Support Ukraine

[RUSSELL5000]

Good morning.

I am working through ways in which I can support Ukraine. One way is through monetary donation. I realize this is not the Politics forum; this is not intended to be a political conversation; I have no desire to discuss the politics involved.

I have been doing some research, but as often happens with the modern miracle of the internet I am overloaded with information and it is difficult to assess the quality of that information. My question is whether anyone is already familiar with a good organization to whom I could donate to support Ukraine.

I would appreciate the experience and insight of anyone who may know more than I do.

Thank you for the consideration.

 

[Cummins12V98]

Don't buy Russian Vodka

 

[Topzide]

Samaritans Purse is a good outfit! They're setting up just across the border in Poland. Packing up a field hospital in the Carolina's to go over and hoping that a cease fire happens so that they can cross into Ukraine!!!!!!!!

 

[RUSSELL5000]

Thank you for the ideas. I do not care for vodka and cannot remember when I last purchased any. However, a good underlying point, and I will be more conscious of my spending to do the best I can to not allow any profit to make its way back to Russia. I am going to look into the origin of the fuel and natural gas I buy, although I cannot imagine that is sourced from Russia where I am located.

Samaritan's Purse appears to be a good suggestion - thank you. It appears that roughly 90% of donated dollars are direct benefit dollars - a good proportion. I reviewed a number of sources and not some quibbling about the reaming 10%, but 90% direct benefit is good. Thank you for the idea.

 

[TDRAdmin4]

Thread cleaned up, politics removed and the person who started it is taking time off. Remember folks, the only place for politics on TDR is the political forum, and it's for TDR members only.

 

[Topzide]

Need to research the Polish organizations that are helping at their border. Seen some good things happening at the crossings and the outpouring of support at train stations. Here's a link to some to check into, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/list-polish-ukrainian-organizations-collecting-support-andy-sikorski.
There's Polish Red Cross and Polish UNICEF to name a couple.

 

[endoscott]

World Central Kitchen is putting out thousands of hot meals for these folks. WCK looks pretty good-85.7% of their money goes directly to the programs, 5% for Admin, and under 10% for fundraising. Charity Navigator breaks down financials for all of these non-profits. The guy that started WCK was started by chef Jose Andres. He is passionate about helping feed people affected by disasters.

 

[RUSSELL5000]

Thank you to Topzide and endoscott. Did further research, utilized Charity Navigator, compared, and evaluated. Did indeed settle on World Central Kitchen and Samaritan's Purse. What I wanted to ensure was that my contribution was used efficiently (i.e., low proportion of donation going to administration and fundraising).

I also researched where my gas/fuel and natural gas comes from. I am in northwestern Pennsylvania and all natural gas I purchase is domestic. I normally buy gas/fuel at a chain called Country Fair, which is owned by United Refining, based in Warren, PA. United Refining had utilized imports in the past, but shifted away following consumer criticism for utilizing import stocks from Venezuela. As best as I can tell, United Refining now utilizes domestic stocks or sometimes Canadian import stocks. I think it would be a pretty time-consuming task to nail down the origin of gas/fuel all across the country. Doing so just for my little area took a bit of work, and am not sure I have an accurate picture.

I was a little surprised to see that the US imported any crude oil from Russia, so I looked it up:

Crude oil imports from Russia began following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russian imports topped out at about 4% of utilization and have generally come down as share of utilization from domestic sources has grown. I note that the US ceased the import of crude oil from Venezuela in 2019; the December 2018 import volume from Venezuela was 17.5 million barrels. The December 2021 import volume from Russia was 12.6 million barrels.

As far as boycotts go, the Office of the United States Trade Representative lists 2019 goods imports from Russia of $22.3 Billion and services imports of $1.8 Billion. Those are huge dollars to me, but small in comparison to 2019 total goods imports of $2.5 Trillion and services imports of $0.6 Trillion.

 

[bcbender]

Thanks for the graph Russel..

Too bad we cant be transparent on everything (or anything these days), from your data it would be a drip in the bucket and of no real impact if we stopped importing Russian crude tomorrow as its only 1% of our domestic production to date.

 

[RUSSELL5000]

bcbender,

My primary interest was to determine whether or not any of my individual spending was finding its way back to Russia; I choose to not to make a purchase that will support Russia. What I learned is this is a far easier thing to say then to do in practice.

To your point, I think we can easily discontinue imports from Russia. The following chart shows the number of active crude oil drilling rigs in the US; the light blue bars are the 2008-2010 recession and the covid shut down period in the first and second quarters of 2020.

We are definitely on an upward trend, and so I would think we could easily replace imports from Russia. If the active rig count grows at the same rate in 2022 that it did in 2021 then we would end 2022 around 890 rigs. This data ends at January 2022, but the Baker Hughes rig count as of March indicates that the upward trend continues. I assume that much more needs to happen to replace the fuel sitting in a tank at the local service station, but certainly seems possible to stop imports of Russian crude oil to me with negligible negative impact and likely positive impact.

 

[bcbender]

It is very interesting information of volume and timing for the production... Seems like you said an easy thing to shut off and should be no real impact to our wallets... makes you wonder why the big deal, seems inflation and panic are the drivers here.

 

[Mark31]

My (Southern Baptist) church is a mission's oriented fellowship. Over 70% of our total receipts goes to missions. We help to support local pastors in Romania and Poland. The one from Poland was on Fox Streaming last week. Yesterday, a missionary we have helped to support for 40 years gave his report on the work. At dinner, I asked him about Samaritan's Purse. To save a long story, he recommended them without reservation.

 

[endoscott]

That charity looks pretty good, 5.3% Admin cost and 7.7% for fundraising. The only thing I see that I find irritating is the CEO (William Franklin Graham) is pulling down $661,000 salary. Yeah, I know, he has to administer a large amount of money so he is getting compensated for his skillset, I know the argument. If he was donating a lot/all of that back to Samaritan's Purse, then it would have 100% of my enthusiastic support. I mean the dude has net worth of $12 million.....

 

[Mark31]

That charity looks pretty good, 5.3% Admin cost and 7.7% for fundraising. The only thing I see that I find irritating is the CEO (William Franklin Graham) is pulling down $661,000 salary. Yeah, I know, he has to administer a large amount of money so he is getting compensated for his skillset, I know the argument. If he was donating a lot/all of that back to Samaritan's Purse, then it would have 100% of my enthusiastic support. I mean the dude has net worth of $12 million.....

I very much understand your line of reasoning. I think a lot of his wealth comes from his book sales. A service mission that operates even in some "closed" countries got in a bind partially because of the accidental death of a vital person. Samaritan's Purse/Franklin Graham made a most significant contribution to keep this work going. The mission is healthy and thriving now. I wish I could tell more, but the internet is open for EVERYONE (friends and enemies) to see.