My COVID charity of choice: educate someone for $3 a year

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The organization I’ve given to during this time is Khan Academy.

There are a lot of anecdotes about Khan Academy. I don’t want to rehash that since it’s so common. The only thing I’ll add is if you have young kids, Khan Academy Kids is something I would highly recommend. I’ve mentioned it to numerous clients during this time. A fair amount knew about Khan Academy, but not the kids version.

I’ve seen a lot of activities being sent home to parents to do with their kids during this time. A lot of them have already been polished for you with the Khan Kids app, and it personally provides a nice reprieve so the parents can still work during the day. Rather than take an hour to research and set-up activities, you can fire up the app.

Beyond all the wonderful stories of what people have gotten out of Sal Khan, I want to highlight their performance in more concrete measures.

According to their most recent public filings, they had,

• 14 million active learners
• $49 million in expenses

That means they are able to give all they give at,

$49 million / 14 million learners = $3.5 per learner

That’s for an entire year.

Furthermore, as you’d expect, over the years their revenue more or less equals their expenses.

However, of their revenue only about 75% of it is from contributions. The other 25% is revenue Khan Academy brings in on its own, such as through licensing and developing content. (I believe this is through avenues such as working with the college board.)

For example, last year they made,

• $31 million from contributions
• $10 million from their services

For a total of just over $40 million.

That means, last year, for the contributions made,

$31 million in contributions / 14 million learners = $2.2 per learner

At $2.2, you can educate someone for an entire year.

Here’s where you can give.

I’m sure with how much more their services are being used these days it’ll be helpful.