Philanthropy Starting In Chile

[Julito]

Interesting thread, philanthopy "starting" in Chile.

It's been happening in Chile for years and being done by Chileans. For example my stepson for the last 3 plus years has worked for a group of philanthropic Santiago architects who fund parks, playgrounds and community gardens in poor areas in the South including an effective scheme for ongoing funding from local corporate sponsers. The communities are thus provided with local support to further develop what they've been provided.

One recent project the tentative corporate sponsor decided to fund the entire deal.

As to people being "too poor" to patch a hole in the roof, have a decent chimney or insulation, they can invariably afford to feed 2 or more dogs. It's a simple matter of priorities as they see them. Culture....

[nwdiver]

50k to get there? What's that 10 first class tickets......I don't get it, the review is flawed so why put it up?

[admin]

well first, that is not how techos primarily works. most of their money is localy sourced from chileans and chilean companies. most the labor is local volunteers (mostly highschool and university students, local community members, etc). they build low cost emergency type houses, and they also build entire perment communitiies in track home fashion. think i also seen them building apartment buildings a few years ago in urban areas. it is literally about getting a roof over people's head first.

that said, bringing potential donors to spend some time seeing what an organization does is a very tried and true method of raising funds. they come to latin america, smash their fingers with hammer for week or two, go home, send more money, tell their friends. yea, typicaly not very productive as far as directly building houses, but made up for in confidence among donors that their money is going somewhere usefull.

i always loved an answer that jimmy carter gave in an interview about habitat for humanity. he was asked if he was concerned about amitures building houses. he said, "where a professional might put in one nail, we put in two".

but your missing the point. what would cost a foriegner just arriving millions of dollars to stand-up an effective organization to do something from scratch, and probably not be very effective in the end, the local organizations already have the infrastructure to put the money to work.

more importantly, do no harm.

do you know how the goverment subsidized housing and social services point system works?

because if you don't, you can cause people to loose their benfits. worse the people you are trying to "help" could be charged with fraud (they regularly prosecute people for housing subsidy fraud)?

do you know that most activities that a 501c(3) in the united states is allowed to do (e.g. own and operate for profit buisnesses), is actualy a criminal offence in chile?

do you know about the audits for none-profits? you make one mistake and you are wrong side of the tax authority and money laundering laws.

I was on the board of directors of a u.s. 501(c)3 in the u.s. many years ago. one of our members set it up over the phone with the u.s. IRS in an hour.

In chile your looking at about $50,000 u.s. and 6 months to a year, at a minum. that is just sufficient paperwork to get you in a lot of trouble. there are strictly enforced rules and regulations about the type of activities, sotrce of funds, yearly audits, and much more.

why?

because in the united states ( especially), and much of the world, historically, NGO's have been little more than tax evasion, money laundering, and just outright scams (e.g. Trump foundation, american red cross).

chile does not play that game.

why?

Do you see the neighborhood we are in?

i am sure the Pablo Escobar family foundation would love to help you fix some roofs in chile. i am also sure their are many "family" foundations out of places like Panama and Uruguay that would also help. Are you prepared to drop a million dollars a year just vetting sources of donations?

it is not an accident that Douglas Tompkins, after all his years in chile, and the millions of dollars he invested in his enviromental project, still mostly used private corporations.

so, think long and hard about how much it costs to put a nail in a roof in chile first.

If you are still asking what a temporary RUT number is good for, your not even remotely in the game. so go fix a hole in a roof in the united states. for everyone's sake. otherwise you are just a tourist draining resources and doing more damage than good.

[admin]

oh, almost forgot.

forget speaking Spanish. as an american, trying to bring a bunch of donated american money, you better get fluent in FATCA first.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign ... liance_Act


https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporat ... -act-fatca

i am very sure the u.s. irs is wize to using none profits to off shore and hide money.

[eeuunikkeiexpat]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12- ... k-paycheck

[questionsasked]

Interesting thread, philanthopy "starting" in Chile.

It's been happening in Chile for years and being done by Chileans. For example my stepson for the last 3 plus years has worked for a group of philanthropic Santiago architects who fund parks, playgrounds and community gardens in poor areas in the South including an effective scheme for ongoing funding from local corporate sponsers. The communities are thus provided with local support to further develop what they've been provided.

One recent project the tentative corporate sponsor decided to fund the entire deal.

As to people being "too poor" to patch a hole in the roof, have a decent chimney or insulation, they can invariably afford to feed 2 or more dogs. It's a simple matter of priorities as they see them. Culture....

good point, thanks for the information.

