Free doesn’t imply better outcomes or efficiency (doesn’t imply the reverse either).

Imagine a charity could hire someone that would 100x the amount of donations, whether that’s through more effective marketing, connections, etc. how much should a charity be willing to pay for that?

Depends, are they just shifting donations from other non-profits doing work without paid overhead?

At that scale, aren't we talking more about systemic problems?

The charity is about need. If it is also about that kind of growth, there is serious need.

We may be better served by a policy change so that charity remains at a lean scale.

Yes, there are massive systemic problems everywhere. Feel free to go ahead and policy change away the war, disease, hunger, homelessness and so on if you can do that?

That's exactly the progressives plan. We can't get at all of that, and for sure, not at once.

But, there can be much better basics in place for people, and with those, a reduced need for charity to somehow perform at very large scale.

It can target, operate locally more, all good.

Disease, hunger, homelessness are all massive artifacts of long overdue policy reforms in the US.

Such small operations typically can't scale and have greater difficulty dealing with emergencies.

You don't need to scale. How many churches are in LA? When I was homeless over there when I was younger, there were spots all over the city that were feeding the homeless. You don't need one giant entity. You just need the community to care. If your community doesn't care no amount of money is going to fix it.

Scale and agility matter during emergencies, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes. In such circumstances, the smaller local organizations are affected by the same problem.

We are not talking about an emergency though. We're talking about regular food drives. Donating to emergencies if a different matter. And if your city is underwater, get your ass out there and help.

While the article is about general food drives, emergencies do introduce a bigger problem of scale and management that come and go quickly.

I volunteer with and donate to a group - https://adrn.org/ - and that's what we do. When Hurricane Harvey hit, they (I was traveling) mobilized 150+ churches around central Texas to support the coast with food, supplies, and transportation immediately after it hit. Further, we've supported cleanup operations and helped get people back on their feet.

One of the things I've helped with directly is developer our playbook so other groups worldwide can learn from what we've done and build the infrastructure and relationships to prepare in advance.

By working with smaller organizations, the closest to the problem, you get great perspective but backed by larger teams who can coordinate across a city, region, or country.

It's business management + crisis response.

I will say though, after the damage is done and its been x amount of time and there is no immediate danger. There is not too much physical donations that can help, but again that's not a food drive problem.

Yeah, they DO need to scale or there wouldn't still be people in LA and everywhere else going hungry.

I'm a Christian who proudly supports our local church's food bank (no strings attached, walk in and take food) -- but I recognize that the Church can't do it alone.

The church down the street from me has it's own food bank (with actual staff, the leader earns $57k according to guidestar) and is also partnered with a local food bank network. It's not like these things run in isolation of each other or are necessarily running that differently just because it's a church.

> Or I can donate to a church that is doing all of it for free.

People donate a ton of money to churches.

No religious flamewar please.

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