That excuse is often used by people who won’t donate anyway.
If you want though. You can check out one of our event videos from last year. In one it shows Steve Aoki and I issuing seven 20,000.00 checks to actual charity reps as well as 120,000.00 donated by my wife and I that was shared by only autism therapy centers.
The money we’ll raise this year will hopefully reach 1 million and that will be donated to:
Our list of autism groups we’ll support is below. We wanted to branch out internationally so we added 2, Pokémon’s roots in Japan and Thuan’s home country Vietnam…
10 charity organization for autism:
Touro University Nevada’s Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities
F.E.A.T Las Vegas
Project FOCUS at UNLV Medicine Ackerman Autism Center
Neat Services
Grant A Gift Foundation
Turning Pointe Autism Foundation
NEXT for AUTISM
Organization for Autism Research
Vietnamese organization (in process of finding)
Japanese organization (in process of finding)
Now instead of looking for excuses how about making a difference yourself. God know, the kids need it.
I do the best I can to explain but I can’t satisfy everyone. I’ll spend that time looking for other ways to help. It would be great if you could do the same.
Plus, the lady who runs the foundation, Brittabuckholtz@aokifoundation.org was with the City of Hope for nearly 10 years so she could better answer specifics.
Instead of accusing me of being an uncharitable person, and condescending me. You could provide DOCUMENTATION and EVIDENCE of this. I am not doubting you give money to charity, but I will never know how much of the money I would be potentially donating is going to charity and I am not comfortable with that.
I’m sure you know if you made the charity more credible with legal documentation more people would donate and make a difference. God know, the kids need it.
Charity Navigator is the USA’s leading charity directory and I imagine a lot of people will look to that to assess a charity before donating. I’m in the UK and our government have a similar charity portal which is what I use when determining whether a cause is worthy of my money.
Everything seems very secretive with the Aoki Foundation and this to me is a bit of a red flag as charities should be striving to be as transparent as possible. I’m personally not interested in donating to the Aoki Foundation in its current state.
Pushing everyone towards a charitable organisation is fantastic, but right now there are some very small but very meaningful things Aoki can do to give everyone more clarity on what it is the organisation sets out to achieve and how it plans to do that with the donations it receives.
Except the million dollar goal for 2021 is from my and my wife’s efforts and will be donated to whom we request. Steve’s work in Brain health is separate from our work though he does help us and we’re grateful for that.
All the autism charities we support (and I mentioned above) are listed in Charity Navigator except for the Vietnamese and Japanese charities. Plus, this month we’re adding a Canadian charity recommended by @vancity_pokefam.
The biggest problem people (how I am reading it at least) have with the aoki foundation is not to which charities you donate, it is which part goes to charity and which part is going into other parts which are not charity. If I am donating to this charity, will 90% go to charity and 10% to costs or will it be 30 % charity, 20% costs and 50% into steves pockets. We have not got a clue and with the rumors of 20-50% to charity this does not help.
Some of the questions above are legitimate and I’ve tried to answer appropriately. I even got a private message of apology from one;) Hopefully this thread is doing some good which is all that matters:)
So why should I donate to the Aoki Foundation and not donate directly to those other charities? What does the Aoki Foundation bring to the table which those charities themselves do not?
These aren’t questions I’m expecting you to answer - this is exactly what the Charity Navigator report would show.
Fair question of course. 100% of every nickel Thuan and I raise goes to the charities I listed above. Steve simply let’s us operate under his foundations umbrella because it can often take two years to get approved for licensing. All miscellaneous expenses like mailers, the 300 t-shirts we gave out, poster costs etc are paid separately by Thuan and I.
That would be awesome. Keep in mind, on average 40.00 pays for a half hour therapy session for kids who could not get the session otherwise:) Honestly, because we can’t get to everyone, ideas like yours are wonderful.
Gary I applaud your overall mission to generate financial support for Autism based charities. I have 2 close family members with varying degrees of autism and it’s actually disgusting how little financial, societal, and governmental support that is on offer. Not just in USA, but Australia too.
I have reservations about motivations behind a charity that donates to other charities because I am a naturally pessimistic and cynical person who is generally looking for peoples ulterior motives when someone sticks out their hand wearing a white glove. However this is not what the post is about. I have made some off hand comments about this on the Discord but I suppose I will get serious for once in my life.
I have gone through the list of charities that Aoki Foundation partnered with in 2020. Generally for me it’s a pretty solid list. The charities that specifically seek to finance inclusion incentives and creating workspaces that facilitate the needs of the autistic person is all a fantastic cause in my books.
