alt Hacker NewsI think the material point of HN User Yuliyp's comment is that the organization claiming to be providing us with "Charity Sense", for some reason is not providing us all of the data we need to make sense of charities. Even worse, it seems to be deliberately disingenuous in presenting the data it does give us.
At least provide explanations of why certain things are included or excluded from the numbers they're presenting. Why are hospitals and universities lumped in with the food bank in the first place for instance? When you remove them, the numbers and percentages radically change. Not only that, it doesn't feel like the average person sees a food bank and a university, or a hospital, (and certainly not a university hospital), as the same sort of "charity". When you start digging deeper into the numbers, it just looks like they were lumped in to make the less resourced charities like food banks look bad.
Maybe there was some other reason they had for using this amalgamation? But they should be forthcoming with what that reason was.
Replies
> Why are hospitals and universities lumped in with the food bank in the first place for instance?
Ask the IRS / congress, this isn’t some arbitrary grouping it’s what charity means in the US.
I do think it’s worth asking that question, but ask it of the people who can do something about it.
> Why are hospitals and universities lumped in with the food bank in the first place for instance?
Because if you don't have shareholders and like to raise money that's not from VCs, it is convenient to have the donors get a tax deduction.
Otherwise you can run a business with little to no tax without being a non-profit.
Yes, non-profits is a superset of "charitable non-profits". The IRS puts all 501(c)(3) organizations under the same filing framework. Hospitals and universities are in there alongside food banks and shelters. Breaking them out by NTEE code gives a more granular picture is a great idea.