[diyseguy]

I recently had to get surgery at a local hospital with a cross on top and named after a saint. As I waited for my appointment, I noticed the walls were covered with quotes from donors. The lady who was working the desk was an unpaid volunteer from a local church. Out of curiosity, I looked up the financials for the hospital and saw that the board of directors and various executives (around 12 people) were pulling in multi-million dollar salaries. Of the $3B they had raked in from donations that year, they allocated around $300M to a program to help the local people in some ambiguous way. No mention of what happened to the remaining donations. The bill for my treatment was $60K, thankfully insurance covered most of it. Rather seems like charity washing an otherwise ordinary corporation including exploiting gullible people for free labor...

[chneu]

If there is a devil, it runs organized religion.

[mcfedr]

wait, are you saying a hospital that charges 60K for surgery is a charity?

because it cheaper than other options or what?

[diyseguy]

No, it's not cheaper than other options. Pretty much market rate healthcare highway robbery. Afaict, they call themselves a charity because of the cross on top of the building. That's it. Their website mumbled something about helping the community with some sort of program with vague handwaving. Maybe an investigative journalist could figure out what they do that's actually charitable, but based on publicly available information, I could not find much. My sense is people just assume they have good intentions because they named themselves after some saint. Just charity vibes.

[rasz]

IKEA is a charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichting_INGKA_Foundation