Results tagged “scandal” from Uncivil Society
In my work I hear a lot about how for-profit/nonprofit cause marketing partnerships. The emphasis is usually on the positive--doing well by doing good, changing the way we do business, and so forth. What we don't see enough of are detailed reviews of how such projects actually work in practice, warts and all.
I especially want to emphasize those last three words. I've read plenty of rah-rah case studies where the critical analysis echoes the oh-so-clever answer every law student gives when a firm inquires as to one's greatest weakness: "I work too hard." But, like people, joint ventures are much more complex, and they'll never reach their potential if we pretend that even their weaknesses are above average.
Case in point: the breaking controversy of the Knight Foundation/MTV Young Creators' Award. The Knight Foundation's News Challenge program has produced a heap o' fantastic work--in fact, in the interests of full disclosure, I personally know and recommended one of the winning teams in a different (i.e., non-MTV-related) grant program.
However, the Knight/MTV partnership has generated a considerable amount of unhappiness among the young people who worked for it. Like Willy Loman, the correspondents in the Knight/MTV community journalist program worked unto exhaustion, long hours (allegedly) without pay--and what's worse, it's pay they were contractually obligated to receive. Since the experience seems to have spawned some disillusionment, attention must be paid.
The lesson now has become so relevant to the news we were covering - and our experience with MTV at the intersection of our nation’s financial crisis, the meltdown of traditional news media - and how the innocent idealism of youth that helped change a nation’s course - was exploited. What happened would wake us all up - on the Street Team, to the Real World.
EricaAmerica has the inside scoop; Gawker is looking for more.
Articles on the Madoff implosion highlight ripple effects beyond the loss of money & closure of prominent charities. Last night in my nonprofit class we discussed the tension this is creating within nonprofit boards, as well as its potential impact on nonprofit governance. Below, an excerpt from one news story highlighting the scandal's effect on local social networks:
"This is a very wealthy area, a place where there are a lot of philanthropic people. The fact that a lot of charity money has been lost is maybe the hardest thing for people to swallow," he said.
The local Palm Beach Post reported a frosty exchange at a birthday party Saturday night at Mr. Trump's ultra-exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club, where several furious Madoff clients confronted Robert Jaffe, who not only invested heavily in the disgraced financier but also received a fee for steering other clients to Mr. Madoff.
With Mr. Trump looking on, Mr. Jaffe came close to a physical confrontation with one particularly unhappy Madoff investor. "There were a lot of unhappy campers there," Mr. Trump told the newspaper.
That's what one professor after discovering that his sister's life savings were lost in the Madoff Ponzi scheme.
But that's just part of this wrenching autobiographical account of how Madoff hurt the family of a prominent financial journalist whose wife lost her foundation job when the charity lost its endowment.
We'll no doubt be studying the Madoff scandal for years to come. It's like the description of the Ponzi wine pictured above: "The finish is long."
[Madoff story via tech journo extraordinaire Angela Gunn. And Ponzi wine is no Ponzi scheme--it's a leading Oregon vineyard active in important nonprofits & charity, and its wines are quite good!]
If you want to know what it's like to chat with charity folks experiencing Madoff effects, their reaction is a lot like the picture above.
I'm in the midst of preparing the final exam + review for my nonprofit law class, but I couldn't help but get caught up in the Blagojevich criminal complaint. Nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations are central to the indictment, which alleges, based largely on taped conversations, that the Illinois governor sought to enrich himself and punish his critics through deals involving a campaign fund, state finance authority, a hospital expansion program, a union, a charity and a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization.
Really, I could have used the complaint as a springboard for half my course.
As someone who practiced law in Chicago, I find several aspects of the complaint sadly familiar--let's just say Gov. Blagojevich is not the first Illinois public official to cultivate a quid-pro-quo culture for getting permission for nonprofit projects. (See the complaint pages 21-23 and 36 for some killer stuff on this score.)
Also interesting from the perspective of charity history is Blagojevich's attempt to trade his Senate appointment replacing Obama for a well-paid position as head of what Blagojevich calls a "private foundation," but in context meant a nongovernmental charity. (see pp. 57ff). Historians of philanthropy will no doubt recall that the alleged use of charities as lucrative way-stations for politicians between posts was a factor in the enactment of the extensive tax reforms in 1969 that gave us much of the present law regarding so-called private foundations and public charities.
Via Blog@, news of another controversy involving charity and exposed flesh--this time, a risque drawing of the Hulk and She-Hulk gets rejected for inclusion in a Heroes Initiative auction. We've seen this value clash many times:
Naturally, Frank’s cover would have sold for thousands. Sober estimates (much more trustworthy than the alternative) run at $8,000. It’s a shame. That’s a lot of money for a charity to lose.
Remember GiveWell, the charitable startup got busted for astroturfing? FastCompany has a new article using the story to illustrate "how easy it is to lose your own credibility."
See, that's why I prefer not to have any credibility. Much less to lose that way.
Via ScienceFairLeader or not, do-gooders may be more smoke-and-mirrors than the real McCoy.
Research has shown people do the bare minimum in many respects, and so with morality, the appearance of taking the right action could be just as beneficial as actually taking that action.
Politics is rife with convenient fictions, one of which is that charities associated with political spouses are mainly about the cause. It wasn't really a coincidence that Bill Clinton's foundation jacked into social enterprise last year, yet like symbiotic little fishies cleaning a shark's teeth we happily joined in what was at base a campaign to promote the Clinton name for other purposes. And this week, mirabile dictu, Clinton's charity is launching a nationwide environmental initiative targeted at the college student vote. Major overseas and corporate donors aren't giving to the Clinton foundation because no one else is committed to sustainability and the green movement--they're buying attention from Bill and his wife.
