Stuff You Should Know - Philanthropy: Humankind and Loving It

Episode Date: November 22, 2012

Sure the fatcats get all the credit for donating millions, but did you know US households making $20,000 or less contribute the highest percentage of their income to charity? Learn more (not to mention a sexy look at the U.S. tax code) in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey buddy, if you don't mind if I plug my Movember page real quick. Please do. I am growing a moustache this month for Movember for cancer research, specifically male prostate cancer research. That's right. And you can donate to my team, which would be pretty cool because you know, you get a free podcast and that'd be nice to throw a little money toward cancer research.

Chuck's being nice here. Give him some money. He's growing out facial hair to help a charitable organization engage in really important scientific research. That's right. And you can go to mobro.co slash Charles Bryant. And that's my page. Or just go to the Movember site, type in Charles Bryant in the search bar and look for the picture of me. There's only a couple of us out there. Chuck's wearing a red shirt. That's right. Yeah. So what is that again? That's mobro.co slash Charles Bryant. Yes, thank you in advance. Yeah, that's a nice Chuck. All right, let's get to it. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Oh, hold on a second, buddy. Yeah, I think you've got something you need to say.

Oh, yeah. Let's go ahead and plug our buddies over at Science Channel, our other home. Yeah. And they're airing pumpkin chunking, this annual awesome fest of shooting pumpkins through the air as far as you can, and then making them explode on contact. It's pretty great. Yeah, it's a real thing. And then Science Channel goes every year and films it, and they air it as what's become a Thanksgiving tradition. So they're going to air it this Thanksgiving, November 22nd at 8 p.m., right? That's right. And we are still waiting to get invited to go chunk pumpkins ourselves. We got invited last year, did we? I think so. Oh, yeah, but it was like, oh, you guys can come if you want. If you happen to be in the northeast.

Yeah, but it wasn't like, I wanted a formal invitation to participate. Okay, I got you. And if you are into pumpkin chunking, then you might want to go online to check out the road to pumpkin chunking. That's already up. There's some great video. Just search pumpkin, p-u-n-k-i-n, chunking, c-h-u-n-k-i-n, and Science in your favorite search engine, and it'll bring that right up. Yes. And don't forget, November 22nd, this Thanksgiving at 8 p.m. on Science Channel, pumpkin chunking, the tradition. Yes. Yeah. Are you ready now? I'm ready. Okay. Back today is our good friend and long-time producer, Jerry. Yay. I wish we had the clap machine. Yeah. Well, people are slow clapping all across the world right now. Very sarcastic. Jerry,

we're so glad you're back. We missed you so much. Just let know. A slow clap is meaningful. Yeah, but it can very easily be turned sarcastic. All you have to do is kind of cock your head to the side. I wonder what the first slow clap was in a movie, you know, such a trope at this point, but I wonder who invented it. I bet you that information is out there. I want to know. Don't you want to know? Yeah. Clearly you do. I'm sure some movie website has probably tracked this down. First slow clap. Let's find it, everybody. Yep. We'll wait. Oh, wait. We should probably just go ahead and do this. Let's do it. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever given money to somebody who did nothing for you in return? Maybe he didn't sell you a good or service?

He just gave them the money. What do you mean? Just like someone? Panhandler, charitable organization. Sure. That's philanthropy. You're a philanthropist. Great. Did you know that? Yeah. Like, that's all it takes. And even better, this is the bright, shiny episode in my opinion. I'm proud of this one. How philanthropy works. Yeah. You don't even need money. True. You donate your time. Yeah. Your time is very valuable, Chuck. Yeah. And I think, well, I can't say this because I'm just speculating, but it seems to me that people are either like, you know, my time is too valuable, but like I can write someone a check. Yeah. Or like, I'm a little light, but I can't give my time. Or you can put it like, well, the government

doesn't let me deduct time that I've donated, but they will let me deduct the hundreds of thousands of dollars I've donated this year. They should let you deduct time because they've actually figured out I have like averages like an hourly wage for volunteerism. Yeah. Nice. That would be awesome. Let's get that in the tax code. That's a great idea. You can, however, like if you were say donating your time by going down to like Louisiana to help clean up after a hurricane or Kansas or Missouri to help clean up after a tornado. Yeah. And you like bought a bus ticket or you drove, you can deduct transportation costs. Okay. Well, that makes sense. But once you get there, the government doesn't care about you. All bets are off. Yeah. But you can deduct

