Non-Profit Horror Stories

Jeff Brooks of the Donor Power Blog asked me if I would write a “nonprofit horror story” today in my blog for consideration in the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. As Jeff said, “I know you have some!”

And of course I do.

I thought about writing about Rick Bowen down at the Youth Development Fund in Knoxville, Tennessee. I went on Bill O’Reilly’s show to talk about Mr. Bowen, and his ability to raise $3 million over the phone for his “charity” and still, spend only $100K of it on the kids. I could even write about Bowen’s $400K salary, of which Mr. Bowen told O’Reilly that only $150K should be counted as compensation, because he usually spends about $250K a year to travel around to exotic locations and make underwater scuba movies.

I could be different (and be branded a traitor) and write about the Bush/Clinton Katrina Fund. The two former presidents were able to raise over $200 million solely on their reputations and cults of personality, and yet never told anyone what the heck they were going to do with the money. It appears that was because they had no idea. Anyone rich or famous can raise money; it takes a philanthropist to figure out how to give it away. Just last month, nearly all of the religious leaders serving on a committee to advise the Fund on how to give the money to churches quit because they weren’t even sure that the churches that were receiving funds “existed!”

And of course I could talk about the CFO of the Newark Salvation Army branch who stole $400K from the neediest of the needy or the former IRS agent who started a children’s charity and stole $500K in state money ear-marked for charter schools to buy herself a couple of houses or even the Washington DC United Way that brought in a new CFO, with an impeccable reputation, to get their books in order after yet another scandal and promptly asked her to cook the books so they wouldn’t look so bad.

As Jeff Brooks said, “I know you have some” horror stories.

But given what we do, I thought I’d touch on a story that I find just as maddening, but that most would find innocuous. In my mind, it’s a story of arrogance and mission creep and an unwillingness on one charity’s part to look in the mirror, and understand not only its own limitations, but its proper role in serving the public.

Whenever a disaster takes place in the world, much of our time here at Charity Navigator is spent trying to help people find good charities that are doing good work. We do a lot of television and radio, and we publish special lists of charities that we know have the experience and the knowledge of the damaged area to truly get things done. This is what we were doing in the days after the Indonesian tsunami of late 2005. In my mind, it was even more vital than usual, due to the fact that most Americans couldn’t find Indonesia on a map if they had to, and the challenges of providing relief and recovery were complicated by the simple fact that few Westerners understand the infrastructure, political system, and inner-workings of that particular region.

This disaster could only be addressed by those that had been on the ground in the region before the tsunami. Organizations like Save The Children, that actually had two staffers die in the waters, or Direct Relief International, that had long-standing relationships with clinics and healthcare providers well before those terrible December days.

However, in the days after the waves came ashore, I got a call from a woman who ran a charity that she insisted needed to be included in our list of “best charities” to serve the Indonesian victims. Her charity was based in Colorado, and they focused on developing leadership skills for Jewish teenage girls. And they raised a lot of money to do this, more than you’d ever imagine. And they were (her words) “well-positioned” to provide relief in Aceh and were aggressively pursuing funding and she was outraged that she wasn’t included on our list.

I asked her if they had ever worked in Indonesia. She said no. I asked her if they’d ever done relief work before. She said no. And I asked her why she felt compelled to participate in this disaster. And she said that they were a good charity (which they might have been) and that the children of the area were going to need leadership skills and that she was ready to wade in.

And while this is not fraud or a crime, to me it is troubling. She had no experience with this type of disaster or the region (she did Jewish teenage girl leadership development in Colorado!), but she saw the money in the water (forgive me) and felt like it was too great an opportunity to pass up. So she was aggressively fundraising, taking her organization where the money was, ignoring the real work she was chartered to do, and sticking her nose in a place where amateurs could only get in the way of those trying to do serious work. Disasters are no time for novices and they’re no time for inexperienced charities.

To me, this too is a horror story.