduce school absenteeism by 25% and increase adult earnings by over 20%. It is also a program that is very cheap to implement and costs only about .50 cents per child per year. So, our $540 donation will help 1,080 children receive deworming medication.

We liked that Deworm the World worked with the local community structure to administer the medication through the school systems and they partnered with the national governments to design a program that can maintained through the long-term. Since children are constantly exposed to these parasites, continuous treatment is essential to the success of the deworming program.

What’s Next?

We’ll gear up for our next donation cycle. Members can nominate an organization if they’d like, and those nominees will be vetted by the donation committee.

We ask

• Is the program well-designed?
• Will it make an impact?
• Does it cause unintentional harm?
• Does it maintain the dignity of the recipients?
• Are the financial documents reflecting appropriate activity?
• Do they have room to handle more funding?

If you’re not asking these questions before you donate, don’t feel too bad. I wasn’t either. But when you’re part of a giving circle, you can be confident that your hard earned dollars are going to organizations that are going to do a good job with it.

Donate Better. Donate With Others.

You’re invited to be a part of our giving circle and make a big impact with small bucks.

Isn’t it amazing what a small group of people doing something small, but doing it consistently can do?

Members of the giving circle nominated two organizations which will now be vetted by the donations committee. If you join by March 28th, you can help us decide! Below is a preview of the organizations we will be considering:

Companion Animal Advocates

Companion Animal Advocates discovered that people were surrendering their pets to the animal shelters because they couldn’t afford to feed them. Believing that keeping pets out of already crowded animal shelters and in their homes was the best course of action, they created a program to provide free pet food and kitty litter to low income people in Bergen County, New Jersey. Since 2008, they have provided 268,720 bowls of food. In addition, they have a low cost and no cost spay and neutering services and a program that provide pet oxygen masks to local fire departments and EMT’s, who are prevented by law from using state funding to purchase supplies that don’t specifically save human lives. This organization is 100% volunteer and all donations go to providing services.

Colorado Veterinary Medical Foundation

The Colorado Veterinary Medical Foundation provides free or deeply discounted health care for the elderly, homebound, homeless, and other economically disadvantaged people who would otherwise have to surrender or euthanize their pets. Their services include basics like vaccinations, microchips, spay and neuter, but also trauma services, medical and dental surgeries, and medications. In 2012, Harrison Memorial Animal Hospital cared for nearly 3,610 sick and injured animals; performed 600 spay/neuters for dogs, cats, rabbits, and other pocket pets; performed over 1,152 surgical procedures and dental extractions; and served nearly 2,855 economically disadvantaged pet owners.

FINCA International

I’m very excited to have a microfinance organization on our list. Microfinance provides a very important service for the extreme poor, because traditional financial institutions (aka, banks and other lenders) can’t make enough money from the very small deposits and loans to justify their time and effort. Yet, having access to these services is critical for people to weather life’s unexpected occurances and to grow their businesses.

Microfinance has been both held up as the cure for extreme poverty and as a dangerous practice that takes advantage of people. Microfinance has the ability to be both, and I recently wrote a Microfinance Guide that covers what microfinance is good for, what’s it’s not good for, and what to look for when making microfinance loans. That way we can do good while avoiding the harm!

FINCA began in 1984 and now serves over 900,000 clients in 21 countries. In addition to loans and savings accounts, they also provide life insurance and education services. FINCA has more than $320 million in outstanding loans and is on pace to disburse as much as $800 million in loans by year end. The vast majority of their clients are women and they even have programs to help young girls who are still far more likely than boys not to attend school. I’m looking forward to getting an in-depth look at FINCA during the review and then sharing that information with you.

Deworm the World

Over 600 million school-age children are infected with parasitic worms. Parasitic worm infections can cause immediate illnesses, but as the worms accumulate and grow they steal more and nutrients from their hosts causing long-term illnesses and fatigue, too. Children with parasitic infections are much less likely at attend school and to do well in school. And since there is a direct relationship between a child’s education and their future income, keeping cildren in school helps break the cycle of poverty.

According to Deworm The World,”school-based deworming is universally recognized as a safe, simple and cost-effective solution. The benefits of school-based deworming are both immediate and enduring. Regular treatment can reduce school absenteeism by 25% and increase adult earnings by over 20%, and at a cost of less than 50 US cents per child per year.”

What’s Next?

These organizations are researched and vetted by the donations committee so that we can be confident we are sending our large group donation to an organization that is going to make the biggest impact on ending poverty.

Anyone who is a member by March 29th can vote with us. Are you ready to make low dollar, high impact donations? Are you ready to be the change?

Some nonprofits have the best of intentions but have been working on programs that don’t work, have unintended consequences, or even hurt the very people they want to help.

An extreme example of nonprofit fraud happened recently when 60 minutes and John Krakauer accused Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea and founder of the Central Asia Institute, of misusing millions of dollars donated to help build schools in developing countries.

Most cases don’t end up on 60 minutes. So if you want to know the reputation of the organization, what do you do?

Fraud represents only one piece of an organization’s reputation. Additionally, there can be problems with the work that they are doing and the programs they are implementing. For example, in one of our giving circles we were contemplating making a donation to an organization that published on the internet the names of people accused of animal abuse crimes. After some reputation research, we discovered concerns about whether or not this was a violation of a person’s privacy. While this concern didn’t automatically disqualify the group for a donation, it did mean we wanted to have a conversation about it. Did we think it was a violation and were we ok with that?

How can you find out about the implications and consequences of a nonprofits programs?

I recommend a simple two step process that can reveal some potential red flags.

1. What information do on-line sources such as Give Well, Charity Navigator, the local Better Business Bureau, or the National Better Business Bureau/) provide about the nonprofit?
2. Google the nonprofit’s name followed by the word “criticism”, “problem”, “controversy”, and/or “complaint”. If the nonprofit does a particular type of work (for example, microfinance, orphanage, no kill animal shelter), Google it followed by the word “criticism”, “problem”, “controversy”, and/or “complaint”. What do you find?

Do these questions raise any problems you need to consider? Does it change what you think and feel about their organization and their work? If not, go ahead and make that donation with confidence!

Of course, you don’t have to rely on just yourself for all the work of discovering out which organizations are the best. You can share that work with your giving circle members and make informed donations that make an impact on the problem in a fraction of the time.