Which is a worthier charity of your donations: the Wikimedia Foundation or Pets with Disabilities?

The Today show did a story this morning about Pets with Disabilities. They take in handicapped dogs that would otherwise be put down and try to find homes for them. Predictably, only a very small percentage of those dogs get placed.Which is a worthier charity of your donations: the Wikimedia Foundation or Pets with Disabilities?Sounds like Pets with Disabilities would make you feel better about your donation than donating to a website whose most popular pages center on sex- and porn-related images.



My concern with both organizations would be how much of their revenues are they spending on program services. We all know Wikimedia's abysmal 31.5% ratio. But, Pets with Disabilities also seems to be spending too little of 2008's revenues... preferring to set aside that money for future initiatives:



http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/20鈥?/a>



If I were you, I would go for funding a more efficient animal-friendly non-profit, such as your local SPCA. For example, according to GuideStar, my local Pennsylvania SPCA has a program efficiency of nearly 78%:



http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments//2鈥?/a>



In my opinion, that's better accounting of money than either Wikimedia or the Pets with Disabilities program.Which is a worthier charity of your donations: the Wikimedia Foundation or Pets with Disabilities?
Looking only at the stated goals of both organizations, I would have to say Wikimedia. Making the sum of knowledge available for all humans, as opposed to saving the lives of a few dogs, that sure sounds like a worthier goal.



Having a lofty goal is useless if you don't do anything towards it. I saw on the Today show website footage of dogs on wheels acting just as happy as if they were perfectly healthy. I look at the Wikipedia website and I see a sum of half-truths and outright lies.



From where I'm sitting, Pets with Disabilities is the charity worthier of my donations.Which is a worthier charity of your donations: the Wikimedia Foundation or Pets with Disabilities?Measuring worthiness by results, I'd have to say Pets With Disabilities, but not by much. Wikimedia provides tools with which students cheat themselves out of an education, while Pets With Disabilities helps a species of animal that is in no danger of extinction. The only reason I would donate to PWD would be if I felt guilty about hurting a dog, while the only reason I'd donate to WMF would be if I was insane.Which is a worthier charity of your donations: the Wikimedia Foundation or Pets with Disabilities?
Maybe we should all feel guilty about hurt dogs. Last time I went to the shelter, I rejected a blind dog, a three-legged dog, and two ugly dogs. I'm making a donation to Pets With Disablities right after I finish here.



I would donate to Wikipedia if I knew it was all going to the website. I'm willing to donate so Jimbo can fly first class, but I'm not going to pay for him to fly his own jet.Which is a worthier charity of your donations: the Wikimedia Foundation or Pets with Disabilities?The Wikimedia Foundation, because disabled dogs will soon die, but the sum of human knowledge made free for the world will live forever!Which is a worthier charity of your donations: the Wikimedia Foundation or Pets with Disabilities?
petsWhich is a worthier charity of your donations: the Wikimedia Foundation or Pets with Disabilities?
There's no objective answer to that question. I already know that you oppose the Wikimedia Foundation in general, so I won't either try to convince you that the WMF is better, or play into your hand by saying the other charity is better. You're clearly trying to make a point, since you posted this question in the Wikipedia section. Instead, I will inform you on a thought process that might help you reach your own conclusion, knowing full well that you already have one.



First, you need to consider what makes a cause worthy. Charitable causes are so because they represent ultimately altruistic attempts to improve society or its environment in some way. First decide whether you agree with the substance of the mission. Wikimedia's mission is, roughly, to foster the development of free and open information. Pets with Disabilities is about finding homes for disabled animals instead of euthanizing them. Depending on your bioethical stance, you may not find Pets with Disabilities' mission to be particularly important (suppose you ignore the anthropomorphization of pets and consider animals to have no ethical rights), and depending on your epistemic perspective you may disdain Wikimedia's mission.



Second, you want to consider where on your personal hierarchy these missions fall. Some people particularly value knowledge, some value helping the poor, some value caring for disabled animals, that sort of thing. You might want to consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs, for example. Of course, that can go either way, since you might realize that a shallow pyramid of hierarchy (i.e. biased toward low-level needs) in donations to all causes could indicate an unrequited worthiness for a cause serving high-level needs.



Finally, you want to consider the relative effectiveness of each cause. Is a charity doing work that no other charity does? I'm sure there are other pet-related charities, though there certainly aren't significant competitors to Wikimedia's projects, in most languages at least. Do the charities use their money reasonably? Do they support the efforts of other, similar projects if such exist? Are they transparent?



Ultimately, your comparison is apples and oranges. Sure, they're both fruit, but asking which one is better is largely subjective. Make up your own mind, but try to think rationally about your decision.