General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I knew KONY 2012 was too good to be true. [View all]Mosby
(19,491 posts)On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse?), but you clearly wont stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:
Stop sending me that video.
The organization behind Kony 2012 Invisible Children Inc. is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called misleading, naive, and dangerous by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes. They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureaus standards.
Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they wont let their financials be independently audited. Thats not a good thing. In fact, its a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money youre sending them is going.
By ICs own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many cant seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone theyve ever known.
http://thedailywh.at/2012/03/07/on-kony-2012-2/