Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy

Once upon a time, the super-wealthy endowed their tax-exempt charitable foundations and then turned them over to boards of trustees to run. The trustees would spend the earnings of the endowment to pursue a typically grand but wide-open mission written into the foundation's charter -- like The Rockefeller Foundation's 1913 mission "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world." Today's multi-billionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders -- think Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, or Walmart heiress Alice Walton. They aim to do good in the world, but each defines "good" idiosyncratically in terms of specific public policies and political goals. They translate their wealth, the work of their foundations, and their celebrity as doers-of-good into influence in the public sphere -- much more influence than most citizens have.

World's Poorest Need Freedom Far More Than Charity

The United Nations held its Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD3) in Ethiopia this summer. At the meeting, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a "reboot" of development finance to fund the pursuit of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals that will take the place of the UN's expiring Millennium Development Goals moving forward. The 17 new goals and 169 new targets are expected to be adopted by the UN General Assembly at a Sustainable Development Summit being held in New York this weekend.

Charity law blocks progress on issues facing Canadians

Canadian charities are under attack. Environmental, human rights and international development charities, organizations struggling to address poverty and women’s issues are examples of non-governmental organizations that have lost their ability to issue charitable tax credits under the Income Tax Act. Either that or they face the threat of a loss as a result of ongoing Canada Revenue Agency audits.

These groups have one thing in common. They turned a spotlight onto Harper government policies or advocated for public policy change that might alleviate society’s gravest ills.

Socks are not enough: Social justice lies upstream from charity

There is a parable called Upstream Downstream that has guided me in my work as a street nurse. It's about visiting health care workers in a developing country. Standing by a riverbed they suddenly see bodies floating down the river. Frantically, they start pulling the bodies out and begin resuscitation. When they look up they see a continual flow of bodies down the river. They call for help and keep pulling the bodies onto the riverbank and apply CPR. Finally, one of them asks: "Who or what is upstream pushing the bodies into the river?"

This time of year people are always asking me what they can do to help the homeless. Where can they help to serve a Christmas dinner in a shelter? What organization can they collect socks for? Is it okay to hand out sandwiches or bags with toiletries to homeless people who are lying on the sidewalk downtown?

Save the Children staff furious over ‘global legacy’ award for Tony Blair

The charity Save the Children faces a backlash from staff after it presented Tony Blair with a “global legacy award” in New York last week – despite privately acknowledging that he is a controversial and divisive figure.

Amid widespread criticism on social media, many of the charity’s staff have complained that the presentation of the award has discredited Save the Children (STC). An internal letter, which gathered almost 200 signatures – including senior regional staff – in the first six hours of dissemination, said the award was not only “morally reprehensible, but also endangers our credibility globally”, and called for it to be withdrawn.

The Walmart Heirs Give a Measly Amount to Charity

The Walmart heirs are infamous for their wealth and penny-pinching. Christy, Jim, Alice, and Rob Walton wouldn't be the sixth-, seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-richest Americans, respectively, if not for Walmart's relentless exploitation of its low-wage workers. But the Waltons' stinginess also extends to their philanthropy. According to a new analysis by the union-backed Making Change at Walmart campaign, the Walton scions give way less money to charity than other über-rich Americans.

Why the Rich Don't Give to Charity

When Mort Zuckerman, the New York City real-estate and media mogul, lavished $200 million on Columbia University in December to endow the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, he did so with fanfare suitable to the occasion: the press conference was attended by two Nobel laureates, the president of the university, the mayor, and journalists from some of New York’s major media outlets. Many of the 12 other individual charitable gifts that topped $100 million in the U.S. last year were showered with similar attention: $150 million from Carl Icahn to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, $125 million from Phil Knight to the Oregon Health & Science University, and $300 million from Paul Allen to the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, among them. If you scanned the press releases, or drove past the many university buildings, symphony halls, institutes, and stadiums named for their benefactors, or for that matter read the histories of grand giving by the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Stanfords, and Dukes, you would be forgiven for thinking that the story of charity in this country is a story of epic generosity on the part of the American rich.

Michael Bloomberg's Contributions To Johns Hopkins University Top $1 Billion

BALTIMORE -- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged $350 million to Johns Hopkins University, mainly to expand its interdisciplinary research on an array of issues including global health and urban revitalization as his lifetime giving to his alma mater eclipses $1 billion.

The university announced the commitment late Saturday saying it believe Bloomberg, who amassed his fortune creating the global financial services firm Bloomberg LP, is now the first person to give more than $1 billion to a single American university.

