Americas 50 Worst Charities-$1 Billions Dollars and almost nothing to the needy

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feenixs

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[h1]America's 50 worst charities rake in nearly $1 billion for corporate fundraisers[/h1]
  • By Kris Hundley  and Kendall Taggart, Times/CIR special report

http://www.tampabay.com/topics/specials/worst-charities1.page#comments
[table][tr][th=""]Rank[/th][th=""]Charity name[/th][th=""]Total raised by solicitors[/th][th=""]Paid to solicitors[/th][th=""]% spent on direct cash aid[/th][/tr][tr][td]1[/td][td]Kids Wish Network[/td][td]$127.8 million[/td][td]$109.8 million[/td][td]2.5%[/td][/tr][tr][td]2[/td][td]Cancer Fund of America[/td][td]$98.0 million[/td][td]$80.4 million[/td][td]0.9%[/td][/tr][tr][td]3[/td][td]Children's Wish Foundation International[/td][td]$96.8 million[/td][td]$63.6 million[/td][td]10.8%[/td][/tr][tr][td]4[/td][td]American Breast Cancer Foundation[/td][td]$80.8 million[/td][td]$59.8 million[/td][td]5.3%[/td][/tr][tr][td]5[/td][td]Firefighters Charitable Foundation[/td][td]$63.8 million[/td][td]$54.7 million[/td][td]8.4%[/td][/tr][tr][td]6[/td][td]Breast Cancer Relief Foundation[/td][td]$63.9 million[/td][td]$44.8 million[/td][td]2.2%[/td][/tr][tr][td]7[/td][td]International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO[/td][td]$57.2 million[/td][td]$41.4 million[/td][td]0.5%[/td][/tr][tr][td]8[/td][td]National Veterans Service Fund[/td][td]$70.2 million[/td][td]$36.9 million[/td][td]7.8%[/td][/tr][tr][td]9[/td][td]American Association of State Troopers[/td][td]$45.0 million[/td][td]$36.0 million[/td][td]8.6%[/td][/tr][tr][td]10[/td][td]Children's Cancer Fund of America[/td][td]$37.5 million[/td][td]$29.2 million[/td][td]5.3%[/td][/tr][tr][td]11[/td][td]Children's Cancer Recovery Foundation[/td][td]$34.7 million[/td][td]$27.6 million[/td][td]0.6%[/td][/tr][tr][td]12[/td][td]Youth Development Fund[/td][td]$29.7 million[/td][td]$24.5 million[/td][td]0.8%[/td][/tr][tr][td]13[/td][td]Committee For Missing Children[/td][td]$26.9 million[/td][td]$23.8 million[/td][td]0.8%[/td][/tr][tr][td]14[/td][td]Association for Firefighters and Paramedics[/td][td]$23.2 million[/td][td]$20.8 million[/td][td]3.1%[/td][/tr][tr][td]15[/td][td]Project Cure (Bradenton, FL)[/td][td]$51.5 million[/td][td]$20.4 million[/td][td]0.0%[/td][/tr][tr][td]16[/td][td]National Caregiving Foundation[/td][td]$22.3 million[/td][td]$18.1 million[/td][td]3.5%[/td][/tr][tr][td]17[/td][td]Operation Lookout National Center for Missing Youth[/td][td]$19.6 million[/td][td]$16.1 million[/td][td]0.0%[/td][/tr][tr][td]18[/td][td]United States Deputy Sheriffs' Association[/td][td]$23.1 million[/td][td]$15.9 million[/td][td]0.6%[/td][/tr][tr][td]19[/td][td]Vietnow National Headquarters[/td][td]$18.1 million[/td][td]$15.9 million[/td][td]2.9%[/td][/tr][tr][td]20[/td][td]Police Protective Fund[/td][td]$34.9 million[/td][td]$14.8 million[/td][td]0.8%[/td][/tr][tr][td]21[/td][td]National Cancer Coalition[/td][td]$41.5 million[/td][td]$14.0 million[/td][td]1.1%[/td][/tr][tr][td]22[/td][td]Woman To Woman Breast Cancer Foundation[/td][td]$14.5 million[/td][td]$13.7 million[/td][td]0.4%[/td][/tr][tr][td]23[/td][td]American Foundation For Disabled Children[/td][td]$16.4 million[/td][td]$13.4 million[/td][td]0.8%[/td][/tr][tr][td]24[/td][td]The Veterans Fund[/td][td]$15.7 million[/td][td]$12.9 million[/td][td]2.3%[/td][/tr][tr][td]25[/td][td]Heart Support of America[/td][td]$33.0 million[/td][td]$11.0 million[/td][td]3.4%[/td][/tr][tr][td] [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][/tr][/table]
The worst charity in America operates from a metal warehouse behind a gas station in Holiday.

