— Warren Buffett
The Making A Difference Foundation is a philanthropic fund in partnership with the El Dorado Community Foundation, an accredited non-profit organization under Section 501 ( c) 3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions from individuals, businesses and corporations are generally tax-deductible for the donor.
Tax-deductible gifting supports many worthy organizations. However, when donating to a charity, do you often question what happens to your money? You assume it’s helping those in need. Often it does. But unfortunately, many charities spend more on fundraising and overhead than providing services to the needy.
According to Charity Watch, founded in 1992 as the American Institute of Philanthropy, the cost of professional fundraising can go as high as 50% of total dollars collected. Operation and management expenses may also be significant.
Consider the 2024 compensation for the CEO of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center was $6.9 million. City of Hope paid $ 5.4 million to their CEO and Boys and Girls Clubs of America paid their president $2.2 million.
With 1.5 million registered charities in the US, fundraising and operational costs can be vastly different, however, on average it’s estimated that less than 50% of donated dollars directly benefits the intended recipients.
To some, a benefit of philanthropy is the knowledge your gifting is helping others in need. But how do you know where your donation is directed? Does it provide shelter and counseling for the homeless or needle exchange injection sites? Are donations directed at the needs of the local community or distant urban centers? How would you know?
The Making A Difference Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of individuals and charitable organizations in need.
A recent study at UC Davis Center for Neuroscience discovered an interesting relationship between gifting and brain activity. Researchers performed functional MRI scans on donors’ brains after they had donated money.
The part of the brain that controls feelings of reward and pleasure lit up. This is called the mesolimbic system, which is also activated by things like food, drugs, and sex.
But that’s just the physiology of it. There’s also a growing body of research that links different types of giving to greater quality of life, including the following potential health benefits.
Much of the research focuses on volunteering for organizations or informally helping loved ones. Researchers consistently find that these activities can lead to greater self-esteem, life satisfaction, and sense of purpose.
Younger adults may not benefit as much as older adults because they are more likely to volunteer out of obligation. (For example, they may feel they have to help out at their children's school.) Older adults are more likely to seek out purposeful volunteer roles in their communities.
But volunteering can give a sense of purpose to people of all ages.
Perhaps because of such positive feelings, giving may decrease your risk of depression and depressive symptoms such as sadness or lack of energy.
One study of older adults found that those who helped their loved ones experienced greater feelings of personal control over their lives. This feeling, in turn, decreased the likelihood that they would experience depressive symptoms.
Another study, on people coping with grief after the loss of a spouse, found that those who provided practical assistance to others (such as money, transportation or help with chores) recovered more quickly from depressive symptoms caused by their grief.
Depression and lack of self-esteem have both been linked with heart disease and other health conditions. This link may partially explain why volunteering can lead to both better mental health and better physical health.
One study randomly divided 100 students into a group of volunteers and a group of non-volunteers. At the beginning of the study, the volunteers and non-volunteers had equal body mass index (BMI) and cholesterol levels. Afterward, those who had been assigned to volunteer once a week for two months (helping out with after-school programs for younger children) ended up with lower LDL ("bad") cholesterol and a lower average BMI.
The researchers suggested that the volunteers' improvements in mood and self-esteem after might help explain their improved physical health, since these psychological and physical factors have been linked in other studies.
Research on middle-aged and older adults, for example, has had similar findings. Middle-aged volunteers appear to have less belly fat, better cholesterol levels and lower blood sugar, compared with non-volunteers. And older adults who volunteer are less likely to have high blood pressure. This means, in turn, that they have lower risk for heart disease and stroke.
Working toward a goal and feeling like you are contributing to society likely increases your sense of purpose in life, which ... contributes to both psychological and physical health.
Even if you already have heart disease, giving your time may have protective benefits. That was the finding of another study in which adults with heart disease who had spent up to 200 hours helping others in the previous year were less likely to have a heart attack or die in the following two years.
The above study was one of many in which researchers have linked giving to decreased mortality, or risk of death. The link might have something to do with the sense of purpose it can bring. Researchers linked having a sense of purpose to lower mortality among older adults.
"Volunteering provides many older people with a deep sense of meaning," says Patricia Boyle, PhD, a Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center neuropsychologist who led that research. "Working toward a goal and feeling like you are making a contribution to society likely increases your sense of purpose in life, which we have found contributes to both psychological and physical health."
John F. Kennedy
