The problem with entertainment charities is not the charities, it is not the people giving in any direction, it is the lack of concentration on the infrastructure. They get the money. They can’t get it to the people who they are raising it for.
When Paul Simon rises money for mobile vansto get free checkups to children in the inner city, he plays a gig, takes the money, buys the vans and gives it to a charity whose sole job is to provide this service.
When U2 raise money for a charity at one of his concerts: he charges $100 for nosebleed seats, he harangues and guilts his broke working class fans and disrupts his increasingly (if that’s possible) self important shows and he can’t figure what to do with his money once he gets.
1. Bangladesh raised $250,000 to help feed the starving. It did nothing of the sort despite George Harrisons best intentions. It was stolen.
2. Live Aid raised millions for Africa and couldn’t get it anywhere. People who gave were ripped off.
3. Help Haiti. This one we warned you about. Five or ten years from now, when they figure out what to do with the money, they may show their accounting books and it may balance. And that still won’t show the millions in interest people have stolen. And that’s a best case scenerio.
It seems there is an excellent way for rock stars to give to charity: think small, check your ego at the door, and get involved with the minituae of giving back: do the unsexy bureacratic work necessary to give value to your contribution.