Charities are everywhere in America. We have 1.4 million charities with $3 Billion in assets. Almost all requests to form charitable organizations are approved and virtually none are audited. Kenneth Stern looks at the problems with charities and the history of charities in America. Much of Mr. Sterns experience comes from his tenure as CEO of NPR. What does not come from his personal experience is extensively documented in over forty pages of references.

Some pages are devoted to charity hospitals which on the whole are more profitable than for profit hospitals. I found particularly surprising, as a Texan, who sees Texas Children's Hospital involved in many fund raising events as a hospital which gives .5% (half a percent) of its care for free. I was expecting much more from a charity.

Another area of surprise is what is considered a charity. United States Golf Association is a charity along with all the college bowl games. Millions of dollars in money flowing into organizations and almost none of it going to actual charity.

Fake charities using “veteran” or “Fire Fighters” in their name rob well-intentioned donors. Many religious charities lack proper oversight and for some religious leaders the temptation is too great. Another well established charity received $1.5 Billion donation that has not helped it because of the strings attached to it.

Mr. Sterns provides an excellent overview of the history and current situation of charities in America. There are numerous examples throughout the book and each is extremely well documented. I have only used a few examples in this review. I found this book to be very informative and even with an advanced degree; I learned quite a bit and found myself thinking “wow, really?” Whether you have an interest in charities or not, you will take away much more than you thought you would. ( )

Nonfiction, charities, charitable giving ( )

Clearly identified systemic issues with the nonprofit and charity sector in the US. If you are interested in getting under the hood on tax-exempts and seeing the ugly truth that most of them run on nice and well-intentioned ideas rather than effective strategies, read this. If you like great stories of what your charitable dollars do and don't want to be disappointed by measuring real effectiveness, don't read this.

Proposed solutions were fairly weak though, and based primarily on a different view of the purpose of government than mine, so that part of the book is "meh" but the book overall is a good read on understanding the problems for non-profits to be effective.

And big points for attacking the administrative costs as the primary evaluation of a charity's effectiveness. Someone finally heard my complaint! ( )