[questionsasked]

well first, that is not how techos primarily works. most of their money is localy sourced from chileans and chilean companies. most the labor is local volunteers (mostly highschool and university students, local community members, etc). they build low cost emergency type houses, and they also build entire perment communitiies in track home fashion. think i also seen them building apartment buildings a few years ago in urban areas. it is literally about getting a roof over people's head first.

that said, bringing potential donors to spend some time seeing what an organization does is a very tried and true method of raising funds. they come to latin america, smash their fingers with hammer for week or two, go home, send more money, tell their friends. yea, typicaly not very productive as far as directly building houses, but made up for in confidence among donors that their money is going somewhere usefull.

i always loved an answer that jimmy carter gave in an interview about habitat for humanity. he was asked if he was concerned about amitures building houses. he said, "where a professional might put in one nail, we put in two".

but your missing the point. what would cost a foriegner just arriving millions of dollars to stand-up an effective organization to do something from scratch, and probably not be very effective in the end, the local organizations already have the infrastructure to put the money to work.

more importantly, do no harm.

do you know how the goverment subsidized housing and social services point system works?

because if you don't, you can cause people to loose their benfits. worse the people you are trying to "help" could be charged with fraud (they regularly prosecute people for housing subsidy fraud)?

do you know that most activities that a 501c(3) in the united states is allowed to do (e.g. own and operate for profit buisnesses), is actualy a criminal offence in chile?

do you know about the audits for none-profits? you make one mistake and you are wrong side of the tax authority and money laundering laws.

I was on the board of directors of a u.s. 501(c)3 in the u.s. many years ago. one of our members set it up over the phone with the u.s. IRS in an hour.

In chile your looking at about $50,000 u.s. and 6 months to a year, at a minum. that is just sufficient paperwork to get you in a lot of trouble. there are strictly enforced rules and regulations about the type of activities, sotrce of funds, yearly audits, and much more.

why?

because in the united states ( especially), and much of the world, historically, NGO's have been little more than tax evasion, money laundering, and just outright scams (e.g. Trump foundation, american red cross).

chile does not play that game.

why?

Do you see the neighborhood we are in?

i am sure the Pablo Escobar family foundation would love to help you fix some roofs in chile. i am also sure their are many "family" foundations out of places like Panama and Uruguay that would also help. Are you prepared to drop a million dollars a year just vetting sources of donations?

it is not an accident that Douglas Tompkins, after all his years in chile, and the millions of dollars he invested in his enviromental project, still mostly used private corporations.

so, think long and hard about how much it costs to put a nail in a roof in chile first.

If you are still asking what a temporary RUT number is good for, your not even remotely in the game. so go fix a hole in a roof in the united states. for everyone's sake. otherwise you are just a tourist draining resources and doing more damage than good.

Are you always such a negative person? I came onto the forum asking how to set up a legal entity to do philanthropy work in Chile.

[admin]

We constantly get people calling us up, and wanting to argue with our advice. We simply ask them, "do you want us to tell you what you want to hear, or do you want our professional advice based on our years of experience in Chile"?

Telling you what you want to hear is very easy.

It will all be wine, roses, and rainbows. It will cost you nothing. You will do great things to help people that really need it, and are not just ripping you off. The government will meet you at the airport with a red carpet and roses. President Pinera will get down and kiss the ground you walk on.

Good luck with that.

One thing that Chile does very well, is separate fools from their money.

[admin]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12- ... k-paycheck

Yea, I would like to see someone do a proper breakout of American living costs vs. medium income. $59,000 U.S. medium income sounds all great and all developed, except if it cost $100,000 a year to live; or, worse. You are not spending what you need to live (e.g. retirement, health care, etc) because you are deficit spending your future. Not seeing a doctor now, cost you years off your life later; or, you are not saving for retirement, to pay rent now.

I would like to see a more detailed assessment than the political number the U.S. government uses of $12,000 U.S. poverty line, that has magically almost never moved; or even that 24,000 U.S. that economist double just to get close to a realistic poverty line. I think I seen something go by the other day, that each american's debt share was $11,000 in 2018.

Something like a total cost of living number.

[at46]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12- ... k-paycheck

Yea, I would like to see someone do a proper breakout of American living costs vs. medium income. $59,000 U.S. medium income sounds all great and all developed, except if it cost $100,000 a year to live; or, worse. You are not spending what you need to live (e.g. retirement, health care, etc) because you are deficit spending your future. Not seeing a doctor now, cost you years off your life later; or, you are not saving for retirement, to pay rent now.

I would like to see a more detailed assessment than the political number the U.S. government uses of $12,000 U.S. poverty line, that has magically almost never moved; or even that 24,000 U.S. that economist double just to get close to a realistic poverty line. I think I seen something go by the other day, that each american's debt share was $11,000 in 2018.

Something like a total cost of living number.

Here's a good discussion on finding value in the stock market. https://seekingalpha.com/article/423053 ... block=true Someone said he'd jump on a stock with 5x P/E if he can find it, but the difference between a 20x and 25x P/E is really meaningless if you're looking for true value.

Using this as analogy, US minimum wage, poverty line or true cost of living are meaningless when the entire country is priced at 25x but has no earnings to show for it.

You can set these at any number, but would those numbers be deserving or honestly earned? That is the question.

[admin]

initeresting argument that the u.s. GDP is in fact 1/3 or more, less than reported, as 60% of the gdp is dependent in goverment deficit spending, but is not measured in the official productivity number.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01- ... everything

i particularly like the suggestion that you need to treat the u.s. goverment numbers like a third-world country and assume all the books are cooked. chief among them is the 100 million americans that get magicaly left out of the employment numbers, and most collect some sort of goverment income.

[Space Cat]

Haha what a thread. A textbook example of the White Savior complex.