What kind of scumbuckets try to make a profit from charity?

I am sooo sick and tired of crooks and scumbags preying on people's good will. Is it any wonder so many people get discouraged and leave?

There is an item for sale on SLExchange for $500 that claims to be a profit-sharing donation station for Relay for Life: http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=611326.

The head of RFL in SL sent out the following information to group subscribers (removing names):
"I am bringing to your attention that SLX has a vendor for sale from a group called Relay for Life Donation Station. This business also has store fronts where they sell these kiosk. The kiosks for sale promise the owners a 5% cut of all funds raised. Aside from NOT being afficilated with ACS or Relay the activites involed are a violation of US IRS tax codes."

the kind that do exactly what you described....and hopefully they made very little money.

This scam has nothing to do with SL in particular.
Scum will operate wherever they can.

I posted some time ago about a relation on mine who had planned to be on the flight that eventually crashed into the second Twin Tower on 9/11.
Had she actually been on the flight, we would have been frantically emailing contacts in the midst of a rising flood of spam touting bogus Red Cross "Twin Tower Survivor" donations.
It only took a few hours from the attacks for the scum to set up the websites and start the spam rolling.

I hope that SLX nuked the product.
If they didn't, then they should be boycotted by all.

I reported it to the SLX administrators through the support page, and I hope that other people did too.

I suppose this is why when you click on a legitimate RFL vendor, it pops up a URL showing that it is legit.

By the way, generous public, if you wonder if you are being ripped off ... just "touch" the vendor for its authenticity certificate.

just don't donate to online charities. i don't trust a one of 'em. no no no

you can give in RL locations so easily, and even get a real (one with a signature from an actual employee), filable receipt for a tax write-off.

The president of the American Red Cross earns well into the 6 figure range.

not that such a position doesn't earn it ('cause i don't know what they do) for that sort of thing, but in this case you can donate time, not money. kind of like girl scout cookies. what a scam!

I think their justification is to allow them to lure prospective executives from the corporate sector.

I think its rather nonsensical. Give the president a comfortable life for where they live, sure. But the head of a charity if not a CEO of a company, and should not be making CEO money. They work for a charity.

i totally concur. i have never understood this logic, nor the tolerance for it by the very donaters being fooled.

It seems that the SLX staff have taken appropriate action, as the article is no longer accessible on the site.

Well if you're too naive to fall for these scams (RL or SL) you money might be better in their hands

WOW a urban myth in a SL thread, you know that thousands of Americans have exactly the same story, if all those people turned up for the plane or turned into work early that day half the population of America would be dead.

Of course Sling I realise your being sincere.

Yea, I don't really get that. Some of those people make huge amounts and only 2% to 3% goes to the actual charity. I remember one CEO saying once, "if it wasn't for us they wouldnt get anything". Just loved his train of thought.

I met a couple of this type of scumbags in real life. The sold magazines that was supposed to help combat veterans. They sat in bars drinking all the money they made. Pathetic. X(

:\ same excuse/thinkin' i guess when they give oil ceo's 100+ million pension packages. "hey, i -need- all that stinkin' fat money!!'

Same thing happens in real life. Last year in Lake County (Ohio) someone who was working for the Salvation Army (bell ringer) stole the money from the pot and got busted. The judge out here is cool and does creative sentencing. Since the Salvation Army helps the homeless the judge forced the guy (with a GPS) to spend a few nights out on the streets like a homeless person .

I was interested in this thread because I am setting a place in SL for a RL non-profit. Part of the sticky part I am running into is being able to take accounting of the money taken in. I'm doing the building as a labor of love and want everything to be above board.

Might be an idea to have a community based group check on charity in SL.

As do the heads of most large charities. People complain about the same thing in the National Health Service in the UK.

Of course, you can hire less competent, less well qualified people to run these massive organisations for less money; but I suspect that the cost in organisational inefficiency if you did that would far outweigh what you saved on their salary. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys, as the old saying goes.

But that's actually true. Efficient business management of the organisation and effective marketting nets the charity many many times more what the salaries of qualified people cost. Do you really think a big organisation like that can work on just unqualified volunteers alone?

Of course not except we're talking about charity here. I also have the right to expect my hard earned money, which I am donating to a charitable cause, to go toward alleviating that charitable cause and not toward the salaries of greedy big wigs.

If you do not possess the compassion or do not possess the heart to willingly volunteer your time and expertise to that charitable cause, then go get you another job and leave those with a more humanitarian perspective to actually volunteer their time, knowledge, experience, and generosity toward that cause.

To be working for a charity yet expecting to be paid a six figure salary is the epitome of hypocrisy.

You miss the point - people with the compassion and generosity don't neccessarily have the knowledge and experience. Your money would not be helping anyone if there were no experienced administrators to actually implement the schemes that the money is for. Massive organisations like the Red Cross don't run on good intentions.

I miss the point?

Are you saying there are no people in the world, or in any particular nation, possessing the requisite knowledge and experience who have the necessary compassion and generosity to volunteer their services to these charities?

Do you realize that it is exactly these types of people who should have not only the time, but the money and resources to fill these positions. They don't need the money. In many cases, they are retired CEO's or the equivalents who could never spend the fortune they and their families have amassed through the ages. If they can't do it full-time, they can certainly have the positions staffed by an employee.

Charity contributions should be going to the charity. Period.

But I digress, I don't mean to burst any bubbles.

This kind of thing has a *disastrous* side effect.

Due to the prevalence of scams, or well-intentioned people perpetuating someone else's scam, I have a major blockade enforced when people ask to get involved with the Caledon community:

"Prove it is the real charity."

This is incredibly difficult for most avatars real charities to do, it seems. Too much bureaucracy.

I ask for any kind of reasonable proof, such as a mention of an avatar in Second Life on an official charity website. There have been some people who have tried for *weeks* and can't get anything - people even I'm sure are legitimate but I cannot prove it to others.

Yet I'm afraid of 'bending the rule' because of what could happen sooner or later. With millions of $L on the table from the good people of Caledon doing fundraisers, 'I'm sorry' wouldn't be good enough. The scammers hurt the charities more than the people they scam.

So far, this issue has largely limited us to RFL.

Red Cross contributions pay for many things. My sister works for them drawing blood. You couldn't get someone to volunteer for what she does, not and have them stay for more than a week.

You are assuming that people who make large six figure incomes are actually that much more competent at organization.

Pretty big assumption since there is a large amount of evidence to the contrary.