Your Club Dues Hard at Work
Every year as the holidays approach, our club looks for a worthy charity. To maintain our non-profit status, we must donate some of our money each year. In past years, we’ve donated to IMBA (International Mountain Bike Association), paid for bike lanes and signs in Cedar City, and given bikes to local kids whose families could not afford them.
This year we’ve chosen the World Bicycle Relief, an organization that changes people’s lives by providing durable bicycles to people in rural Africa through a microfinance plan. With these bikes, children can attend schools that are too far to walk to. Adults can carry the products they grow and produce to market. Families can carry clean water to their homes. The organization also trains local mechanics to build and maintain the bikes.
World Bicycle Relief has many A-list bicycle industry people on the board including Johan Bruyneel and the leaders of SRAM and Trek. An independent audit shows that 88% of the donations go to the program. Only 12% goes to marketing and management. (Details are available upon request.)
Why donate so far from home? Because we live in a world community and this is a way to have our money make a big difference in people’s lives. Our dollars will have a greater impact there. As the world watched the rescue of 33 miners in Chile, did we not care just because they live far away from us?
At the October club meeting, the members voted unanimously to support this. If anyone has an objection to giving $1,000 to World Bicycle Relief, please attend the November club meeting. That will be your only chance to suggest reasons not to donate.
View the charity’s independently audited financial statement: 2009_Financial_Statement
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Color Country Cycling Club Newsletter 
John,
I congratulate you on the amount of research that you have now put into this effort. It is becoming truly impressive! We only know what we now know about this charity so that you could defend what was initially a poorly researched suggestion to support this charity. Perhaps if this legwork had been done beforehand we wouldn’t even be having this conversation now. My point in offering a counter-argument to your suggestion at the September meeting was that little was known about this group aside from a couple of articles, one of which you apparently saw or read and it caught your interest. My brief inquiries back then yielded the facts that I have stated previously and those facts seemed to leave questions about this groups effectiveness. I don’t understand why that offended you?
As far as your comment on political affiliations go, I will confirm my belief that you should be aware of whom you are donating to. If members of this charities board are affiliated other organizations that I or others might find objectionable then I believe that should be known. PETA, the ELF or the Ku Kux Klan would among those that might trouble me. I believe we should know who these people are. I don’t understand why you don’t want to know or don’t want others to know, full disclosure is best.
You also seem to just disregard my or anyone else’s desire to primarily use the club’s funds locally or to national organizations that can benefit us locally. I don’t really recall during the history of the club that our purpose has ever been to save the world or any distant part of it. As a local cycling club our priorities have always been local. Although you seem to believe that Africa is local I believe that if you need a passport and vaccinations to get there then it is not local.
Personally, I say give all you want to this organization, if you are convinced that they are worthy of your dollars. As for the club’s money I think a higher standard should be employed. I do not think that a single members personal commitment to a cause should be used to browbeat less vocal members into agreeing to something that seems outside of the realm of a local cycling club. Hey, if I had my way beer would be served at all club rides and parties but I tabled that motion long ago.
Regardless of what your personal agenda may be, our bike club, historically and by design is a local bike club formed to serve our local interests as cyclists. If your personal interests lie elsewhere then I can recommend a couple of organizations that list worthwhile charities which you can support.
Lonnie
Lonnie, you are just as entrenched in your negative view as I might be in my favorable view. Perhaps your assertion you made in the September meeting about some of the board members’ political views is having more influence than you care to admit. Rather than base a decision on a second or third party, I have more information from the source to help everyone. Jill Reid, VP of Development at World Bicycle Relief provides this:
“Thank you for calling our attention to the rating listed at GiveWell and to the lack of ratings at other charity review sites. We appreciate your interest in donating wisely. It is important to know that most of the sites mentioned require the charity to apply to be reviewed. World Bicycle Relief has applied to be reviewed by GiveWell, Charity Navigator, and the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance; we have also requested profile updates with GuideStar and GreaterGood.org. The status of each request is as follows:
• Givewell – they selected 500 charities to review in 2007 – 95% of them received 0 stars, including well respected organizations like Kiva, Opportunity International, Technoserve and The Grameen Foundation. We can provide a breakdown of the reasons for GiveWell’s review if you would like – just let me know.
• Charity Navigator – Charity Navigator has reviewed 5,500 of the nearly 1,000,000 charities that exist — as they state on their web site http://www.charitynavigator.org/ — priority is given to the largest charities. We applied to be reviewed in 2007, and as of June we are still in the queue to be reviewed.
• BBB Wise Giving Alliance – We have applied to be reviewed. We expect to meet their criteria; however, the Charity Seal Program requires an annual fee of $2,000 from organizations our size, so we may opt out of participation.
• Guidestar – we are applying for profile updates with GuideStar; we expect to meet their criteria.
• GreaterGood.org has yet to update our profile, though the requested information has been sent.
