United Way/Good or Bad/pros or cons

[boustany]

If harrassed, I give $1 so my employer can say that 100% of my department gave. That's it. The boss leans on me every year to chip in a fairly large sum (in the thousands), and I'll give $1 max.

The way I look at it is this: I don't need an organization to give my money away for me. If I gave to the United Way with no string attached, I would be funding a bunch of organizations I fundamentally disagree with. If I 'direct' my giving, then why do I need to pass it through the UW?

Basically, I figure its a great way for a boss to get his name in the papers and to employ a bunch of bureacrats. Our major charity is my wife's church.

And no, I've never recieved a dollar of charity. I am atheist, which pretty much disqualified me from gettin a plug nickle when I needed it. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

[Docsknotinn]

Is it just my demented menory or wasn't the United way in deep trouble with Federal investegators just a few years back for failing to donate the % required by law to the charities. i think now they stay about 1/2 % within the law. Overall I have read they retain the most for salaries etc of any legal organization of its type. I used to get pressed by a former employer as well. I gave $5 a year. They are at the bottom of my list. I would much rather donate directly. No diss respect to any one who donates or likes this organization but how can any charitable group that is this controversial be a good thing ? dave

 

[yooperdave]

I had a situation many years ago where I donated $100 to a charity with many stories and pictures showing lots of need.

I latter found out that 90% to 95% of my donation was a finders fee paid to the agency soliciting the money /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif!

I put up a big fuss and eventually got my money back.

I now only give to charities with more honorable intentions. Pictures of need are powerful marketing tools.

Yooper Dave

 

[TresCrows]

"I believe in charitable giving, but do you think the United Way is too much of a bureaucacy ? "

Yep, I don't like the arm twisting at work either to give them my money for support of groups I find anti Christian and immoral. I give my money as I see fit, mostly to the church and to animal shelters. The Red Cross will not get anymore from me either after the 911 fiasco, those vultures. I don't care if the people whose families were killed were filthy rich, undeserving or drunks living in a box, I gave my money after 911 to go to THEM and resent the Red Cross for their decision to decide who gets what and mostly the Red Cross getting it for new office equipment and beuracracy expansion. J

 

[Slamfire]

My wife served a term as treasurer for the local chapeter. She got no compensation, the head man was the local Methodist Minister, he got no compensation. My wife won't allow me to give to the organization because of her experience there. The board was just too willing to give money for any sob story that came along, without any investigation. I was a municipal employee and we got the suggested giving blurb every year. I never contributed, and civil service made it impossible for anyone to get rid of me.

 

[Richard]

We have a favorite charity and because of it, we tend to shun all the conventional charities.

Our niece suffers spinal bifida and is wheel chair bound. The poor girl (13 years old) has had more surgeries in her lifetime than your average grandparent will in theirs. In fact, the last surgery she had was to remove some scar tissue as I recall, and to put a rod in her spine. They took this poor girl and operated on her spine, putting a rod in it, then they literally flipped her over and cut into her stomach side and did something on THAT side.

Talk about being fileted like a fish. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Any giving, assistance, other that we do, goes to the most beautiful 13 year old I know. Best of all, ZERO admistrative fees.... oh, look further into a lot of these programs. I found one that was soliciting the wife, they had a defined benefit retirement plan, not a defined contribution as the typical "joe schmoe".

A defined contribution plan, you contribute and what it's worth later on, is what ya get. (like a conventional IRA or 401-K)

With a defined benefit plan, the end benefit is defined and the company has to fund it sufficiently so that the end benefit is fulfilled. hmmmm... it smelled like a dead fish to me!

(A person HAVING a defined benefit plan is a good thing, having one in a charity is to me, a scam)

 

[jyoutz]

I quit giving to UW when I saw their local list of so-called "charities". They actually supported political organizations like environmental groups and such. I immediately quit giving anything to UW. A political organization is not a charity (to say nothing of the fact that I am politically opposed to many of the groups on the UW list).

 

[fivestring]

On the flip side....
the steel industry, the airline industry, the auto industry, the textile industry, etc. are in deep doo-doo because of labor costs.
NAFTA was formed, in part, because of labor costs.
USAir - the 8th largest carrier -- but #1 in labor costs... and they wonder why they filed for bankruptcy?????
I agree that the unions brought better conditions and wages... my family is a family of coal-miners since the mid to late 1800's in SW Virgina and Kentucky.
I also agree with you that they definitely have outlived their usefulness. The only union members benefiting from unions right now are the union bosses.

 

[Durbob]

Here around Dayton ohio at the assembly plant that makes the Chevy/gmc SUVs , the jobs start out around $10.00 an hour or less , and it takes 10 years or better to reach top benefits. While the older employees make around 25.00 with full benefits. Where was the union for the new employees. The older members sold out the younger generation for themselves. You can go to Honda 70 miles up the road that is not union and start out at 12.00 an hour and be making 18.00 in 2 years with full benefits. If you have a family to support, where would you want to work. By the way, i drive a truck and deliver to both places and i can tell you , i'll go to Honda any day to unload, or any non union plant for that matter. They are much faster at getting you unoaded. I went into GM last week to unload and there was 1 lift truck driver around. She had a pillow on her steering wheel with her head on it and she was asleep. It was lunchtime so she has that right. Somebody came by and said that luch was almost over ,then she would take care of me. The buzzer goes off and all the other lift truck drivers show up and start unloading trucks. I leave about a half hour later and she is still sleeping. She slept thru at least 2 lunch periods. Tell me where is the union there. You and I are paying that lazy employee . The company is pretty much powerless against the union on stuff like that. That kind of crap doesn't happen in a non union plant. That is just example of many that i know of. Needless to say, Unions are a sore subject with me.

 

[EastTexFrank]

Not having been born in the USA, one of the things that amazed me when I came to this country was how little "charity" had to do with charity and how much it had to do with business and job creation for the organizers. I have never contributed to the United Way and never will. Why do I need a middle man to distribute my donations and be paid for doing it? I give freely of my time and energy directly to local charities but financially subsidize only a few. When I was employed by a major oil company in Dallas we were pressured every year to make contributions to UW and I always refused. It seemed to me that I worked and earned my salary and the company had no right to dictated to me how I disposed of it. Our department, however, always had a 100% participation and it always amazed me because I knew that I and a few others didn't contribute. It wasn't until some time later that I found out that the designated company organizer for that year was making a $1 contribution on our behalf in order to maintain the "100% participation" and not be the first to fail to achieve it. Companies should not put that kind of pressure on employees especially on behalf of charities. All I would advise is to be very careful of how your donations are being used and distributed. I think it would shock a great many people if they actually knew what their donations were subsidising ... give directly to the organizations.