The article is entitled “Charity contests loss of license office contract” and it’s for subscribers only.
As I have mentioned before, gentle reader, the slang DOV for Department of Motor Vehicles does not apply in Missouri. Drivers’ licenses and automobile registrations go through the Missouri Department of Revenue, and the local offices are, well, localish offices that the Department of Revenue tends to award to charities so they can raise money from them.
Here in Springfield, one such charity (or an independent operating entity working on behalf of the charity) lost one such franchise to a former executive’s organization, and the such charity has sued to get it back.
The charity (or independent charity working on behalf of the charity) runs several other local fee offices for the Missouri Department of Revenue, so it’s not like the rather well known charity, which hosts numerous other fundraisers which attract the glitterati, has lost all its funding. But it wants all its funding.
What does the organization do for the community?
[The charity] began operation in 2000, and sincce that time has distributed $7.9 million in aid.
Sweet Christmas, that must be a typo. That’s less than $350,000 per year in aid.
“These five offices together raised enough money to pay for the entire administration of [the charity],” he said. “It’s a substantial amount.”
Reminds me of the scripted answer we had when I worked in the telemarketing fundraising organization a long time ago. When asked how much of the money in the law enforcement window decal campaign would go to the Missouri Deputy Sheriffs Association, we were to rattle off a list of enumerated administrative costs, such as the equipment, the lease (on a storefront in a strip mall in Hillsboro, Missouri, so not premium real estate), postage, et cetera, et cetera, and the profit-taking on the part of the owner of the operation (redacted), the actual stated purpose of the fundraising received a very small percentage indeed.
A substantial amount. You don’t say.
This makes the cynicism lobe of my brain throb, and it underscores why I choose very small, direct impact charitable organizations. I culled probably two hundred pounds of canned goods from our “just in case” fund for the local food bank today. Not the well-known one with the big painted trucks and glitterati fundraisers. That one gathers money and food by the pallet which it then sells to the local food banks that distribute food to the hungry. I support the one run out of the shotgun shack on the railroad tracks which is only open two days a week because it’s run by volunteers.
