11/26/2007

Charity and mercenaries are incompatible

When charitable organisations are growing too big and becoming big businesses themselves, there is a need for more effective corporate governance. And this cost money especially when professionals and professional agencies are needed in the wake of several embarrassing breaches. So everyone is now calling for big money to be paid for professionals to come in and manage big charitable businesses. Is this the right way to do things? Charitable organisations are meant to do charity using public donations. The people who stepped forward to serve charitable organisations mostly came forward to serve out of compassion and kindness. Accepted that wolves and vultures came along in disguise and started to steal donation money from these organisations, these are due to lack of supervision and corporate governance. If the solution is to bring in highly paid employees whose interest is to do a good job and to demand higher and higher pay, then charitable organisations may end up collecting donations only to pay these professional mercenaries. And they will want to be paid market rates, normally a percentage of the organisation's revenue. Is this what it should be? Collecting money from the public to be paid out handsomely to mercenaries? What the govt could do is to do a little public service. Second or attach a few top notched civil servants to be the guardians, the eyes and ears of the organisations. They can recommend regulations, rules and procedures, good corporate practices, and supervise the financial management of charitable organisations to keep things in order. And their salaries be paid by the govt and not from the donations. As a public service, it is not too much to ask for from the govt. Asking charitable organisations to spend a fortune on professional mercenaries is in conflict of what charity is all about, and a conflict of interest between the objectives of the organisations and those of the paid employees. Let the two be kept separate. There is no place for mercenaries in charity. We must not encourage greed in charitable organisations.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Redbean, what you have suggested is good, but in the real world it will never happen, esp. in Singapore where serving out of compassion is dead and buried along with many other virtues.

Anonymous said...

The reality is that charitable organisations offer great opportunities for the mercenaries to feast on. Too bad.

Anonymous said...

Since the SM thinks that paying top dollars is the way to lure professionals to do charity work, why don't the Government just fund these charitable organisations and do as he suggested. It seems that in Singapore they assume every problem can be solve in the context of raising prices or charges or paying more and more like the ERP and hospitalisation. If only everybody could afford!

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

ok, look at the bright side. if all the big charities are allowed to pay good money, we may have another few more jobs paying million dollar available.

so a few singaporeans may become millionaires under the the vacancies not open to foreign talents. i am protective here. if not, a hollywood big fund raiser may get employed and live on our donations.

charity begins at home.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

The only hope for S'pore is to succumb to it's eventual fate as a failed state. i.e. MATILAH SINGAPURA

If people cannot or will not cooperate with each other to help their fellow man who is momentarily less fortunate, then the whole fucking loser cuntry is destined to become a WELFARE STATE, where the people turn ONLY to their government to "solve problems".

These "problems" are so much easier and more efficiently solved BY VOLUNTARY CHARITY AND COOPERATION, if only people would put their differences aside, agree that DONATING TIME equals DONATING MONEY (opportunity cost), and is a noble and honourable thing to help one's fellow man BUT one should do it because one thinks it is "right" and not expect any "validation" (e.g. awards, rewards, recognition, medals, blow-jobs and such-like).

Anonymous said...

Stop donating and there will be no problem!!