money as far as transportation. Oh, and just regular contributions. Right. Depending on who you give to. And we have a very thrilling segment in this episode about the tax code. Yeah. The ins and outs of it. Chuck's not very excited about it. I think this is kind of neat. But we're talking about philanthropy. And it's kind of become, I don't want to say vogue. Maybe it has for the ultra rich, some of the richest people in the world, at least the richest people in America, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, yeah, to sign a pledge that Bill Gates created, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation created this thing saying, Hey, we're going to donate at least half of our vast wealth. Yeah. And they're trying to sign billionaires up to agree to this. And then we'll

just be super, super, super wealthy. Right. Well, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is this like superstar foundation that has like in the assets that controls is like the GDP of several nations. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's like $37 billion in assets right now. You can do a lot of good with that. And one of the people they signed on was Warren Buffett. And he's worth $49 billion right now. He's pledged 85% of his fortune to the Gates Foundation afterward, after he's dead, which I mean, he's getting up there. So they may have about $80 billion in assets in their control, which is, go ahead. Well, I was going to say that's almost as much as about three quarters of the assets or the value, the capital value of the most valuable corporation in the world,

Apple, which ironically had a founder who may have never given a cent to charity. Oh, really? Steve Jobs died without officially having given any money to charity at all. Really? Any. He was notoriously stingy. And after his death, there's a lot of talk like, okay, did he, did he really amass an $8 billion fortune and not donate any of it? Right. And a lot of people were like, you know what, even if he didn't, you know, to heck with you, he gave this technology to the world and people are using it to better humanity. Well, he doesn't need to give money. And other people are like, yeah, if you have $8 billion in personal wealth, you need to give some of that for other things like water and stuff that you can't use an iPhone app for, right? Sure. I guess

it depends on how you feel about it all. And then there was another camp that was saying, hey, it's totally possible that he was just not a jerk and he donated a lot of money, but he did anonymously. Right. He didn't want a bunch of glory or he didn't want a bunch of charities knocking down his door like, hey, hey, give us some too, for whatever reason. But you're saying that did not happen. He didn't give anonymously. No one knows. It's a mystery. Oh, I thought you said for sure he didn't give any money ever because he was so cheap on paper. Oh, there is no not registered no record of him ever giving a cent to charity. Gotcha. But it's pretty pretty interesting. Like I can't imagine having a billion dollars and not giving any of it away. But he

Bill Gates approached him and he's like, nah, I'm not signing that pledge. And will you pick up the check? Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. He's like, I don't validate parking either. I remember Ted Turner kind of was one of the original guys to give a ton of money when he gave the billion to the UN. I remember that was a really big deal at the time. Yeah, I don't know that he gave it to the UN. What'd they do with it? I don't know. Oh, just they went in the general fund. I guess so. But it was a big deal at the time. This is a long time ago. We're like in the 70s or 80s. No 90s. I'll have to look 2000. But it was long enough to go go such that it was a really big deal that someone gave a billion a personal individual gave a billion dollars. I think at the time it might

have been the largest individual donation. That's crazy ever. That's neat. Maybe I like that though. Oh, yeah, he's a cool guy. Yeah. But this whole thing, this trend that's going on among the uber wealthy is kind of this throwback to the beginning of the last century, when like the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's were setting up foundations that are still around today. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Ford Foundation. The Rockefeller, they created like a bunch of different trusts. 30 Rock. Yeah, University of Chicago. That was another thing that was in focus, setting up huge universities, Cornell, Stanford. All those were rich people endowing universities. It was like there wasn't a university there before. Now there is. What's the one you always hear on NPR?

The Ford Foundation? No, the Joseph D. And Catherine C. Oh, man. I know. It's so in my consciousness. I can't believe I can't just spit it up. Yeah. Oh well. One of us will shout it in about 45 seconds. Yeah, exactly. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Step out of piss y'all.

