Robin Hood Was Right: A Guide to Giving Your Money for Social Change

Rating:
Summary: The Book That Keeps on Giving
Review: "Robin Hood Was Right" is an entertaining and intelligent guide to contributing to social change. Instead of replying to the nightly phone solicitations or the direct mail appeals, the reader can take control of the contribution process to focus on the values and outcomes desired.

I especially enjoyed the cartoons and sidebars. The text is thoughtful and each appendix offers an array of legitimate organizations. I recommend this book to anyone, who like me, wants to be sure that giving will make a difference. That the book is also a good read is just a free bonus.

Rating:
Summary: hoped for more
Review: Good intentioned book on the importance of giving money for social change. But the book left me short by not addressing the authors' own observation that "uncertainty about the impact of your gifts" can cause the most philanthropic among us to balk at giving. Book would have been so much more helpful if the authors had spent more time on how a reader can intelligently evaluate the foundations they profile in the book. We get a glimpse of what the book could have been in appendix H where the authors tell us that nonprofits with budgets of more than $250,000 have to have annual audits that are made publicly available. That's the kind of information that's really helpful...and a few words or paragraphs or even a chapter on how to read these audit statements to make sense of the health and intentions of the organizations would have been terrific.

Rating:
Summary: Chuck Collins is wrong
Review: The story of Robin Hood is not one of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. It is a story of too much taxes and Robin Hood returning the taxes to those that were bled dry. Not only does Collins rely on an incorrect myth of Robin Hood, but he latches on to myths about solutions for poverty. Studies have shown that minimum wage does not help the poor. In fact, one study (whose author would agree with Collin's premise) called minimum wage "perverse" in the fact that it took from one group of poor (those that became unemployed because of minimum wage) and gave to another group of poor (those that got a small raise because of minimum wage).

A better book on effective ways of helping the poor can be found in some of the chapters of "Healing Our World" by Dr. Mary J. Ruwart.