Category: Charity

Normally, this Level of Incompetence at this Level of Status Results in a Promotion, not a Demotion

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But it appears that the Norwegian culture is different form ours, as former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been demoted from his position as head of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee:

Norway’s Nobel peace prize committee has demoted its chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, in a move unprecedented in the long history of the award.

The committee, which said the former Norwegian prime minister would remain as a committee member, gave no reason for its decision.

However, the renowned diplomat drew criticism shortly after becoming committee chairman in 2009 for awarding the prestigious Nobel to newly elected US president Barack Obama.

The move stunned the world and the recipient alike, as Obama had been in office less than nine months and the US was waging simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After six years at the helm of the committee, Jagland, 64, will be replaced by deputy chair, Kaci Kullmann Five, the organisation said on Tuesday.

“There was broad agreement within the committee that Thorbjørn Jagland was a good chair for six years,” Kullmann Five told reporters, but declined to comment on the discussion.

Commentators and former Nobel laureates had criticised the committee’s decisions under Jagland’s stewardship.

Hitting back at critics after Obama’s prize, Jagland said the organisation wanted to praise the US leader’s early vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and capture “the spirit of the times, the needs of the era”.

Last year, a federal study estimated that the US will spend $1tn (£649bn) upgrading its nuclear arsenal over the next three decades.

Ohhh ……… Bummer of a birthmnark, Thorbjørn.

Your award recipient is responsible for more spending on nukes than the rest of the world combined.

………

And in 2012 Jagland became the face of a body that handed the award to the European Union for its commitment to “peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights”.

“The EU is clearly not the ‘champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in an open letter with two other former laureates.

Jagland, a former leader of Norway’s Labour party who has served as prime minister, foreign minister and speaker of parliament, spent much of his career trying to bolster support for Norway to join the EU.

So the that award appears to be an attempt to political agenda that he has personally held for years.  (And then there is the whole thing that the EU seems like the most forceful attempt at German hegemony in Europe since that bloke with the funny mustache)

It is rather unsurprising, that Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu roundly condemned the selection of the EU as, “Clearly not the ‘champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will.”

Oh Snap.

Why You Should Not Give Money to the Red Cross

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Even if you ignore their blood products profiteering which killed a significant portion of the Hemophiliacs in the United States under Liddy Dole, you have their routine and brazen profiteering in the event of major disasters:

Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy?

The charity has hired a fancy law firm to fight a public request we filed with New York state, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is a “trade secret.”

The Red Cross’ “trade secret” argument has persuaded the state to redact some material, though it’s not clear yet how much since the documents haven’t yet been released.

As we’ve reported, the Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent.

The Red Cross did give some information about Sandy spending to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had been investigating the charity. But the Red Cross declined our request to disclose the details.

So we filed a public records request for the information the Red Cross provided to the attorney general’s office.

 That’s where the law firm Gibson Dunn comes in.

 An attorney from the firm’s New York office appealed to the attorney general to block disclosure of some of the Sandy information, citing the state Freedom of Information Law’s Trade Secret Exemption.

 The documents include “internal and proprietary methodology and procedures for fundraising, confidential information about its internal operations, and confidential financial information,” wrote Gabrielle Levin of Gibson Dunn in a letter to the attorney general’s office.

If those details were disclosed, “the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross’s business model for an increased competitive advantage,” Levin wrote.

(emphasis mine)

Trade Secret Exemption?  Proprietary Methodology?  Competitive Harm?  Business model?  Competitive Advantage?

Seriously?

You are asking us to give you money on the vague promise that you won’t blow it all on salaries and severance packages for senior executives (and, you know, give thousands of Hemophiliacs AIDS ……… Oops, too late on that one).

The American Red Cross, and the Susan G. Komen foundations are not charities should be our first choices for donations.

It’s a Start………

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The IRS has revoked the 501(c)3 tax exempt status of The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a right wing group that has routinely engaged in illegal electioneering.