The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Our nation loves true crime. And it's no wonder. In the past decade, one in four Americans have reported being victims of crime. But what happens when we survive? That's what we explore in the podcast, Survivors Heal, hosted by me, Boya L. Charelles. I've worked as an organizer, activist

and advocate for the past 15 years. And for the past five years, I've been on the ground for providing services to survivors of crime. I invite you all to listen in as we discuss the healing side of true crime and what I call the new survivors movement. Listen to survivors heal available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Okay. But anyway, so yeah, you usually associate philanthropy with the uber wealthy, but it doesn't have to be. You can be poor. And as a matter of fact, the poorest Americans contribute the highest percentage of their income of any income bracket in the country. Did you know that? Yeah, I did. And in fact, if the richest people contributed that same percentage, then

there would be fewer problems in the world. I would say so. Yeah, but the rich people give the most because they have the most. Yeah, I've got stats, but we'll get to those later. Well, let's talk about a couple of stats. How many charities are there in the country? Well, this says 600,000 in the article. I think it's a little out of date. Is it? Yeah, because I found in 2011, there were approximately 1,080,130 charitable organizations. This is that was a decrease from 2010. So yeah, maybe this counts. Maybe this only counted. Although this is accounts foundations. Yeah, I think there was an enormous increase. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because I have the feeling that this article is written about 2003. Okay. Well, that that would be a real big increase

in. Yeah, a million. Yeah, a million plus. So 355 of which are religious congregations, which we'll get into that 355,000. Okay. And then in the United States in 2011, charitable giving total $298 billion. Yeah. And that was an increase from 2010, which saw $286 billion. Yeah, 217 from individuals, which is pretty amazing that 73% of all charitable gifts are from people. And if you factor in bequests, like people's leaving stuff in their wills, which is also individuals and family foundations, well, it rises to 88%. More than that, I think, isn't it? I saw 88% on philanthropy.com. Yeah, okay. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Well, I have foundations at 14% bequest at 8% and in last place, corporate donations at 5%.

Apparently, they give the least. And you know what I just heard the other day? I don't know if this is true. Maybe we can get confirmation. Okay. You know, when you go to the grocery store and they ask you to, would you like to donate to March of Dimes or whatever, like a dollar onto your thing? Well, yeah, where does come a listener wrote in about this? Was that? Yeah, I think maybe that was it. Someone said that they call those donations under their companies, under their corporation. And like, like, you know, the grocery store donated that money, those and gets the millions of dollars and gets a tax deduction. And so not saying you shouldn't do that, but it's just something to consider for sure. Let's say, let's say you're

like, no, I'm not giving a cent to March of Dimes premature babies can all like rock. And then, but you really, really care about muscular dystrophy. So the time when they hit you up for that shamrock, you're like, of course, not only will I give $1, we'll give $5. Well, TS for you, because you have no say whatsoever and where that money is going, because they pull it all together in a pot that they sell out quarterly or annually. And then they take the tax deduction for whoever wrote that in. Like I've stopped altogether giving it the grocery store now. Like I don't even consider, I don't even feel bad saying no now. Yeah, I've kind of stopped doing that too, just because if you're going to give money that we'll explain, you should

take the time to research and do it in a way that you feel good about and it's responsible and that you know where the money's going and yes, all that stuff. Let's talk about that, buddy. Well, one thing they point out early in the, in the article, though, that we should say is that these days, the more and more nonprofits are seeking funds in different ways because a lot of government funding is declining and going away all together. So they need money more than ever and costs are going up, obviously. So that is why you will see websites and billboards and door to door and flyers and everything to get in touch with the potential donate donate or donor donor. Right. That's a good thing they wrote a word. It means that. But like you said, philanthropy doesn't

have to be just about money. No, it doesn't. But the word philanthropy means that you love humans. Phil means loving. Okay. Anthrop or anthropo or enthalpy is humankind. So you love humankind by giving money to it. That's how you're demonstrating your love of humankind. That's nice. Yeah. Checking out charities. So this is a big one. It's a big deal. I don't know how many people do this. I think I don't know. I want to say like, trust you because I don't. But normally the charitable giving I do is like, whoever is ringing the bell at that moment or something like that or it was. Or it's on an individual basis. It's not necessarily through charity. Right. I hear you. They say there are a few

guidelines you can look for if you're checking out a charity to judge whether or not you think they're spending money wisely. Generally 50 to 60% of every dollar should go to the actual work, the charity work. Right. And then the other remaining for operational marketing administrative costs. So I from what I saw that's a very generous toward the charity's percentage. I saw 25% of your costs for administration and fundraising to 75. 75 should go to programs, but that's charitychoices.com. Yeah, that's probably the ideal. Yeah, I'm sure. I think 50 to 60 cents is like anything less than this and you should really like examine. Yeah, it means that there's people at the top taking a big paycheck or they're not doing a very good job of managing