Thank you again for your support and please let me know if you would like letters of recommendation or any other 3rd party reference.” Jill Reid, CFRE (312) 664-3604 jillr@worldbicyclerelief.org
John,
When you made the pitch for this donation at the September meeting you were already convinced that you loved this charity yet you had almost none of the facts that you cite today. Now that you have found facts to support your previous position you are back to push it even harder.
Charity Navigator is the largest rating agency out there, you would think that World Bicycle Relief would try and get at least one good review from a major charity rating agency. When, in fact, the one agency that does rate them says “we therefore cannot confidently recommend them to donors” that is a red flag to me. Im not going to argue as to whether or not they are a good charity when they will not submit to be rated by the other agencies that do so. If they have been rated by any other agencies that would be helpful information to have.
Transparency means that the information is out there for all to see. Givewell.org gave them the zero rating because of their lack of transparency and their inability to prove the effectiveness of their efforts. Perhaps if they forwarded the documents that they provided to you to Givewell.org they could get a rating of at least 1 star out of 3.
I don’t see how this fits in to our clubs charter to “promote cycling and cycling safety in southern Utah”. You apparently think “of all of Earth as local” where I think of local mainly as Utah. I believe that more than enough US money is being sent overseas already, when clearly there are great needs here at home. You may think that our poor here at home “live like kings” but I believe that we can find a worthy use for the clubs money “locally” here in Utah.
Lonnie
I wasn’t at the club meeting the other night and it is probably just as well. I see that another pitch was made to give a donation to the charity World Bicycle Relief and it was passed by the members present. Thats fine if thats what people want to do, but I personally want to make sure that any money that I donate is used effectively. I have no specific knowledge as to the integrity or effectiveness of this charity. When you visit an organizations website you will get some information but it is mostly a sales pitch for your money. Compelling imagery and a plea for you to help are often accompanied by a few facts to help make the case. There is often no real information as to how effective the charity might be. For this kind of information you need to go to independent organizations which assess the effectiveness of charities.
The largest charity rating services including; Charity Navigator, BBB, Charity Watch, Network for Good, do not show any data or rating for World Bicycle Relief. Guidestar.org shows tax documents but does not offer any rating for this charity. Givewell.org seems to be the only rating service to have reviewed this charity and they have given it a rating of 0 out of 3 stars. The criteria they use and the conclusion they draw is shown below.
__________
Does the charity publish high-quality monitoring and evaluation reports on its website? A charity meets this criterion if it freely publishes – on its website – substantial evidence regarding impact that (a) discusses how the impacts of projects or programs were evaluated, including what information was collected and how it was collected; (b) discusses the actual impact of the evaluated projects.
Does the charity stand out for program selection? A charity meets this criterion if it focuses primarily on (or publishes enough financial information to make it clear that 75% of its recent funding is devoted to) what we consider “priority programs.” These programs have particularly strong evidence bases, enough to lower the burden of proof on a charity running them.
World Bicycle Relief did not meet either of these criteria, and we therefore cannot confidently recommend them to donors. If you have documentation that demonstrates that World Bicycle Relief does meet either of these criteria, please send it to us using our charity submission form for international aid charities.
__________
These criteria and evaluations are abbreviated but contain the essence of the standards and the conclusion that Givewell came to. The full version is available at http://www.givewell.org. I am in favor of the club making donations to worthwhile causes though I would personally prefer that they were more local. I am not in favor of making donations to organizations that cannot be shown to measure up standards of transparency or that can’t be verified or rated through agencies that do this.
I hope that this comment although it is mildly critical will not be deemed as inappropriate for the club’s newsletter. Perhaps it will bring more people into the discussion as to how the club’s money is being spent. If the comment is unsuitable for the newsletter then I can always send it out to club members via email.
Lonnie Wolff
Your facts about the reporting agencies and their criteria are not complete. The agencies you cited that do not list this charity only list about 5,000 of the roughly 1 million charities in the United States. Agencies must pay to be evaluated. World Bicycle Relief has applied to some of them but subscribing to them all only adds to administrative costs.
Also, as you said, the agency that rated them zero did so because the charity doesn’t post their financial statement on their web site. However, the zero does not mean that they don’t meet the 75% criteria. Even if a charity gave 100% to their cause, they would still get a zero for not posting their financial statement.
The fact is, this agency applies 88% to their cause as I stated in the body of the post. These numbers come from an independently audited financial statement. As far as transparency goes, one simple phone call to a number in the FAQ section about expense ratios prompted an employee of the charity to immediately and voluntarily send me the independently audited statement I cited. I have posted it for all to see.
Regarding local giving, I believe I made a good case for thinking of all of Earth as local. The poorest people in our community live like kings compared to the challenges people in rural Africa face every day. Why can’t we reach beyond our front yards and give where the need is greatest?
So Lonnie, now that you have the correct facts, I hope you will get behind this worthy charity and the club’s support of it.
John Stavros