Turtle,

You've obviously been meditating for many years and as a consequence are perhaps none too bright,  but 'try' to grasp the following if you can.

1. The criticisms of an organisation which seeks to garner funds, which enjoys tax free status and which seeks public approval of its activities has no relation to the choices an individual makes - whether Jim or anyone else 'gives' nothing or $100,000 has no implication for the judgements made about a 'charity'.

2. The judgement about 'charity' can never simply be based upon whether the 'cause' is 'good' or upon the level of funding attributed to that cause. Charity has frequently been the vehicle of cultural and even racial oppression; even where the intention has been noble and the practice has been sound, the accompanying cultural message has often been destructive. What a Charity 'says' and the way it says it, is often as important as what that Charity actually does if there is concern for the long term interests of those who the Charity claims to help.

3. TPRF and Raway say nothing about the fundamental problems of poverty, of environmental disaster, of social dislocation or of the problems that lie at the heart of malnourishment in a food rich world. The only thing that TPRF says about 'food' is that TPRF and Rawat are wonderful for donating $x dollars - the only  conclusion that a reasonable person can reach is that TPRF and Rawat are cynically using food poverty as a PR tool to promote Rawatism.

4. The effectiveness of a Charity is largely related to its capacity to focus on a core activity - the greater the number of activities the higher the volume of administration costs that have to be expended on each activity, leading to inherent inefficiency. TPRF avoids public analysis of the efficiency of its 'humanitarian' activities by lumping all its admin costs and all its outputs into single budget heads .One way to show just how impoverished TPRF's humanitarian efforts really are is to take the claimed numbers of 'aspirants in preparation' and divide the humanitarian funds by that number. The most recent $75,000 divided by 125,000 claimed to be in preparation (* see below) gives a figure of just 67 cents - as US aspirants are paying $19 per Keys DVD in admin and P&P - 67 cents looks pretty paltry in comparative allocation of funds.

5. Given TPRF's claims about its activities in India and its partnerships with RVK, TPRF's (and Rawat's) humanitarian concerns can be usefully judged by their operation in India. As the largest portion of the claimed 125,000 'aspirants' are predominantly low income Indian citizens the net effect of TPRF/RVK humanitarian activity in India can be calculated as: the total sum provided in 'actual' aid and support - less - the total expenditure made by impoverished Indians on participating in TPRF/RVK/Rawat promoted/promoting activities. Unless TPRF/RVK can demonstrate that they make net expenditures running into tens of millions of rupees annually that directly provide material benefit to low income Indians, the conclusion must be that rather than improving the position of the poor in India, TPRF/RVK/Rawat are simply absorbing resources from the poor and then doling back a small percentage in the guise of charitable giving.

In conclusion Turtle - if you and Rawat want to play the 'philanthropy game' you had better get a lot more sophisticated in your back story if you don't want to look stupid, venal and corrupt.

Nik

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prem_rawat

Size of following

130,000 people came to hear Maharaji speak at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi

According to the organizations, Prem Rawat has over the years engaged over six and a half million people in 250 cities and fifty countries. They estimate slightly more than half a million have been taught the techniques since Rawat came to the West, about 125,000 of this number between January 2000 and April 2004[43]. Volunteers estimate an additional 125,000 currently in preparation to be taught the techniques, 65,000 having been in preparation five months or more, with these numbers on the increase in many countries. A press release states that 2004 was the first year where the number of new students has exceeded 50,000 [44]. Printed and audiovisual materials are available in approximately sixty languages, and the organizations estimate Rawat currently has hundreds of thousands of practicing students worldwide, representing a wide variety of backgrounds and personal situations. Since there is no longer any membership component to the organizations, however, it is difficult to determine with precision the number of persons actually practicing his techniques. Chryssides' Historical Dictionary of New Religious movements (2001), estimates 15,000 people practicing the techniques in the USA and 5,000 in the UK.