their money. But it could also mean that if you look at the age of the charity or the size of the charity, like there's an economy of scale in raising money. Yeah. So if you if you are established, you have an established name, or you've been doing this a while, your fundraising costs are going to be lower than say a new charity or a radical charity that does controversial work. Yeah, good point. They're going to have a harder time generating money. So just because their fundraising costs are high, it doesn't mean that they're all like just enjoying lavish tuxedo based parties. And that's where all the money's tuxedo based black tie affairs rather than business casual based. Gotcha. Rather than turtle necks and jackets based. If you want to find out about

a charity job in this 1987, you can write a letter to the local charity registration office, usually within the state attorney general's office. And six to eight weeks later, you might get a letter back. These days, you can go online. Yeah. And I went online actually today and registered with guide star. Nice. And as a charity, no, has the money started coming in yet? No, guide star is one of the places you can go to check out other charities and you have to register to log in. Right. And because I wanted to check out, you know, like our friends at cooperative for education. Yes. Like all the records are there for 990. For 990 is what you're looking for. I looked at it. Text form. And you know what my first thought was, man, I feel so bad that Joe

and those guys have to fill this thing out every year. Oh man, I'll bet it. Oh dude, it was so long and but they don't have to file taxes. So yeah, true. Whatever. It's all a wash, right? But you'll be glad to know they're, you know, obviously doing great work. They're on the up and up. We knew that. Yeah, we definitely did know that we saw it firsthand. We checked those guys out personally. I see them behind Cohen. The Center for Better Better Business Bureau. It's another place. The Foundation Center is another place and you can get basically have access to the numbers if you really want to check it out thoroughly. Right. So the form 990 is going to have like a general description of the work they do, the programs they do, who's running the thing, where their money's

going. And I think it gets a little more specific than just like programs, fundraising, and administrative costs, right? Doesn't it break it down a little more? Yeah, like theirs had all the different, you know, drives that they did and it broke it down specifically to, you know, if you were into looking on that stuff up, it's there. Right. And I mean, like, if you really want to know, I mean, if you give to like a mega charity, yeah, like the Salvation Army and United Way or something like that, yeah, like they have more than just one program. So they may be doing work that you don't necessarily agree with. So there's another reason to go look at form 990. That's true. Because you'll see what what programs they're

carrying out, like all of them. Yeah, well, that's what the Komen Foundation got in hot water. Remember with the whole Planned Parenthood thing last year? Yeah. Or was that early this year? It was at some point in the recent past. Yeah. So that's, you know, there's when you get that big, there are other associations you might want to know about. Yeah, depending on your affiliation, your sociopolitical affiliation. That's right. There's about three ways that they're going to be spending their money, though, program services. And these are what you want your money to be going to most if you want to just feel better about yourself at night. Right. You don't want to think, oh, I paid the water bill there at the building. You want to think I put a sandwich

in a needy kid's hand? Sure. Right. A good one too. Management operational cost is next. Like I said, it's a little less exciting to think about that, but they need to pay the rent and bills. Definitely. They need office supplies. Sure. And then you've got fundraising. Yeah, which can really rack it up. I mean, it's everything from like direct mailers to lavish parties. Yeah. If you're courting celebrities, they like that kind of thing. And a well run, well managed charity can take, you know, X number of dollars, whatever their fundraising costs are, and grow it exponentially. Yeah. Use it correctly. But there's also charities out there that don't know what they're doing and shouldn't get the same funding. If you've got over a million,

there's bound to be a handful that aren't quite right. Right. You know, and some that are outright scams. Yeah. Unfortunately. And I think we have one of those, don't we? Well, there was a guy in this article. There's a guy in Texas who after a tornado, I think at Austin, he set up a charity that asked people to mail $1 donations checks made out to cash and mail them to this PO box. And people did. He kept the money unsurprisingly. There's just, there's the bad place for those people in their next life. Oh, for sure. You know, it's about the worst thing you can do. No one likes you when you're a grifter. Yeah. Other grifters don't like you. Right. Sure, they'll make movies about you. But I mean, like, that's about it. Josh, how would you go about soliciting money

if you were a charity, if you were a nonprofit? Well, not for profit. Well, one of the things I would do is probably take some of my initial money, my initial capital, and I would buy some mailing lists of other donors from other charities, which is extremely common practice these days. Yeah, I wonder what kind of money they make doing that. Well, that's, that's one reason they do it. They, they, like a charity will, will compile a mailing list and they'll sell it to other charities for income. They can. Yes. And again, it's common practice. Yeah. They also will sell them not necessarily just for the money. They may swap them with other charities because if you've donated to a charity, you've separated yourself, I imagine, from a lot