On a more local level, consider NYC's Children for Children Foundation, a charity started by the wife of Eliot Spitzer, Silda Wall. The charity does a lot of good work, yes, but so do a lot of other charities that somehow can't attract high-powered corporate partners or manage to get donors to chip in upwards of 800K at an annual cocktail party. And in politics, donations to schools and schoolkids aren't just acts of goodwill; they're a strategic means of locking in the teachers' union as well as parents.
Like I said, it's a symbiotic relationship, and the fact that I call attention to the fiction doesn't mean I think it's a bad thing. Children for Children, for example, pays a low-to-middlin' ED salary given its stature & location, and I bet if you asked the recipients of its largesse they wouldn't object to whatever political networking may have prompted the original gift.
Next to Spitzer's family, CFC & its beneficiaries are perhaps the folks who stand to lose the most from this whole sorry affair. Whether Spitzer resigns in a back-room plea deal or gets indicted (the two alternatives he's now rumored to be facing), the charity won't lose much if not all of its political cache. Spitzer's senatorial & presidential possibilities have evaporated; his influence as a lobbyist will likely trend to nil, at least for the immediate future. That leaves the Board having to count on the sheer goodwill of its supporters to maintain current levels of support.
Psalm 146:3 advises us not to trust politicians; the Spitzer provides a potent illustration why. Perhaps it would not be a bad idea for charities with a substantial connection to a political leader or celebrity to consider contingency plans in case of scandal, death or other change in fortune. Insurance might even be in order, if a company can be found to write the policy. That may sound like overkill to some folks, but if you've ever worked with an organization that's seen funds dry up after the impossible has happened you'll know why I'm raising the issue.
A wry take on Emperor's Club VIP via Web news icon Ana Marie Cox, who herself broke the story of a DC political sex scandal:
I love it when people clothe (as it were) unseemly activities in the jargon of the marketplace because they think it'll make it sound less obscene. This sounds pretty white-slave-y to me (emphasis mine):
We specialize in marketing fashion models, pageant winners and exquisite students, graduates and women of successful careers (finance, art, media etc…) to leading gentlemen of the world. Catering to clients who will not compromise in any area of their life. We provide our customers and associates with complete discretion and privacy while we guarantee the most exclusively valuable dating and travel companionship.
- a repeat customer--he had $400 credit on deposit before the DC assignation and paid extra to make a deposit on a future session, and he was familiar with the woman, Kristen, chosen to meet him on February 13 (!)
- not exactly committed to the public health agenda of the NYC Health Department--management followed up with "Kristen" and asked if it went well, inasmuch as Spitzer was reported to be someone who "would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe -- you know -- I mean that . . . very basic things"
- conspiring & enticing to transport an individual across state lines to engage in prostitution--he arranged and paid for the escort to travel from New York to DC
- one degree of separation from human trafficking--this was an international sex ring, the subject of a fair degree of scrutiny from law enforcement & policymakers in recent years
- engaged in money laundering and fraud--besides the financial arrangements noted in the complaint, Spitzer apparently conducted business under the name of a member of his campaign staff.
Gawker has the scoop on pseudo-Crip Margaret Seltzer's International Brother/SisterHood foundation.
Valleywag has the rundown on the apparent effort to hide the misuse of funds by founder Jimmy Wales.
LIST UPDATE: The three mortal sins.
As we nonprofit experts live our little lives, sipping our chardonnay at benefits and reveling in the nondistribution constraint, a monster from beyond is poised to attack.
And if it doesn't get us, symbiotic parasites will finish the job.
No, I'm not talking about the latest cinematic 9/11 metaphor. I'm referring to attorneys general and ratings-driven commercial media.
This headline from Billings, MT is just the latest example of the horror that lies in store for any charity that believes it is safe: "Some Nonprofit Hospitals Keeping Too Much of the Profit."
From the standpoint of nonprofit legal theory, hey, no probs--as long as the money doesn't get distributed to insiders, it's cool.
Surprise!
In what was surely a coincidence, apparel retailer Aeropostale had two announcements appear in yesterday's Women's Wear Daily:
Now I'm actually glad that my early morning post evaporated. I wrote about how Givewell stands on a precipice where many charities have stood before. It could fall into nothingness, like the PTL Club; linger as a tragic phantom of being and nonbeing, like Jimmy Swaggart Ministries; or luck out with a huge boost in support and meaningful accountability reform, like what seems to be happening with Oral Roberts University.
Over at Non-Profit Tech Blog, though, Allan Benamer has provided a more analytical meditation on GiveWell's future, with a chart and hard stats and no Heidegger or televangelists! If you aren't a reader of NPTB or a habitue of socialmarkets.org, you should be--Allan and Jeff are cool cats doing interesting work.
I hadn't intended to write another entry on GiveWell. However, a number of things have happened or are now in the works, so I figured I'd add a few thoughts.
The big news, of course, has been the quasi-discipline of co-founder Elie Hassenfeld for posting online under the pseudonym Talia. More than anything, this made me laugh. As a lifelong Batman fan--the "Batman" logo in the Adam West TV show is literally the first word I remember reading--the name Talia immediately brings to mind the devilish daughter of Ras al Ghul, best known for trying to seduce Batman into taking over her father's global criminal empire.
My recommendation if you're a guy choosing a cross-gender sockpuppet: try "Silver St. Cloud" or better yet, "Julie Madison." You'll get serious geek cred without raising questions about your moral compass!
