How does Friends of KMMA-CAITHS send 100% of donations to Kenya?

Overhead, the cost of running an organization, is a factor in any nonprofit's budget. Although public sentiment tends to be that the lower the overhead the better, in fact the best situation is where an organization’s overhead is only as much as is needed to effectively accomplish its mission: the costs and benefits are optimized.

Like any organization, Friends of KMMA-CAITHS has overhead costs. But, as a small, family-run nonprofit, we keep these costs minimal: operating out of our houses rather than office space; doing the work ourselves rather than hiring staff; etc. By keeping our operating costs low, those expenses get covered entirely by our Board members. Thus, 100% of all donations outside of the Board go directly to programming in Kenya.

There are downsides, of course: for example, without staff fewer newsletters get produced than we might like! But that means that more resources, resources that you donated, are applied directly to supporting the people of Rusinga Island. To us, this is the best way to optimize our impact, achieve our mission, and leverage the generous gifts of our donors.