The kicker is that Center is in part a political advocacy group formed by Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas:

Under the tax code, it’s illegal for a charity to engage in electoral politics. In its response to the IRS, the Patrick Henry Center said its statements could be interpreted differently by different people, and that many of them did not advocate voting for or against a candidate.

The center’s most recent tax return disclosed $343,503 in revenue for tax year 2012. In recent years, it’s become aligned with the Tea Party movement, contributing to at least one of the groups targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS beginning in 2010. Also in 2010, the Patrick Henry Center merged with Liberty Central, an advocacy group headed by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese serves on the center’s board.

The IRS’s revocation means contributions to the Patrick Henry Center are no longer tax deductible.

I incorporated a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization in the early 1990s, and I recall the sh%$ I had to go through to incorporate.

I was originally turned down, because the examiner thought that the organization was better suited to 501(c)7 status, a membership organization, as opposed to a charity, which would lose tax exempt status and (more importantly to us) a special low postal rate. (Had to explain some terminology we used in my appeal,k and it worked)

In retrospect, I believe that the examiner morally right on this, though my application was was within the parameters of existing law and regulation.

It’s just that and the rules that the IRS is not enforcing are way too lax, and more observed in the breach than in actual enforcement.

It’s nice to see that this is changing.

Why the Boy Scouts Leadership Need to be Fired, and it Offices Should Moved from Texas to a Civilized Place

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There is was a boy scout troop in the Seattle area whose leader is openly gay, and BSA ejected him from the scouts.

When the church at which his troops were based refused to discharge him, because they oppose discrimination, and the BSA closed down those troops:

Church Pledges to Resist BSA’s Demand and Remain Open and Inclusive; Scouts for Equality Deplores Boy Scouts’ Callous Act as a Discriminatory Attempt to put Politics before Boys

In a startling and discriminatory move, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) revoked the charter of Seattle Troop 98 and Pack 98 for its refusal to remove gay Scoutmaster Geoffrey McGrath. The BSA revoked the charter of Rainier Beach United Methodist Church’s (RBUMC), a Seattle church whose two Scouting units serve a neighborhood with few other positive opportunities for local youth.

“The Boy Scouts’ decisions only serve to hurt a group of boys who need the values and leadership of someone like Scoutmaster McGrath,” said Zach Wahls, Executive Director of Scouts for Equality, a national organization dedicated to ending the BSA’s ban on gay members and leaders. “Unfortunately, the BSA’s decision calls into question its commitment to leadership and values by perpetuating an outmoded policy rooted in fear and discrimination. History will show that today’s announcement is a self-inflicted wound.”

The controversy surrounding Troop 98 emerged in March, when an NBC News report on the inclusive troop prompted the BSA to question the sexual orientation of Scoutmaster Geoffrey McGrath. McGrath, abiding by the Scout’s commitment to trustworthiness, acknowledged his sexual orientation to the BSA, which in turn, responded by revoking McGrath’s status as Scoutmaster.

Since then, support for McGrath has been overwhelmingly positive. The entire Seattle City Council, as well as more than 20 Washington State legislators, have expressed their support for Rainier Beach United Methodist Church’s right to determine its own leadership for McGrath’s ability to remain a Scoutmaster. Most important, RBUMC Rev. Dr. Monica Corsaro has stood by McGrath and has refused to remove him from his post. BSA is taking this action in direct contradiction to the inclusive religious beliefs and wishes of Rainer Beach Methodist Church.

It makes no sense to support the BSA until the leadership gets its head out of its collective asses.

If they are sponsored by your house of worship, or your church, you should consider finding some other organization that better represents a moral view of our society.

And More Christie Corruption and Cronyism Raises its Head

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As a result of “Bridgegate” Chris Christie’s deals are getting a lot more scrutiny.

Now it appears that Christie threw a $300 million dollar pension deal to a supporter in violation of state anti-corruption laws:

A PandoDaily investigation has discovered evidence that Gov. Chris Christie’s pending deal to award a $300 million pension management contract to a controversial hedge fund is in violation of state anti-corruption laws.