of other people. Yeah. And you're somebody who may be willing to give money to a different charity, too. Yeah. So that's one way I would do a direct mailing. I would hire a bunch of clean cut teenagers who are enthusiastic about the charity that they represented and send them door to door. Clearly labeled through uniforms and possibly matching khaki pants as representatives of the charity, complete with identification and lots of pamphlets about the programs that we have. Wow. You're like, you have the starter kit ready to go. It's, I'm ready. I just need some, an injection of funding. I don't know the programs yet, but everything else I've got lined up. As this article points out, if you are getting more solicitation than you'd like,

you can, in 1987, write a letter to the organization requesting your name be removed. Right. It may or may not work and keep a copy of that letter. Or you can just go to their website and unsubscribe. Well, that was, I think, one of the things that gave us away was like the, it's saying like more and more charities are starting to go to the web now. Yeah, exactly. And I think the web was capitalized and maybe in quotation marks and then in parentheses afterwards, it said the worldwide web. Right. We kid. If you want to donate, you can give cash if you're walking by a Salvation Army Santa Claus. You can. I mean, it's a way to go. You can throw your change in the bucket. If you've done the work though, you're looking at

form nine nineties and stuff like that. That's probably supplemental to the actual charitable giving you're doing. I'm sure. So if you are like really seriously philanthropic, like it's a past time of yours or a tax strategy, as we'll see, you will probably want to write checks because there are good records that you want to keep. You might want to go down to your bank and get the canceled check after it's been cashed and keep it in a safe deposit box. Yes. Or because it is not 1987, you can donate on the internet with your credit card. Yeah, I hear more and more charities are going to the web. And there are just as many records as if you wrote that check. And it's all very legit these days. Right. Probably don't need to worry about it unless,

I mean, if you can't tell the difference between a reputable website at this point, then you know, you're one of those people that falls for the Nigerian scam, I guess. It's true. I feel bad for these people if someone can making fun. But well, go listen to the con artists episode. That will be helpful. Maybe that's a companion to this one, sadly. You can also if you are loaded or if you really don't like your family, you can leave money, land, goods, your old's mobile, all those things, two charities, they'll take them. Maybe I'll will the my squatted land. That'd be cool that to coed. That'd be very nice. They'd be like, thanks for this thing that we can do nothing with. We have to mow this. And Josh, the final way is really popular these

days, donating old things that you don't use anymore. And you know, we've been doing this forever in terms of like furniture and clothing and stuff like that. But nowadays things like computers, as we mentioned in a recent listener mail or an upcoming listener mail, which you're still trying to get to. Yeah, about donating old computers to this group in Athens, Georgia. There are lots of organizations that do that now. You can donate your car, write that off, office supplies, building materials, emergency supplies. Those are huge, obviously, when catastrophe hits. Yeah, when the poop hits the fan. That's right. And you can write most of this stuff off as well. You can. You can write off the fair market value of it. And if you go to

an auction, and you pay way more than some, the something's worth, you can write off whatever you paid over and above the fair market value of that thing. Oh, nice. Yeah, the sucker fee, like the philanthropic fee. Well, that's nice that they give it back. Like, well, you're sort of an idiot for paying that much money, but go give it away and we'll at least let you write it off. Okay, you want to talk about tax stuff now? No. Well, we're about to. So there are two kinds of others. There's three kinds, according to the IRS, the tax code, the US tax code. There's three designations and then a few sub designations, which we'll get into to the letter. It's the sexiest publication on the planet. Um, the tax code for a charitable organization,

right? 50 shades of green is what they should call it. The most. Have you read that? No, Emily didn't. What'd she say? Was she like sweating all the time? Yeah, I mean, it was it was pretty racy. That's crazy. She blew through the series and you know, a couple of weeks, that person was earning like a million dollars a day or some some crazy amount from that for weeks for right and smut. I guess good for her. Yeah. It was a lady, right? Yeah, but she's got a man's name. Frank? No, initials. It's very masculine. Oh, really? Yeah. Huh. In my opinion. All right. J.K. Rowling sounds like a dude. You think? Sure. I never really thought about it. And isn't it like P.D. James? It almost sounds like P.D. Anyway, the three tax codes. Yes. So the one that everybody's

heard of and is most familiar with is the 501c3. You know, you've heard of a 501c3 corporation. Don't pretend like you haven't. Like you're too cool to know about that. There's the 345. Your favorite, I guess, is the three. So the 501c3, that's the one. I'm sorry. 346. Yeah, that's the that's the money organization. That's the one that's like it covers that. Let's see, prevention of cruelty to children or animals, those kind of organizations. Awesome. Educational charities, straight up charity charities that help like the poor and the needy, religious charities, scientific organizations. Yeah. Yeah. Literary, my favorite ones that support national or international amateur sports, which is pretty sweet. Yeah, you can give like to the US ski team.