The 1 problem I have is the partnering with Autism Speaks. I have a lot of issues with this charity in the way it operates. I take offense at their mission to ‘End Autism’ rather than facilitate and improve public and professional acceptance of Autistic people, I recognize that there are people with severe cases of ASD who have a greatly diminished quality of life but the amount of people with ASD who have, against the odds, built successful and meaningful lives WITH their Autism is so great that the idea of ‘curing’ Autism robs us of so many brilliant people who only needed society to accept them and believe in them for them to live a ‘normal’ life. Any money spent towards trying to rid these beautiful people from existence is money wasted that could have gone towards building a better society FOR autistic people.
Outside of my own moral objection to Autism Speaks. Through my own research only 4% of Autism Speaks budget actually goes towards families seeking assistance from the charity. Meanwhile 22% of the budget goes towards production cost of fundraising efforts. Also I found out that not a single person on the Board of Directors for Autism Speaks actually has autism. To me that’s like a Women’s Rights Charity having a board entirely filled with male members.
I get serious Susan G Komen charity vibes from Autism Speaks. A charity that is much more concerned with it’s pink ribbon copyright initiatives than actually funding cancer research or scientific endeavors.
So in summary. I have no real issues with the Aoki Foundation or what you/they are trying to achieve and build towards. I admire your own individual effort along with your wife. However I do take issue with at least 1 of the major partners that Aoki Foundation is affiliated with. And for that reason I can not support it at this time.
Pichufan asked this earlier as a food for thought question, but I’m asking for the express purpose of getting an answer. Why should I donate to you Gary, who will give a portion of my money to Aoki foundation, who will in turn give a portion of that portion of money to one of several charities? I could just donate directly to the charity of my choosing and get 100% effectiveness out of my dollar. Your rebuttal of “haters aren’t donators” is honestly really dumb because you haven’t given a good reason to give you and your friends money instead of giving money directly to the charities.
“Plus, the lady who runs the foundation, Brittabuckholtz@aokifoundation.org was with the City of Hope for nearly 10 years so she could better answer specifics.”
I feel like everyone has good questions and shouldn’t be criticized for asking them but maybe someone should actually direct these operations and spending questions to Britta rather than Gary who may be able to provide better transparency and oversight on how these funds are being distributed. If you get some solid answers, please post them for clarity.
I’m a big troll 90% of the time but in all seriousness, there are often real costs involved with the fundraising process. Yes, people can send all their money directly to a charity to get closer to a 100% threshhold, but guess what happens? In the long run, the charity sees less revenue because no one is sending that 100%, because that charity isn’t getting exposure. Raising AWARENESS to charity is WORK. Figuring out ways to get people to donate is work. Most people aren’t just waking up in the morning, rolling out of bed, and donating directly to charities. They will, however, donate to a good cause if they are incentivized in some way (entertainment being a staple). In short, people shouldn’t have to bear the burden of all overhead costs associated with creating these events either. The issue is people netting a bunch of PROFIT out of them rather than just covering the overhead, and it’s happened plenty of times with other foundations which is why people have the right to be critical/inquisitive/skeptical.
I understand what you’re saying and agree with you that specific questions about dollar figures and percentages should be directed to Britta… but anyone who is actively going out and raising money for any foundation or organization or charity should be able to answer the question of “why donate to you?”
I do think Gary’s NFT Drop is a kind of “cash-grab” for certain individuals involved whether that be through “production costs” and/or hyping this NFT as an “investment” in-order to capitalize on this themselves. However, I have zero doubt in my mind that 100% of Gary’s Portion will be going to legitimate charitable organizations who will use the money raised for its intended purpose and that’s why I’ve fully supported Gary’s work with the Aoki Foundation from the beginning and will continue to do so going forward!
Gary spends countless hours planning these charitable events with the help of the Aoki Foundation and without the help of the Aoki Foundation, Gary would not be where he is today in-terms of the money raised through these different events! I see the Aoki Foundation as more-or-less the “logistics” side of the organization, making Gary’s ideas for charitable events become a reality!
I fully-support and contribute to Gary’s Work with the Aoki Foundation because of the man behind it all - Gary! If nothing else (which I truly know is not the case here), I’m helping a friend raise money for something that he’s truly passionate about and that’s a small price to pay for everything that he’s done over the years to keep our hobby thriving! IMO, Pokémon would not be where it is today without Gary or Ed spending all those years keeping our hobby alive!
This reminds me of this very interesting video linked below. Evidently, charity based foundations made by rich people are surrounded by much controversy and the questions asked here seems well justified. Charities are great, but I am also aware of numerous scandals and lack of transparency of various big charities in recent times. So, unfortunately it is easy to become skeptical of peoples good intentions.