 New Jersey state pay-to-play statutes prohibit state contractors from directly or indirectly financially supporting the election campaigns of state officials. Those statutes also explicitly prohibit the use of outside groups or family members to circumvent that ban.

Additionally, separate Department of Treasury rules appear to prohibit public pension contracts from being awarded to investment firms whose employees have made significant financial contributions to political entities organized to operate in New Jersey state elections. Those laws also bar investment firms doing business with the state from making contributions “for the purpose of influencing any election for State office.”

 Yet, late last month, the New Jersey State Investment Council moved to award a controversial $300 million investment contract to Chatham Asset Management, despite the fact that Chatham’s principal, and a woman living at his address and sharing his surname, donated more than $50,000 to a Republican election group that oversaw major portions of Gov. Christie’s 2013 re-election operation. The proposed investment is already highly controversial given the hedge fund also reportedly owns a stake in the Atlantic City casino, Revel.

 Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen, which originally lobbied for the pay-to-play statute, said that the $300m offer “appears to be not an indirect violation, but a direct violation of the law.”

What’s more, Chatham is providing free space to a charity chaired by Mary Pat Christie, the first lady if the great state of New Jersey:

As part of that investigation we have also learned that Chatham made a large in-kind donation to the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund, which is chaired by the governor’s wife, Mary Pat Christie. That charity has been plagued by allegations that it is a stealth conduit for corporations to buy influence and circumvent campaign finance regulations.

In an interview with Pando, a spokeswoman for the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund acknowledged that Chatham Asset Management housed the 501(c)3 organization from November 2012 to February 2013, a total in-kind donation value of approximately $15,000.

 For his part, Gov. Christie has denied that the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund would be used as a way to wield influence with him. At a 2013 press conference, he said donors to the charity “know, because they know me, that it will not one iota affect the way I execute my job as governor or any decisions I have to make as governor regarding the use of public money.”

Drip, Drip, Drip.

What is Wrong with the TED Talks in One Person

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My call in is at 41:05

On Monday, I went to the Doctor, and on the way there, I was listening to the Midday talk show on WYPR, and they were interviewing Dan Pallotta, who gave a TED talk (no link, ever) about how we need to spend lots of money on high powered executives and self promotion, and not be so concerned about overhead costs.  (Link to this show)

I called into the show (you can hear me at 41:05), and made two points, both from experience:* That aggressive fundraising and growth as a strategy will take place at the expense of the core function of that organization, and that studies have shown that very high levels of compensation actually decrease performance.

Pallotta spouted banalities about the use of “appropriate metrics” when discussing how a high growth focus won’t distract , and for the studies showing that excessive pay decreases performance, he pulls out the straw man about whether we should stop paying real estate agents after their 3rd sale.

The reality is that his failed for-profit event promotion business died because it became excessive expensive, and the self aggrandizement of its CEO, Dan Pallotta.

In it’s own way, this is TED Talks in a microcosm, it is all about comforting the comfortable.

After all this, I Wiki the motherf%$#er and found this “clearly-written_by-his-publicist” article:

Pallotta TeamWorks
Pallotta built his for-profit company Pallotta TeamWorks. His company employed 400 full-time people in 16 U.S. offices and was raising $169 million annually by 2002. In total, the company raised $582 million from 1994 to 2002. The company charged a fixed production fee for its services. It did not do commission-based fundraising or get a “take” off of the top. One hundred percent of all donations went to lock boxes under the charities’ exclusive control. The charities then reimbursed the company for its expenses on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Pallotta TeamWorks fees, in a hindsight calculation, amounted to 4.01% of funds raised.

As is shown below, this is a bogus number. It refers only to direct fees, and not the expenses of putting on the increasingly lavish events.

Palotta was criticized for the large amounts of money Pallotta TeamWorks was making each year and the $394,500 salary he was receiving, described as “stratospheric” for the aid world.[ His annual salary ranged from $150,000 in 1994 to approximately $425,000 in 2002. Palotta commented that “We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them”.

