act!onaid. End twattery. Together

act!onaid used to be Austcare. Nice to see the char!ty has enough money to blow on a stup!d piece of rebranding to act!onaid. That alone should cause most people to g!ve them the f!nger rather than money from now on.

The!r latest wheeze is to ask for money to do someth!ng about rape in Afr!ca. Apparently there are an estimated 500,000 rapes in South Africa every year and half of all South African women will be raped during their lifetime. Only 1 in 25 men charged with rape go to ja!l. That's what act!onaid are telling us.

I have a simple solution. Give African women a handgun each.

Funnily enough, I found this report:

The incidence of murder, attempted murder and rape dropped over the past year, according to the South African Police Service's 2007/08 annual report, tabled at parliament.

The number of murders dropped from 19 202 in the previous year to 18 487, attempted murders from 20 142 to 18 795, and rapes from 39 304 to 36 190.

That's a nasty number of rapes. Give woman handguns - preferably powerful handguns - teach them how to use them and get them started on shooting attepted rapists. I say "attempted" because it's hard to go through with a rape when you've got 11 or 12 9mm slugs in your chest.

Anyway, act!onaid is using an unsubstantiated number of "500,000" rapes in South Africa per year as a lever to open our wallets. They will get away with that by saying, "Many rapes go unreported". I believe that to be true - many crimes go unreported. But what they are suggesting is that only 7% of all rapes in South Africa get reported each year. It's possible that they are confusing surveys that ask women about whether they have been sexual assaulted with rape. I won't profess to know the answer. Let me just state that I am sceptical of their numbers.

Here is a great l!ne from one of their begging letters:

We will take sides with the poor. And that can mean standing up against the rich.

I decided to have a look at their last annual report.

During the year, Austcare engaged the services of a trader for the purposes of face-to-face fundraising. Austcare commenced face-to-face fundraising in 2007, and the net amount of revenue raised has been negative as anticipated due to the upfront nature of the costs involved in face-to-face fundraising. Austcare expects that 2009 will return a positive amount of net revenue from face-to-face fundraising.

They paid the trader $232,000 to raise $185,000...... ie, they went backwards by fortyseven grand.

I was unable to find out how much they pay Archie Law, the CEO, but I did find this nugget:

Executives

Archie Law – Chief Executive Officer (appointed on 1 April 2008)
Greg Taylor – Chief Financial Officer (appointed on 14 January 2008)

In addition to a salary, the Company also provides non-cash benefits to key management personnel, and contributes to a post-employment defined contribution superannuation fund on their behalf.

The key management personnel compensation included in ‘employee expenses’ are as follows:

Short-term employee benefits $354,015
Post-employment benefits $24,078
Total $378,092

I take it from reading that section that the CEO and CFO split a paltry $354,015 in salary between them. Assuming a 60/40 split favouring the CEO, Archie is making $212,000 per year. Even on a 50/50 split, he'd be on $177,000. Plus Super. No mention is made of any other "key management personnel", so I have to assume that all those costs are attributable to just two positions.

Sorry, let me repeat that line from his begging letter:

And that can mean standing up against the rich.

Excuse me while I vom!t in a bucket. He earns at least $177,000, plus Super, and tells us that we need to stand up against the rich? Is an income of $177,000 qualify you as being poor these days?

This though might blow you away:

Public donations - $2,007,315
Costs to raise those donations - $1,002,507
Admin costs - $873,390.

If it wasn't for the government throwing around $6 million their way, act!onaid would have had just over a hundred grand to spend on charitable causes.

And just remember, 43% of those "admin costs" are taken up by the salary and Super for the CEO and CFO.

I need another bucket.