Right. If Don King's involved, though, do not you don't look for a tax deduction at the organization. And then testing related to public safety, which I was trying to figure out what that would be. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe an organization that goes around setting off incendiary devices and fallout shelters to see if they hold up. Yeah, I'm not sure. I was going to say like auto safety, but it seems like that would be the auto companies privately doing that. Unless there are like no there's like independent organizations. There are like the. Yeah, there are. Yeah, I bet you that's what it is. So anyway, all of those except for the public safety one, you can write off like without thinking twice without prejudice. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Unless these any that that is a

not for profit or nonprofit corporation that's overseas. Yes. And it means that they're based overseas, not necessarily that they do most of their work overseas. Right. That's where they're incorporated is overseas. Yeah, because co-ed, for instance, that's why I mentioned it. They are based out of Cincinnati, even though the work they do is usually in Guatemala. Right. That's an excellent point. Yeah. So that's the 501c3. You've got a public charity. You've got the private foundation and a private foundation is it gets its income from investments, endowments, and then it's basically a charity for other charities. Yeah, then grants that to whoever they see fit. Right. And that's a good one to invest in because they are they usually know

exactly what they're doing more than you. Yeah. You know, yeah, that's true. And they're like their whole their work is charities. So like they're looking for up and coming ones once they're doing really great work, kind of stuff, what's well managed, that kind of thing. And then you have a private operating foundation, right? Yeah, and they donate to directly to the causes instead of granting grants to other charities. Right. Though the private foundation, if you give to one of those, you may not necessarily be able to deduct it, but a public charity or a private operating foundation, most of the time, you'll you'll get the full deduction. I think that's up to about 50% of your adjusted gross income. So if you make $50,000, and you donate $25,000,

you can write that off. It'll take that right away. Yep. That's true. That's a pretty good tax strategy. It is. And corporations can are allowed to deduct all contributions up to usually about 10% of their taxable income, which that's where it ends. But I mean, think about it. What about corporations that like have zero taxable income, like because of their fancy accounting? Like, do they donate at all? I don't know. I have a big question about that. And I was quite cynical there. And I don't like cynicism. I said that's probably where they stop donating is when they reach that threshold. Not necessarily true. But you know, maybe this, well, you know, the the tax, the deductible charitable contributions as it stands now is kind of under threat, actually,

because the Bush tax cuts are going to expire possibly. Yeah. If the Bush tax cuts expire, then for the for those highest income brackets, yeah, they'll lose about 80% of their deduction abilities, which I would think would show a pretty steep drop in charitable giving in that tax bracket. Yeah. And even though it's only 5%, that's, you know, still how much was it like $14 billion? Yeah. Yeah. And then Obama has a proposal that I don't know if it's going anywhere or not to basically like set 28% of your adjusted gross income is the maximum you can deduct for higher income tax brackets. Oh, really? Yeah. I don't know if it'll go anywhere though. But we may see charities like really getting hurt in the future. I'm so ambivalent right now.

No, you're not. You're angry behind the ambivalence. What about the C4? Oh, boy, the C4, that covers that covers organizations that lobby on behalf of specific causes like social welfare and stuff like that. Yeah. So remember, there was a big, how about I can't remember, I couldn't remember it before and I can't remember it now. It was a lobbying group that had 501c3 status. Not C4? No, but it had C3. Yeah, but it was, they were lobbying on behalf of social values. Remember, McDonald's got called out and like left like all these huge corporations like left this lobbying group. It was like a chamber of commerce arm and somehow they have 501c3 status. It was a big call for them to go back or to be forced into 501c4, which would mean a lot.