Banks' Charity, Philanthropic Giving Only Reaches 'Mediocre' Levels

The philanthropic practices of the United States' four megabanks are "mediocre" at best, an independent watchdog has concluded.

A report released Thursday by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), the only independent watchdog of institutional philanthropy, found that Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs have tried to use charity as a way to boost their tarnished images, but those banks lack transparency and donate at disappointing levels.

Why Jesus Would Be Angry This Christmas

"Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." -- Proverbs 31:9, the Bible 


Jesus would be angry this Christmas, furious to see charities feeding the hungry, helping the homeless, comforting those with disabilities and supporting the poor, all asking for donations.
 


But Christ wouldn't be mad at those worthy groups doing good works. He would be disgusted our society refuses to properly care for those in need, making them depend on the whims of individual generosity.
 


Stephen Harper’s attack on charities doesn’t go far enough

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper says charities that engage in too much politicking should be denied tax subsidies, he’s right.

There’s no good reason why environmental groups that oppose oil pipelines should be able to finance their activities, in part, on the backs of the general taxpayer.

The problem with Harper’s dictum, however, is that it’s not broad enough. He’s only putting the boots to charities that his Conservatives don’t like.

Parliament should end the tax subsidies going to all charities. Period.

That would include cutting off not only dubious charities, such as the right-wing Fraser Institute, but organizations that probably do some good, like the United Way.

The original idea of having the public subsidize charitable organizations was well-meaning.

Charities used to be organizations that engaged in uncontroversial good works, such as helping widows and orphans.

Charity used call centre firm that worked for Tories

A historical charity that receives millions of dollars from the federal government each year has been paying the Conservative Party's main call centre company for fundraising work.

Historica-Dominion Institute has been using Responsive Marketing Group (RMG) for telephone fundraising to supplement the $5 to $7 million the charity has received from the federal government over each of the past three years.

The privately-owned RMG performs voter identification and fundraising work for the federal Conservatives using the party's sophisticated Constituent Information Management System (CIMS) database.

The company was thrust into the media spotlight last month when some RMG phone operators from Thunder Bay said they had filed complaints with the RCMP and Elections Canada about calls they made for the Tories during the last election campaign.

Historica-Dominion is a charity that raises awareness of Canadian history and is best known for its "Heritage Minute" television ads that recreate important moments such as the Halifax explosion and the execution of Louis Riel. It has also created videos commemorating the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, an event the Conservative government is heavily promoting.

As a registered charitable organization, Historica-Dominion is legally bound to scrupulously avoid involvement with partisan political activity.

Feds attack charitable sector in budget for being too political, say opposition MPs

PARLIAMENT HILL—Opposition MPs say a surprise allegation in the federal budget that Canadian charities are violating federal rules limiting their political advocacy is retribution for widespread opposition from environmental groups to the massive Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline across British Columbia.

The obscure provision in the budget Thursday to beef up the Canada Revenue Agency’s “enforcement tools” to monitor political activities of charities demonstrates the partisan nature of the Conservative government, opposition MPs said.

NDP MP Megan Leslie (Halifax, N.S.) told The Hill Times the measure is one of several provisions that show the budget, aside from its main thrust of public service spending cuts, is all “pipeline, pipeline, pipeline.”

“The over-arching theme here is this is a budget for the great pipeline to China,” Ms. Leslie said. “This is about pipelines, pipelines, pipelines, and at any cost.”

“Whether it is going after charities, who might have a different opinion, cutting the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy and cutting Environment Canada and not relying on science and evidence, or whether it’s going after the Environmental Assessment Act and weakening it, that’s what this budget says to me, it’s all about pipelines,” Ms. Leslie said.

The Fraser Institute: 100% political and still a registered charity! Explain, please...

Other than Canadian political parties themselves, the Fraser Institute must be Canada's most intensely political organization.

Notwithstanding its pious mission statement -- "to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government interventions on the welfare of individuals" -- essentially 100 per cent of the Fraser Institute's activities are 100-per-cent political.

As such, the far-right, market fundamentalist "think tank" plays a key role in what author Donald Gutstein terms the "corporate propaganda system" that purports to churn out unbiased research but in fact works tirelessly to hijack our democracy for the benefit of Big Business and the ultra-wealthy families that control it.