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.

But Kids Wish is not an isolated case, a yearlong investigation by the Tampa Bay Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

Using state and federal records, the Times  and CIR identified nearly 6,000 charities that have chosen to pay for-profit companies to raise their donations.

Then reporters took an unprecedented look back to zero in on the 50 worst — based on the money they diverted to boiler room operators and other solicitors over a decade.

These nonprofits adopt popular causes or mimic well-known charity names that fool donors. Then they rake in cash, year after year.

The nation's 50 worst charities have paid their solicitors nearly $1 billion over the past 10 years that could have gone to charitable works.

Until today, no one had tallied the cost of this parasitic segment of the nonprofit industry or traced the long history of its worst offenders.

Among the findings:

• The 50 worst charities in America devote less than 4 percent of donations raised to direct cash aid. Some charities give even less. Over a decade, one diabetes charity raised nearly $14 million and gave about $10,000 to patients. Six spent nothing at all on direct cash aid.

• 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 fundraising 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 fundraising 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.

• To disguise the meager amount of money that reaches those in need, charities use accounting tricks and inflate the value of donated dollar-store cast-offs — snack cakes and air fresheners — that they give to dying cancer patients and homeless veterans.

Over the past six months, the Times  and CIR called or mailed certified letters to the leaders of Kids Wish Network and the 49 other charities that have paid the most to solicitors.

Nearly half declined to answer questions about their programs or would speak only through an attorney.

Approached in person, one charity manager threatened to call the police; another refused to open the door. A third charity's president took off in his truck at the sight of a reporter with a camera.

Kids Wish has hired Melissa Schwartz, a crisis management specialist in New York City who previously worked for the federal government after the 2010 BP oil spill.

Schwartz said Kids Wish hires solicitors so its staff can focus on working with children, not on  raising donations. According to its 2011 IRS filing, the charity has 51 employees. Schwartz also said donors who give directly to the charity instead of in response to solicitations ensure that 100 percent of their pledge will be spent granting wishes.

She declined to answer additional questions about Kids Wish's fundraising operations, saying the charity "is focused on the future."

Charity operators who would talk defended their work, saying raising money is expensive especially in tough economic times.

"No parent has ever turned me down for assistance because we got our money from a telemarketer," said David Thelen, who runs the Committee for Missing Children in Lawrenceville, Ga. The charity is No. 13 on the Times/CIR list.

Over the past decade, the charity paid its solicitors nearly 90 percent of the $27 million it raised. It spent about $21,000 each year on its cause, most often buying plane tickets to reunite families.

The charity's efforts primarily consist of giving advice to families whose children have been abducted. Thelen said his group has worked with about 300 parents since 1997.

But he publicly claims credit for reuniting as many as 1,600 children with their families, even if his charity's involvement was as minimal as posting the child's picture on the charity website.

Doug White is one of the nation's foremost experts on the ethics of charity fundraising. A consultant to nonprofits for more than 30 years, White teaches in Columbia University's fundraising management master's degree program.

He said charities with high fundraising expenses often rationalize that such costs are inevitable in the early years. But White said the Times/CIR findings, based on a decade of data, show that the nation's worst charities can't use that excuse.

White also criticized reputable nonprofits that refuse to condemn bottom-tier charities.

"When you start a charity, you have a sacred compact with society," said White, one of 30 charity experts interviewed for this series. "They are ripping off the public under the guise of an organization that's supposed to do good for society."

How the list was made

To identify America's 50 worst charities, the Times  and CIR pieced together tens of thousands of pages of public records  collected by the federal government and 36 states. Reporters started in California, Florida and New York, where regulators require charities to report results of individual fundraising campaigns.

The Times  and CIR used those records to flag a specific kind of charity: those that pay for-profit corporations to raise the vast majority of their donations year in and year out.

