Who deserves to receive aid?

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Comments

[Saundra]

Brad,

It sounds like charities are handled very differently in Canada. I am interested to hear what you think would work better. There's so little oversight in the US. There must be some good middle ground.

[Brad Davis]

Just ran across your blog and have enjoyed catching up on some of your posts. The issues you bring up need to have more discussion and large donor / donor agencies need to have a better understanding of the agency they work with and the culture & environment for which they work.

One cause of this problem it appears to me here in Canada is government regulations requiring the Canadian charity to have control over how the money is spent. This requires aid agencies to sent up elaborate guidelines, accountability mechanisms, and reporting in order to demonstrate to the government how they controlled the money being spent. Without this the government can reject their charity status or penalize them an amount greater than the donations.

Of course this would all go away if aid agencies and donors would start working outside the "charity" status. They just wouldn't be able to issue tax receipts - which unfortunately is a major requirement for many individual donors.