The Fraser Institute strives to change Canadians' political attitudes so they will place far-right political parties like Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives in power, and keep them there. It works relentlessly to restructure our political architecture in ways that will make it difficult for citizens to seize back their own country. And it fields an army of "former researchers" -- Danielle Smith, leader of the far-right Wildrose Party here in Alberta is a prominent example -- who play an overtly political role.
Nor is there much that is fair or scientific about the Fraser Institute's research, despite the claim it is subject to "a rigorous peer review process." Saskatoon health policy consultant Stephen Lewis brilliantly deconstructs the Grade 9 methodology behind the "institute's" annual report on hospital wait times and exposes it as "skewed estimates on a hot-button issue," retailed as hard data, and intended "to lure Canadians to the promised land of private medicine."

"Never mind the 16-per-cent response rate in 2011, which alone cashiers validity," Lewis writes of the Fraser Institute's effort. "Even more fundamentally, the questionnaire asks respondents for neither the sources of their estimates, nor whether they consult any real data to support their responses."

So, as Nova Scotia Finance Minister Graham Steele put it: "The Fraser Institute produces junk. It is not a serious institution. It is a political organization."

Steele was two-thirds right. The Fraser Institute is serious all right, although its research is not serious in the normal sense of transparency and lack of bias, no matter what it claims. But it surely is political. Indeed, the Fraser Institute is all politics, all the time.

As it turns out, this is important, because the Fraser Institute is also a registered charity, meaning that those Canadians who do pay taxes are in effect subsidizing its purely political operations. Indeed, to go a step further, we are also subsidizing those wealthy individuals, organizations and corporations that bankroll the Fraser Institute's propaganda efforts to work directly against the interests of ordinary Canadians.

Alert readers will be aware that charitable status for organizations that take controversial positions on the issues of that day is currently a highly contentious issue -- at least when the registered charities in question do not support the Harper government on such issues as bitumen pipelines to the West Coast, climate science and uncontrolled oilsands development.

So, for example, Charles Adler, Canada's self-styled "everyman" and a bloviator for Canada's real state broadcaster, the Sun (Non)News Network, columnized last month about how "there's no shortage of radical greens getting generous tax breaks from the federal government."

"Under the law," Adler opined, "these supposed charities can only spend 10 per cent of their budget on advocacy activities. I'll leave it to you to judge whether these radicals are obeying this law."

Others on the government side of this debate take a more extreme view. An email now in circulation originating somewhere within the Online Tory Rage Machine accuses an Alberta-based environmental group of being part of a "treasonous and underhanded" conspiracy "to destroy our Alberta oil industry."

And last month, the Globe and Mail reported that the Commons Finance Committee's review of the charitable sector is expected to attack the charitable status of Canadian environmental organizations.

So it is interesting that when it comes to one of Canada's most intensely political organizations, which boasts on its website about the controversial nature of the positions it takes, its charitable status passes uncontested among these same far-right actors, including the ones in government.

Now, the Canada Revenue Agency's rules governing political activities by charitable organizations are not quite as clear-cut as Adler makes them sound, but he has the gist of it right. Depending on their annual income in the previous year, registered charities may contribute between 12 and 20 per cent of their resources to political activities in the current year.

However, "a registered charity cannot be created for a political purpose and cannot be involved in partisan political activities," the CRA states. "A political activity is considered partisan if it involves direct or indirect support of, or opposition to, a political party or candidate for office."

Elsewhere, the CRA goes on to define political activities quite broadly, including the following: "explicitly communicates to the public that the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country should be retained (if the retention of the law, policy or decision is being reconsidered by a government), opposed, or changed…" The CRA even defines as political activities as "attempts to sway public opinion on social issues."

So, obviously, from any common sense position, the Fraser Institute fails to meet this broad test and clearly should lose its charitable status.

When a charity files its annual income statement with the Canada Revenue Agency, it is always asked: "Did the charity carry on any political activities during the fiscal period." Yet in each year between 2000 and 2010, according to a recent Access to Information request by the Alberta Federation of Labour, the Fraser Institute answered "No."

"Any rookie observer of Canadian politics knows this is nonsense," the AFL wrote in its Jan. 17 submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance on Tax Incentives for Charitable Donations. "The Fraser Institute is actively involved in the Canadian political landscape. Any reporting or suggestion otherwise is a sham."