In 2002, the company moved into an innovative headquarters that it had outfitted, The Apostrophe. For years Pallotta TeamWorks was located in poor offices spaces in Hollywood. A new and completely empty 47,000 square-foot ’tilt-up’ warehouse was located in Atwater Village, Los Angeles. ………

Shut-down of Pallotta Teamworks

……… At the time the Breast Cancer 3-Day program was the company’s largest fundraising event series. For five years the Avon Products Foundation had been the beneficiary of the events, which netted $194 million in unrestricted funds for the Foundation in just five years. In 2002 Avon informed Pallotta TeamWorks that it would no longer be associated with the company’s events. Pallotta TeamWorks began negotiating with another charity to become the beneficiary of the events. During that period, Avon announced a nationwide series of multi-day breast cancer fundraising walks, each with a four-figure pledge minimum, in many of the same cities in which the 3-Days had been conducted and, in many cases, on very similar dates. As a result, the new charity with which Pallotta TeamWorks had been negotiating, fearing that the events would cannibalize one another, decided against partnering with Pallotta TeamWorks on the 3-Days. A few days after the news, on August 23, 2002, the company laid off its entire staff nationwide and closed the doors on its new headquarters.

So, they got dumped by their charities (more below), and they tried to set up competing events to keep their gravy train rolling.

But we can look at the Internet, where nothing goes away, and see what was being said of Pallotta Teamworks at the time:

Published on Tuesday, August 27, 2002 in the Washington Post

Expenses Eat Profits Of District AIDSRide

 by Carol Morello

Expenses ate up at least 86 percent of the $3.6 million raised in June for the annual D.C. AIDSRide organized by Pallotta TeamWorks, a rate that is expected to increase when the tally is complete, the benefiting charities said yesterday.

If the riders had not raised more money than required, the event might have lost money. Per-rider expenses averaged $400 more than the $2,400 each rider needed to raise to participate. But the event turned a $500,000 profit only because riders raised an average of more than $3,200, according to preliminary estimates made by the two charities that co-sponsored the ride.

“Disappointed doesn’t even begin to describe how we feel,” said Cornelius Baker, head of Whitman-Walker Clinic, one of two charities benefiting from the ride.

When the audit is completed in the fall, the return may be less than 14 cents on the dollar.

………

Critics of Pallotta events said the return on the D.C. ride was indicative of problems that have beset the company this summer.

“The returns are abysmal,” said Wayne Turner, an AIDS activist with the D.C. chapter of Act Up. “People are beginning to wake up to the fact these AIDS rides are not about raising money at all. They’re about building Dan Pallotta’s empire, which is now crumbling.”

This year, Pallotta TeamWorks was to have run 23 charitable events across the United States and in Africa and Europe. Pallotta’s fee for each AIDS ride runs from $225,000 — the amount for the District ride — to $450,000. Locally, it also has organized the Avon Breast Cancer walk, held in May, and a night walk this month from Fairfax County to the District to raise awareness of suicide prevention.

Pallotta had been one of the country’s most successful promoters of charitable events. But criticism grew as the company expanded and began aggressively promoting itself. Its events are characterized by emotional opening and closing ceremonies, slick marketing and creature comforts for participants, including cucumber eye masks and massages. Expenses run into the millions, though net proceeds are often high, too. But recently, many riders and walkers have complained that the events’ purity has been clouded by excessive promotion. At walks and rides attended by survivors and relatives of people with breast cancer and AIDS, vans were set up marketing the company’s other events and selling books by founder Dan Pallotta.

………
 Pallotta, though, has lost numerous clients this year.

This spring, Avon Products announced that it would no longer use the company to produce its three-day breast cancer walks and would launch its own walkathons. After seven years of collaboration, Food & Friends decided to hold its own bike event next year. The huge Heartland AIDSRide across the Midwest also is being dropped.

So he is a f%$#ing serial narcissist who put on lavish charity events for the purpose of his own self-aggrandizement, and so his business imploded.