They'd have to pay taxes. Right. That also will include volunteer fire departments, which I thought was interesting. Yeah. And civic organizations and they are not deductible as charitable donations to the C4s except for volunteer fire departments. Yeah. And veterans organizations. Yeah, exactly. So I guess if you give to the VA, are they C4 or the VFW or VFW or the American Legion? Maybe even the not the French foreign legion though, they're overseas. That's right. The C6, Josh, the C6. That's, that's actually, I guess it should be that, that organ that lobbying group shouldn't be a 501c3. It should be a C6 because this covers trade associations and boards, chambers of commerce, real estate boards. Yeah. We can't

forget those. And you can't deduct any or any gifts to those as well. Basically just 501c3 and you want to make sure it's not a private foundation. Yeah. And that's a private operating fund. And that's if you're donating money. But we mentioned you can donate your time. Right. As a volunteer, which I think it's kind of a neat way to go about it. If you're into like, you know, grassroots hitting the ground, getting your hands dirty. They have figured out that, actually this article is, I don't know. I'm sorry. I have a new staffer that they figured out that it is an estimated dollar value of volunteering time is $20.85 an hour. Wow. In 2009. Wow. That's great. And so in 2009, the volunteer time totaled about $169 billion. I wonder how much of that

is wasted though. Because in this article, they cite a UPS survey, UPS foundation that was taken as back in 98. But at the time they found that like 40% of volunteers said that they stopped volunteering because they felt that their time was wasted while they were volunteering. Yeah. I've had experience like that. Sure. And I get it, you know, because if you don't have a lot of time, you're like, I want to give my time. You want to have it be used. And I don't want to call out who this was, but it was a group in town, volunteered, showed up and like, they didn't know what to do with me. Yeah. And I did it a couple of times. They didn't know what to do with me till eventually I was like, you know, I'm not going to come back and like sit around here. Yeah.

I'm going to go find somewhere else or maybe you should get your act together a little bit more. But it's tough, you know, I mean, it's easy to criticize. It's tough to manage volunteers. It's one of the most difficult, I think it said in the article, one of the most difficult parts of running one, a nonprofit is, is managing and maintaining your volunteers because they waltz in brand new and I'm sure they want to be the one doling out soup, you know, where we really need someone to lift those boxes in the back, which is unglamorous. It's unglamorous. And so it's probably not the easiest thing in the world to manage expectations and what they're supposed to be doing and training and the like, you know, I got some stats. 65% of households give

the charity. Average household contribution, 2,213. Well, majority of charitable dollars went to religion, 32% education, 13% grant making, 9% human services, it just says percent. They're like making electricity with bodies. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's 98% of high net households give the charity, which is great and beneficial for your tax status. Not saying it's why, but you know, it's good that that's there at least. And then 26% of people volunteer and those in religion leads away again at 35%, which leads us to, did you read the article? I skimmed it. Yeah, let's hear what you get to say. Well, Mitt Romney was criticized recently because, and this is criticism by Bill Maher,

so take it with a grain of salt. Right. But he counted 16.5% of his income as charitable donations, a lot of which went to the Mormon church. So that brings up an important thing, tithing. If you are a believer of the Bible, you were supposed to tithe 10%. Off the top. It's off the top, is it? According to Reverend Lovejoy. Okay. And you can write that off, which I didn't under, I didn't know that until today. I didn't either. So Bill Maher says that, you know, some churches and like these well to do organizations like symphony orchestras, colleges and universities with large endowments shouldn't count as charities any longer.

So he's kind of slinging some harsh words there. But that sort of says that the only people who can benefit from charity are the poor. And that's just not necessarily the case because then you've got like hospitals and libraries and museums and these other things, animal organizations that would be thrown out under the Bill Maher model. Well, I mean, all you need to do is inject a little capitalism, like make the humane society and the ASPCA really kind of compete for money. The one left standing is the one that gets to survive. And they did a study on church budgets in 2000. So this is not super updated.

And Christian today did this and found that an average church budget is about $292,000. 43% went to staff compensation, 20% for facilities, 16% for missions, 9% for church programs, six for admin and supplies, 3% for denominational fees, and 3% for other handling fees handling fees. And one of the things that I how much was that how much of that where we really went to charity? Well, that's the thing though, the church itself qualifies as a charity with its non exempt status. Right. So like, I guess the 16% for mission work would be charity, 9% for church programs, a lot of that could be charity. But one of the issues is Is that but is that also like the music program? Well, that's what I'm saying. That's one of the

issues with with considering churches charities. And this is written by a Christian organization saying that churches need to get better about connecting the giving to the outcome. Because people like knowing like the literal outcome of where I'm giving my money, whereas churches apparently are not very good at tying that together. And it's really just like, it's your tie that's just for everything. Instead of it's for this program and this program, and it's used in this way. Yeah. So, you know the solution to that. What's that charging admission to church? The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one, this drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me