In 2010, for example, the Fraser Institute explicitly communicated to the public calls for laws to be changed, thereby engaging in politics as defined by the CRA. So the Fraser Institute column, "Reject Unions and Prosper," which was published on Sept. 10, 2010, urged Canadian provinces to adopt "right-to-work" laws typical of those U.S. states south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

"Provinces would do well to adopt worker-choice laws (called right-to-work laws in the United States), which would allow workers to choose whether they want to join and financially support a union," the article, which is found on the Fraser Institute's website, states.

Clearly this article meets the standard for political activity set by the CRA. There is no shortage of similar examples.

Indeed, one day after last year's federal election, in which the political party clearly backed by the Fraser Institute won a majority, they were at it again, pushing Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative Party to change Canada's election spending laws to eliminate all per-vote subsidies for political parties.

So, never mind why the media treats the Fraser Institute's dubious findings with such respect, the question most often asked about this organization. That seems obvious enough considering who owns the media.

A better question is: Given its responses to the CRA, can Canadians have any confidence that the Fraser Institute is staying within the 12 per cent of its allowed limit for political activities?

Moreover, it is fair to wonder: Is anyone at the Canada Revenue Agency paying attention or even raising concerns about the Fraser Institute's constant political activities, let alone questioning its charitable status?

As Adler said, "I'll leave it to you to judge whether these radicals are obeying this law."

Original Article
Source: Rabble.ca 
Author: David Climenhaga 

Santorum charity for the poor spent most of its money on management, political friends

As Republicans gathered for their national convention in Philadelphia a decade ago, Rick Santorum, who was then an up-and-coming senator from Pennsylvania, launched a charity he said would improve the lives of low-income residents in his home state.

“Wouldn’t it be a great thing to leave something positive behind other than a bunch of parties and a bunch of garbage?” Santorum told a local reporter.

But homeless families and troubled children were not the biggest beneficiaries of “Operation Good Neighbor.” Instead, the foundation spent most of its money to run itself, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for fundraising, administration and office rental paid to Santorum’s political allies.

The charity also had significant overlap with the senator’s campaigns and his work on Capitol Hill. Among the leading donors to the foundation were Pennsylvania development and finance firms that had donated to his election efforts and had interests that Santorum had supported in the Senate.

Santorum, whose last-minute surge in the Iowa caucuses has brought new attention to his presidential bid, portrays himself as a common man concerned about the gap between the nation’s rich and poor. But in the case of his charity, his efforts ended up mostly helping his cadre of political friends.

Conservativism, Compassion, and Cruelty

Through a story of personal tragedy and the virtues of small-town life, voluntarism, and compassion, the New York Times' David Brooks has written a column that unwittingly exposes our nation's outrageous cruelty and callousness.

In his December 30 column, "Going Home Again," Brooks tells the story of Ruthie Leming, a school teacher and mother of three daughters in St. Francisville, Louisiana (population 1,765), who last year, at age 40, was diagnosed with a virulent form of cancer. Brooks understandably laments the tragedy and applauds Ruthie's community, which rallied around her and her family as her health deteriorated.

"There were cookouts to raise money for her medical care," Brooks reports. On April 10 last year -- officially "Ruthie Leming Day" -- "more than half the town went to a fund-raising concert" to help pay her medical expenses.

Brooks describes other ways that Leming's friends and neighbors came to her aid. At the fundraising concert, for example, someone brought a camper trailer "so Ruthie would have a place to rest and take oxygen." And when Leming died on September 15 of this year, "more than 1,000 people signed the guest book at the funeral." Brooks quotes Ruthie's husband Mike, an Iraq war veteran and a fireman, whose friends helped him get through the tragedy. "We're leaning, but we're leaning on each other," he said. Each year on Christmas eve, Ruthie and her mother would put candles on the graves in the local cemetery. But her mother couldn't bring herself to do it this year. When she drove by the cemetery, however, the candle flames were aglow; one of Ruthie and Mike's neighbors had taken it upon herself to maintain the tradition. "They will never know what this meant to me," the mother said.

Charities to pay for trash pickup

Toronto plans to start charging for trash pickup from churches, service agencies, retirement homes and other non-profit organizations that have long received the service for free.

Some 1,100 formerly exempt customers will pay commercial rates phased in over four years, and end up pumping $2.9 million annually into city coffers to recover the cost of collection and disposal.

The news comes as a shock, said John Campey, executive director of Social Planning Toronto.

“There’s been no consultation, no discussion, no sense of what the impact on any of those organizations will be,” Campey said. “It seems they just dreamt this up as a way of making some money.”

On Monday, council’s executive committee chaired by Mayor Rob Ford supported the change without debate in approving a water budget that raises rates by 9 per cent and a trash budget with no rate increase.

