Another UN Scandel

[Dr. Shane]

Overheads take up to 1/3 of tsunami funds

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Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead.

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The newspaper also found several U.N. agencies continue to refuse to disclose details of their relief expenditure in spite of earlier pledges of transparency by senior officials.

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[Nicodema]

They should just disclose it and be done with it. Let judgments fall where they will. Intelligent men and women who know what it takes to operate any kind of business, charity or otherwise, are not going to regard "overhead" as some great evil so long as it is justifiable. (Paying some stuffed shirt $1 million off the top is NOT justifiable -- paying for workers and transportation costs, etc. is.) If they keep refusing to disclose, it only makes it look like they've something to hide.

[Bravus]

scandal <img src="/ubbtreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

[Dr. Shane]

To give the issue a little prespective let's take a look at various organizations' overhead.

Private sector industry will tend to have low overhead since overhead eats into profits. In the construction industry we keep our overhead under 14% and our profits run between 5% and 10%.

Any charitable organization that spend more than 25% on overhead (including fundraising) is not considered a good charitable cause. Here are a few well-known charities and their overhead.

National Christian Charitable Fund - 5%

Goodwill Industries - 12%

Samaritan's Purse - 11%

Wycliffe Bible Translators - 18%

Catholic Relief Services - 6%

American Red Cross - 9%

United Way (various chapers) - 10%-15%

Doctors without Borders - 14%

Focus On The Family - 16%

Salvation Army - 17%

Habitat For Humanity - 18%

So if the UN disater relief is using 33% in overhead that would be scandelous. Each percentage point of this disater relief money represents a little more than $5 million. So the difference 25% and 33% is about $42 million.