Wait for the Bad Guys to Call a Reporter?
Disagree with my plan to make IRS audits of charities more effective by simply starting with the police, firefighters, and veterans groups that have large telemarketing budgets, and see where that gets you? Based on this Boston Globe article, I'd already have caught one bad guy, a veterans group (in name, at least) that is lying, cheating, and stealing, and getting away with it.
The Veterans Charitable Foundation (sounds legit, right?) is calling donors and telling them that 100% of their donations will go to veterans. Yeah, 100% of whatever they have left, after they spend over 97% of the money they raise on professional telemarketers.
There are thousands of these groups, playing on people's patriotism and hiding behind the vagaries of the tax code and the state-driven system of charity regulation. The only reason these guys even ended up in the Boston Globe is because they had the misfortune to call an honest and dogged reporter named Bruce Mohl.
What we have here is a group based in Florida that is calling donors in Massachusetts but not Florida (to avoid prosecution in their own state), spending 3% of their budget on their programs, and actively lying to the people they're calling on the phone, and we as a nation can't do anything to stop them? They're preying on the donors who admire their cause and the legitimate recipients who could benefit from the money, if there was any money left over after the telemarketers and the charity charlatans divvied up their shares.
There has to be a better way.
The Veterans Charitable Foundation (sounds legit, right?) is calling donors and telling them that 100% of their donations will go to veterans. Yeah, 100% of whatever they have left, after they spend over 97% of the money they raise on professional telemarketers.
There are thousands of these groups, playing on people's patriotism and hiding behind the vagaries of the tax code and the state-driven system of charity regulation. The only reason these guys even ended up in the Boston Globe is because they had the misfortune to call an honest and dogged reporter named Bruce Mohl.
What we have here is a group based in Florida that is calling donors in Massachusetts but not Florida (to avoid prosecution in their own state), spending 3% of their budget on their programs, and actively lying to the people they're calling on the phone, and we as a nation can't do anything to stop them? They're preying on the donors who admire their cause and the legitimate recipients who could benefit from the money, if there was any money left over after the telemarketers and the charity charlatans divvied up their shares.
There has to be a better way.
Labels: Boston Globe, Bruce Mohl, IRS, Veterans Charitable Foundation
posted by Trent Stamp at 8:29 AM
2 Comments:
It is a tough business trying to find legit charities and trying to avoid the fake ones, but it is well worth it.
Thanks to the Navigator it has become a lot easier.
Trent --
One thing that you, as well as the author of the Boston Globe article forgot to point out, is that many of the "charities" that solicit donations with the aid of professional fundraisers/telemarketers (especially those representing police, firefighters, veterans, etc.) aren't even charities (i.e., 501(c)(3) organizations) at all, and the contributions that people make to them are NOT tax deductible. Although fundraisers are supposed to mention this when they make a solicitation, most of the time they don’t.
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