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Photo courtesy of AmeriCares |
Nonprofit relief organization
AmeriCares was founded in 1982 by businessman Robert Macauley, after he had embarked on two large philanthropic missions: rescuing a group of Vietnamese orphans after a plane crash in 1975 and bringing millions of dollars of health care supplies into Poland in 1981.
Twenty-five years later, it is still giving. AmeriCares has given away more than $6 billion worth of aid, in the form of life-saving medicine, medical supplies and relief, to people in 137 countries around the globe.
Curtis Welling, CEO of AmeriCares, knows that this nonprofit organization is particularly appealing to members of the financial community. "They understand the key terms, including leverage and value-added proposition," says Welling.
"Somebody gives us a dollar, and we can turn [it] into $30 or $40 of aid. So from an investment standpoint, it's a leveraged pay on your philanthropy. You get to see your dollar work 30 times as hard," Welling explains.
Choosing a Charity
Not surprisingly, the most intelligent and aggressive charity donors want to know where their money is going.
There are several companies acting as watchdog services to give benefactors information on how their donation is used.
Charity Navigator, for instance, was founded in 2001 and has information on over 5,000 charities.
Its Web site judges charities in the areas of organizational efficiency and organizational capacity. Each organization receives a score in each area and an overall rating.
The efficiency rating looks at four factors: fundraising expenses, fundraising efficiency, program expenses and administrative expenses.
The capacity rating is based upon the organization's average annual growth of primary revenue, average annual growth of program expenses and working capital ratio (which analyzes how long a charity could sustain its current level of giving using its current capital).
AmeriCares, for example, was rated 39.92 on a scale of 40 for efficiency and 22.50 on a scale of 30 for capacity.
Inside AmeriCare
The structure for AmeriCares' funding is complex, as it's such a large organization.
It has three stakeholders: financial donors (individual and corporations), in-kind donors (companies that provide services or products) and country partners (AmeriCares implements programs in countries around the world). In-kind donors include many Big Pharma players. "They have a big stake in corporate responsibility. They do it for many reasons, including public relations. We're the means to which they can implement their charity," Welling explains.
"Nonprofits either create programs, or ... find programs [to] work with to make it stronger," says Welling. Considering its worldwide reach, AmeriCares primarily does the latter.
AmeriCares works directly with drug companies.
Pfizer(PFE Quote - Cramer on PFE - Stock Picks), for instance, donated $530 million of its drug Zithromax to help cure trachoma, an infection of the eye. Left untreated, the infection can eventually lead to blindness. Eight million people are visually impaired or irreversibly blind as a result of trachoma, and Pfizer's program has been implemented in some of hardest-hit areas of Senegal, Mali, Niger and Ethiopia.
To view Alix Steel's video take of today's Good Life segment, click here.
Danielle Sonnenberg
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