His response is to go on TED and suggest that the way to improve our charities is to throw more money at those overpaid narcissistic sociopaths who are our looting class.

Just beautiful.

* My background:

  • I audited my university (UMass Amherst) as a part of a student government committee.

  • I founded a not-for-profit, and successfully took it thorugh the 501(c)3 process.

  • My experience was that a laser-like focus on aggressive growth and increased prestige is achieved at the expense of quality services.

  • That, as numerous behavioral economics studies have shown (Dan Ariely, for one), very high levels of compensation are associated with DECREASED performance.

Bummer of a Birthmark, Susan G. Komen Foundation

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As a result of their abortive (pun no intended) attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, their revenue has fallen by $77 million, about 22%:

The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation committed one of the great PR faux pas of the decade in January 2012, when it summarily cut off funding to Planned Parenthood in what appeared to be a bow to anti-abortion crusaders.

Now, with its release of its latest financial statements, the cost of that decision can be measured: It’s more than $77 million, or fully 22% of the foundation’s income. That’s how much less the Dallas-based foundation collected in contributions, sponsorships and entry fees for its sponsored races in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2013, compared with the previous year. The raw figures are these: In the most recent fiscal year Komen booked $270 million; the year before that, Komen booked $348 million.

………

The foundation’s decision to cease funding Planned Parenthood was a huge blunder. Komen officials said at the time that they had merely tightened grant eligibility rules to exclude groups under investigation by government authorities — Planned Parenthood was the target of a ginned-up “investigation” by anti-abortion Republicans in the House.

The decision by the nation’s leading breast cancer charity to defund the nation’s leading provider of health services to women sparked a predictable uproar, and Komen reversed the decision after only three days.

But the damage was immediate and, plainly, lasting. There were indications that the original decision had been driven by Karen Handel, the organization’s vice president for public policy, who had joined Komen after losing a race for governor of Georgia on an anti-abortion platform. She resigned from Komen days after the reversal.

The affair led to more public scrutiny of the foundation’s own record. It transpired, for instance, that while the foundation depicted itself as devoted chiefly to research for a breast cancer cure, it spent only about 20% of its donations on research; the biggest expenditure category was public education, at more than 50%. Critics questioned whether “education” really should be such a heavy priority in a field where research issues remain important.

George Herbert Walker Bush’s, “Thousand points of light,” in a nutshell.

All those people who talk about how how private charities can be a replacement for government action are full of it.

Not only are private charities rife with corruption and inefficiency, but we have wankers giving TED talks suggesting that the solution is to allow people to more aggressively loot. (More on that later)

As Much as I Like Liz Warren, I Wish that Martha Coakley Had Beaten Scott Brown in the Senate Race in 2010

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She ran a truly horrible campaign, but her tenure as Massachusetts AG has generally been pretty positive.

Case in point, her most recent report showing that not-for-profits pay obscene remuneration to their top executives, and proposing changes in corporate governance:

Nonprofit groups in Massachusetts are paying their chief executives huge amounts of money and giving them lavish perks unavailable to most workers, according to a new report from Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office that calls for reform in the way groups disclose executive compensation.

The 92-page study, which covered 25 large charitable organizations in Massachusetts, mainly hospitals, insurers and colleges, found all of them paid their leaders at least a half-million dollars a year in total compensation. And many of the organizations offered their executives an assortment of other benefits, including bonuses, deferred compensation, auto allowances, financial planning, life insurance and other benefits that are more commonly associated with corporate leaders.

Even when executives retire, they often leave with hefty severance or consulting deals that allow them to earn millions more. The executives covered by the report each received between $487,000 and $8.8 million in total compensation each year between 2009 and 2011 — pay levels that Coakley’s office said should cause concern in some cases.

“It is not always clear that large compensation benefits packages are actually necessary to attract and retain talent,” the report argued.

Gee, you think?

Doubtless, there is some politics involved here, Coakley is looking to run for Governor, but when we are talking about tax-exempt organizations, there is a direct governmental interests, because it is the taxpayer who pays for these excesses.