Funding public benefit

IMG_7667, originally uploaded by skomra.

Tactical Philanthropy points to a poll indicating that Americans believe charities spend too much on overhead. Not surprising, since capital and charity tend to fall in different conceptual domains. The amount that people sense should be spent on infrastructure typically will reflect a number that they associate with "relatively small" rather than a number that has any practical relation to the amount needed to maintain an effective charity.

To compare the amounts spent on infrastructure will not provide an accurate measure of relative efficiency. The key issue is not actual expenditures but attention management--do people see the charity in reductive terms or as something beyond the mundane. An organization adept at transformative design can direct 100% of its assets & revenue to infrastructure & still be perceived as the quintessence of charity. Any number of local churches do this quite well. In contrast, focusing on infrastructure as the salient metric is likely to undermine public trust, not to mention group cohesion & morale.