But how much actually goes to the project?
Funny you asked. Actually it’s not, because that question is top of mind for most people when they donate to a charity. And fair enough too; a donation is your hard-earned money that you are choosing to part with because you believe, if spent wisely, it has the power to change someone’s life.
You don’t want to hand it over to a charity CEO so they can take a first-class flight to a conference in Dubai. Or produce a shiny, expensive brochure. Or pay for boring ol’ web hosting. You want your money to pay for the project on the ground, the stuff that really matters. Not marketing, not staff salaries, and certainly not travel expenses. These all come under the unpleasant umbrella of ‘overheads’. Blugh. Even the mention of the word ‘overhead’ evokes feelings of corruption and wasted resources that should be spent on The Project.
And at Just Peoples we agreed with that notion wholeheartedly. We kept our overheads hidden away from donors and created a separate funding stream for them, so that people could have the golden experience of knowing that 100% of their donations were going to The Project. Our 100% model was a badge we wore with pride. Bigger charities took a percentage of donations to cover their own costs, but not us! We sent all the money we received to the project leader and ran our organisation on the smell of an oily rag, we’d brag.
And so we’d skimp on comms, rely on thousands of volunteer hours each month, and do our admin manually instead of wasting resources on efficient systems that cost money. We were willing to work round the clock to design our own promotional materials to save money on marketing, so The Project could have every last dollar.
Maasai children with disabilities receive physiotherapy and mosquito nets to prevent malaria.
So yes. The 100% model sounds utopian, but sadly it doesn’t consider all the work, time and costs that go into getting projects ready for funding. So even though projects do get funded, the organisation is running at limited capacity, which ultimately limits the number of people we can support.
The 100% model keeps us busy with admin tasks that could be automated if we could afford better systems. Precious time that could be spent getting more projects funded. It also means we lose the skills and passion of our incredible volunteers as their energy necessarily goes into paid work outside of Just Peoples.
But most importantly, it keeps our impact on global poverty small. Without including our overheads in project revenue, our resources are drained after reaching just a few thousand people. And we want to tackle global poverty!
If we have the potential to scale and lift more people out of poverty, it feels like a crime not to.
Don’t worry, we’re not about to start flying first class, even if Covid would let us. We’re going to start incorporating some of our running costs into project targets, so that as our projects get funded, the resources it takes to get them funded are replenished. This way we can scale hand in hand with our impact on the ground, reaching ever more people in poverty. It’s a beautiful mathematical equation.
In practice this means that next time you donate $100 to a Just Peoples project, instead of $100 being sent to the project by a headless volunteer using software from the 1990s, $87.50 will be sent to the project leader by a motivated staffer who’s worked efficiently to get the project funded. The value of her work is recognised by her well-resourced and scalable organisation that is able to deliver exponential funding to grassroots projects.
So now we’re looking our beautiful overheads in the eye, and saying ‘you are worthy’. We’re acknowledging how valuable our operations are in reducing poverty and giving them the attention - and funding - they deserve. Because this is the only way we can really take on global poverty and kick it to the past.
So to answer your question; how much actually goes to the project? All of it! 87.5% goes to the work happening on the ground, and 12.5% pays for everything that Just Peoples needs to do to make that happen.
Thank you for trusting us with your money. We promise to use 100% of it to improve the lives of people all around our lovely world.
Ugandan women after a literacy class
Just Peoples team talk business with Bangladeshi project leader
Indonesian kids attend free preschool