that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds tomorrow one. Yeah, and they can do Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And on the prime example, the war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Our nation loves true crime and it's no wonder in the past decade, one in four Americans have reported being victims of crime. But what happens when we survive? That's what we explore in the podcast, Survivors Heal, hosted by me, Oya El-Sharrells. I've worked as an organizer, activist and advocate for the past 15 years. And for the past five years, I've been on the ground floor providing services to survivors of crime. I invite you all to listen in as we discuss the healing side of true crime and what I call the new survivors movement. Listen to Survivors Heal,

available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. If you want to know more about philanthropy or philanthropy, if you say things like a weirdo, you can type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, philanthropy. And I say handy search bar or search bar or something like that, which means it's time for Listener Mail. And live Listener Mail today. Oh, goodness. Since we're covering philanthropy, we're going to support co-ed because we haven't done it in a while. Okay, awesome. You want to tell them about the organization, Josh? For those of you who don't know, you can go back into the deep archives and find our Guatemala adventure part one and two.

It's the, I think, one and only time you can clearly hear Jerry speaking. But we went to Guatemala to see firsthand what the Cooperative for Education does. And what they do is they take money from different donors, basically pile it all together and buy enough books for a class in Guatemala. Then those kids pay rent on those books, something that's affordable. It's like two bucks a year or something like that, that the average Guatemalan family can afford fairly easily. And that goes into a pool, held in escrow. And then at the end of that year or a couple years or a few years when the books are worn out, that school has the money to replace them. So it's a self-sustaining model.

And basically you can help a kid get out of poverty by getting an education where otherwise they would be working in the field and making tortillas, which we found out they do in addition to going to school normally. So they do great work. We've seen it firsthand. We stand very firmly behind this organization. Yeah. And not only they have a book program and a computer lab program. So some of your money can go to computer labs and getting these kids not only computers, but training. Which it's the same model. It's just what rather than like a set of books, it's like a computer lab. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah. I mean stuff these kids have never seen before and they're in there learning how to use computers, getting better jobs, it's good stuff.

Yeah. All right. So you can visit cooperativeforeducation.org and that's different from their old website. So go to cooperativeforeducation.org and you can, there's a donate now button at the top right of the screen. Or if you want to go down there, you can go on one of the tours. Yeah. Snapshot tours. We've had some listeners go. Yeah. Guatemala got under Jerry's skin. She became very, very much involved with the Co-Ed after that first trip and returned several times. And when she went, she would go and there'd be stuff you should know listeners that went because they listened to the Guatemalan adventures. That's right. Yeah. And they, for 2013, you can go February 19th through 24th or August 6th through 11th to the land of eternal spring.

You will not regret it. Yeah. It is very nice. And I'm going to go again. What's the website again? cooperativeforeducation.org. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Go give. Your money is well spent there. Check out their form 990. Yeah. Or volunteer or help somebody help a panhandler out. Who knows? Just be philanthropic, not misanthropic. Right. We need a t-shirt that says that. I bet there's one out there. And hey, Chuck. Yeah. Let's just take this moment to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Seriously. I don't know if you have traditions like sitting around the table and like telling each other what you're thankful for. I like doing that. Maybe you don't even have family. Yeah. Maybe you have no one in the world. Surely there's something for you to be

thankful for. That's very good. Yeah. Dig deep. Dig deep for people. I'm thankful for that wall. In that carpet square. Yeah. Beep. That's awful. Beep. All right. You ready? So after Chuck's spiel. Yeah. Whatever your tradition is, we hope you're safe and toasty and happy. And you have the warmth of the great turkey in your spirit. That's good. Thanks. We should make that our sign off every year for Thanksgiving. Well, maybe we will. Great. Great warmth of the turkey spirit. The great warmth of the great turkey in your spirit. In your spirit. Something like that. I love it. Use a little tinkering before we trade market. Agreed. Let's get to work on that. Okay. Well, until then, happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Be safe. If you want to get in touch

with us to wish us Thanksgiving tidings, even if you're from Canada, which celebrates Thanksgiving at some preposterously early time, right? Yeah. We'll still accept your tweets at SYSK podcast. Say hi on Facebook, facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And as always, you can send us an electronic mail to stuff podcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being

robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.