Movement of Movements

First off let me start by informing everyone that this will be the last post of this blog as they will not allow me to change my primary e-mail to a gmail account and i refuse to continue with Hotmail because , well, it sucks. I may likely however find a new blogging venue to rant and rage about everything and nothing-I'll keep you posted.

I've been wondering for a while now , as well as reading about, all the different movements there are for food justice and social justice (pretty much the same idea really). Who are these movements benefiting? Are they actually benefiting the people they were designed to help? I see a lot of dinner and special engagements designed to raise money for "the cause", but I have to wonder if that money is really being put to good use, helping and educating the people in need. I understand that in order to run a not for profit "cause", you need to raise funds to pay for staff and materials and so on. But when you have a fund raiser dinner for example and invite all these big wallet types who in turn donate generously to "the cause" and then a month later you have another high dollar dinner to thank those same people, is that economically responsible? These people were invited to a dinner after all where they donated their funds and got to enjoy the meal and any other entertainment. This seems like a preemptive "thank you" to me, after all, the "cause" could have simply solicited the donation in an office somewhere with no big hubub or theatrics. Can't the second dinner be skipped? Or is this just a way to earn a tax credit and attend a couple of big parties so you can look good?
Let me be straight here, I'm not pointing fingers at the deep pocket folks or even the Non profit folks. I simply would like to know if these "benefits" are actually beneficial. Are the people who need help and education receiving it from these groups? I'm a very tangible proof kinda guy, I just like being able to look at an organization, read their mission statement and see where they are working and helping to make changes rather than look at the website or read the literature and still walk away saying "now what is it exactly that they do?" "where does the money go to?"
I don't have any answers to my questions yet, and I'm sure most groups are "benefiting the cause" in some way, but I just have to wonder if we're continually going at it in an inefficient manner because that's the way people did it before us.