When 'Giving Back' Becomes 'Atonement'

As the federal government moves to reform how charities are funded, the 'moral debt' of wealthy philanthropists comes under the microscope.

Two seemingly separate storylines – one of taxing the rich and another of reforming the role of charity – have dominated our national news lately. The first chronicles the ongoing saga of the Occupy movement, which has spread northward from New York City to our own urban centres, and to hundreds of cities around the world. The public spaces around the Vancouver Art Gallery and Victoria Square in Montreal are now as "occupied" as those around Wall Street and St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the movement is generating debate among all quarters.

A second, apparently distinct storyline has emerged from the federal government’s recent proposal to reform the way it funds charitable organizations, and to move Canada closer to a U.K.-inspired "Big Society" model of social service provision. The latter story has expanded into an in-depth Globe and Mail series on philanthropy, which, among other things, sets out BMO Capital Markets advisory board member, Donald Johnson’s argument that the tax benefits available to Canadian philanthropists should be expanded even further at this time.

Ottawa looks at rewriting rules on charitable giving

Ottawa is conducting a sweeping overhaul of the way it finances charities and non-profit organizations, pledging a new era of accountability in which businesses and citizens shoulder more of the cost of giving.

The government’s lead minister for the changes said financing will come with more strings attached in an effort to ensure that organizations deliver promised social gains.

While the first steps will be small, the government’s ultimate goal is a shift in public expectations as to the role of government in assisting social causes.

The plan is inspired by British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society experiment, in which social responsibilities that traditionally fell to the state are put in the hands of the citizenry and private sector.

Data Shows Goodwill Means Good Wages At Canadian Charities

THE CANADIAN PRESS -- OTTAWA - Goodwill means good wages for thousands of Canadian charity workers.

An analysis of tax filings by The Canadian Press has found salaries often run well into six figures -- raising questions about how money raised in the name of charity is being spent.

The Canada Revenue Agency keeps a database of all the country's registered charities, which now number around 85,000. Charities must disclose how much their 10 highest-paid workers take home.

There are around a million charity workers in Canada. The agency's database shows more than 6,000 of them earned above $120,000 last year. A few hundred made over $350,000.

Another 12,000 workers made between $80,000 and $120,000. And about 163,000 earned less than that.

It's likely the number of charity workers making six-figure salaries is actually greater since organizations must only disclose their Top 10 earners.

Charities defend the high pay by saying they have to pay top dollar for the brightest talent.

"If you really want those charities to have an impact and make a real difference, you're going to need to bring in the best people to work in that sector," said Marcel Lauziere of Imagine Canada, an advocacy group for Canadian charities.

"It's not only in government and in business. So you will have to pay salaries that are commensurate to that."

The definition of a charity is murky. Not every group that's registered as a charity builds schools in poor parts of the world or raises money to fight diseases.

Many are Canadian hospitals, school boards, universities and colleges. These groups tend to pay top dollar to attract the best talent, which perhaps explains many of the six-figure salaries.

Registered charities with at least 10 people earning $350,000 or more include the La Salle Manor retirement home in Scarborough, Ont., the Regina Qu'Appelle Regional Health Authority, the University of Saskatchewan and Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital.

There are also many churches and religious or community groups. By registering as charities, these groups can issue tax receipts for donations.

Some spend millions of dollars on salaries.

The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation paid its 156 full-time workers and 30 part-timers nearly $13 million last year, Canada Revenue Agency records show.

All of the foundation's top earners made more than $120,000 last year -- and three of them made between $200,000 and $249,999.

The foundation also spent about $23 million last year on charitable works, including research grants and scholarships.

Sandra Palmaro, head of the foundation's Ontario branch, said that's the going rate.

"From our perspective, that's basically what the market dictates as the acceptable salary range for employees at that level for our size of organization" she said.

The Sick Kids Foundation, which mainly raises money for the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, paid its staff of 136 full- and part-time employees nearly $12 million last year.

The 10 highest-paid workers at the Sick Kids Foundation all made more than $160,000 -- and five of them made more than $200,000.

The group raised $51 million for the hospital last year, and spent another $1 million on other charitable programs.

Ted Garrard, head of the Sick Kids Foundation, said the group's board of directors sets the top salaries and reviews them every year.

"We are a large and complex organization," Garrard said.

"We want to make sure that we attract qualified people to oversee and manage our various programs."

Origin
Source: Huffington