The effort identified hundreds of charities that run donation drives across the country and regularly give their solicitors at least two-thirds of the take.  Experts say good charities  should spend about half that much — no more than 35 cents to raise a dollar.

For the worst charities, writing big checks to telemarketers isn't an anomaly. It's a way of life.

The Times  and CIR charted each charity's performance over the past decade and ranked it based on the total donations diverted to fundraisers, arriving at the 50 worst charities.  By this measure, Kids Wish tops the list.

Tracking donations diverted to fundraising is just one way to rate a charity's performance. But experts called the rating fair and said it would provide a unique resource to help donors avoid bad charities.

White, the Columbia University professor, dismisses the argument made by charities that without telemarketers they would have no money.

"When you weigh that in terms of values, of what the charity is supposed to be doing and what the donor is being told in the process, the house comes tumbling down," White said.

Collectively the 50 worst charities raised more than $1.3 billion over the past decade and paid nearly $1 billion of that directly to the companies that raise their donations.

If that money had gone to charity, it would have been enough to build 20,000 Habitat for Humanity homes, buy 7 million wheelchairs or pay for mammograms for nearly 10 million uninsured women.

Instead it funded charities like Youth Development Fund.

The Tennessee charity, which came in at No. 12, has been around for 30 years. Over the past decade it has raised nearly $30 million from donors by promising to educate children about drug abuse, health and fitness.

About 80 percent of what's donated each year goes directly to solicitation companies.

Most of what's left pays for one thing: scuba-diving videos starring the charity's founder and president, Rick Bowen.

Bowen's charity pays his own for-profit production company about $200,000 a year to make the videos. Then the charity pays to air Rick Bowen Deep-Sea Diving  on a local Knoxville station. The program makes no mention of Youth Development Fund.

In its IRS tax filings, the charity reports that its programming reaches "an estimated audience of 1.3 million."

But, according to the station manager, the show attracts about 3,600 viewers a week.

Bowen, who runs the charity out of his Knoxville condo, declined to be interviewed. He defended the practice of hiring his own company with the public's donations.

"We just happened to be the low bidder," he said.

http://www.tampabay.com/topics/specials/worst-charities2.page
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Its a dirty game out here...

Just wanna say thanks to Meth & Co. for their due diligence in selecting NT's charitable partners.

http://niketalk.com/a/community-contributions-to-date
 
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Crazy it literally pays to know who and what you donate your money too. I for one believe that charitable workers should be paid fairly, but this is ridiculous. I wonder what these charities PR are gonna say about this
 
TBH most of these people know what they're doing. Its a fine line between systematic operational inefficiency, billing yourself under the term 'consultancy' (legalised fraud), serial empathetic apathy, especially when you're dealing with sick children.

White collar crime :smh
btw its kinda sad these lowlifes are execs when there's so many qualified people on unemployment ready to step in especially at the office level. What's the national unemployment average?

There's gotta be someway to force these companies to restructure and hire competent individuals. I know tons of grads would be rubbinf theyre hands like birdman. Sheesh
 
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this is why i never donate money to charities. alot of people give me grief for it but i dont know where my money is going so instead of money, ill usually donate clothes, food, things i dont need, and have tried volunteering 
 
wow its a good thing these organizations got exposed. i always wondered if anyone monitored how these organizations are spending the donations they receive
 
blkrstr21 said:
this is why i never donate money to charities. alot of people give me grief for it but i dont know where my money is going so instead of money, ill usually donate clothes, food, things i dont need, and have tried volunteering 
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THIS

Charity is from the heart so actually giving something practical to your local shelter like a bag of old tee's, hoodies, track pants, cans of food goes alot further than you think.

Just did that this past Saturday, puts you in a good mood and honestly its hard to put a price on that!

smokin.gif
 
blkrstr21 said:
this is why i never donate money to charities. alot of people give me grief for it but i dont know where my money is going so instead of money, ill usually donate clothes, food, things i dont need, and have tried volunteering 
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Yea I'ma start doing this. I always had a feeling this was going down regardless though.
 
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this is why it is always better to directly donate. instead of giving money to them send it to family overseas if u have any or go give it to some homeless or even a kid that looks like he could use a buck or two
 
We only care about ****** charities when we're blasting athletes for donating to them and calling them out for faux good will. 
 
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