This is truly an outrage
The Tampa Bay Times teamed with The Center for Investigative Reporting and CNN to create an exhaustively-researched list of the fifty worst charities in the country. What you’ll read in the Times‘ reporting and CNN’s reporting will blow your mind.
From the Times:
Carol Smith still gets angry when she remembers the box that arrived by mail for her dying husband.Cancer Fund of America sent it when he was diagnosed with lung cancer six years ago. Smith had called the charity for help.
“It was filled with paper plates, cups, napkins and kids’ toys,” the 67-year-old Knoxville, Tenn., resident said. “My husband looked like somebody slapped him in the face.
“I just threw it in the trash.”
Over the past decade, tens of thousands of people have donated nearly $100 million to Cancer Fund of America. In telephone calls and letters, the Tennessee-based charity touts the direct financial aid it gives to people like the Smiths.
But the real beneficiaries are not dying cancer patients and the families who have gone broke trying to save them.
While Cancer Fund provides care packages that contain shampoo and toothbrushes, the people in charge have personally made millions of dollars and used donations as venture capital to build a charity empire. Less than 2 cents of every dollar raised has gone to direct cash aid for patients or families, records show. {…}
In the past three years alone, Cancer Fund and its associated charities raised $110 million. The charities paid more than $75 million of that to solicitors. Cancer Fund ranks second on the Times/CIR list of America’s worst charities. (Florida’s Kids Wish Network placed first.)
Salaries in 2011 topped $8 million — 13 times more than patients received in cash.
From CNN:
The worst charity in America operates from a metal warehouse behind a gas station in Holiday, Florida.Every year, Kids Wish Network raises millions of dollars in donations in the name of dying children and their families.
Every year, it spends less than 3 cents on the dollar helping kids.
Most of the rest gets diverted to enrich the charity’s operators and the for-profit companies Kids Wish hires to drum up donations.
In the past decade alone, Kids Wish has channeled nearly $110 million donated for sick children to its corporate solicitors. An additional $4.8 million has gone to pay the charity’s founder and his own consulting firms.
No charity in the nation has siphoned more money away from the needy over a longer period of time. {…}
Among the findings:
— The 50 worst charities in America devote less than 4% of donations raised to direct cash aid. Some charities gave even less. Over a decade, one diabetes charity raised nearly $14 million and gave about $10,000 to patients. Six spent no cash at all on their cause.
— Even as they plead for financial support, operators at many of the 50 worst charities have lied to donors about where their money goes, taken multiple salaries, secretly paid themselves consulting fees or arranged fund-raising contracts with friends. One cancer charity paid a company owned by the president’s son nearly $18 million over eight years to solicit funds. A medical charity paid its biggest research grant to its president’s own for-profit company.
— Some nonprofits are little more than fronts for fund-raising companies, which bankroll their startup costs, lock them into exclusive contracts at exorbitant rates and even drive the charities into debt. Florida-based Project Cure has raised more than $65 million since 1998, but every year has wound up owing its fundraiser more than what was raised. According to its latest financial filing, the nonprofit is $3 million in debt.
Don’t confuse Kids Wish with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Make-A-Wish spent a whopping 60% of its budget on kids. Kids Wish spent less than 3%.
Read the full list of the Shitty Fifty HERE.
[CC photo credit: Terry Alexander | Flickr]
