Yesterdayâs memorial for Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy brought in $336 and Lily and I are giving every penny of it to a childrenâs charity. That part was easy to decide. The hard part is figuring out which one because I have watched what happens to a dollar after it clears the donation page and it is NOT pretty.
In my twenties I worked for a charity in Florida. The word gets italics because it earned them. Money came in the front door with a sad photo attached and went out the back door as salaries and consultants and awareness campaigns and whatever else the people who owned the nonprofit felt like owning that month. The cause got what was left over. I am not naming the outfit and I am not inventing a single detail about it either. I am just telling you the machine exists and I have seen the gears.
If you think that was a Florida problem the IRS filings say otherwise. The CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian took home $8.9 million in 2022 from a tax exempt nonprofit. The CEO of the American Heart Association pulled a little over four million bucks the same year. Even St. Jude runs its donations through a separate fundraising corporation called ALSAC whose CEO cleared $1.36 million in 2023. That year ALSAC burned $836 million on fundraising before the hospital saw a dime. The average nonprofit CEO makes around 150 grand which is a fine living and also proof that the seven figure guys are not the norm. They are the ones who figured out the GAME.
You would assume a state at least makes a charity spend some minimum percentage on the actual cause the way you would assume a restaurant has to serve food. Nope. No state sets a floor at all. The New York Attorney General publishes a report every year called Pennies for Charity and in some campaigns the professional fundraiser kept 90 percent of what you gave. In 2022 charities working with pro fundraisers netted 77 cents on the dollar and in one campaign out of six the fundraiserâs expenses exceeded what was raised. The charity paid for the privilege of being fundraised at. My favorite entry is from an older St. Jude filing where a telemarketing firm raised $4.16 million for ALSAC and billed $4.04 million for its trouble and handed over about 120 grand.
Somebody got a kid a bike I guess.
None of this is illegal. It is just a corporation with a halo. Payroll and marketing and operations and executive bonuses come first and the mission gets the crumbs exactly like any other business except the customers think they are doing a good deed and the product is tax deductible.
So Lily and I are not writing a check to the outfit with the Super Bowl ad. We want the other kind. The church basement kind. The one run by a mom who lost a kid or a retired nurse with a spreadsheet and a folding table where the CEO also drives the van. The ones that put 85 or 90 cents of every dollar on the ground where children can actually reach it and where the annual report fits on a postcard.
That is where you come in. If you know a childrenâs charity like that (a local one or a tiny one or one you have personally watched do the work) tell us in the comments. Tell us what they do and how you know they are legit. Lily and I will read the filings ourselves and we will publish where the money went and why.
If you have not read the memorial for the Clancy kids it is linked below. Every like and every share on that article puts more into the pot and every dollar in the pot goes to charity once we know which one deserves it. Not a nickel stays with us. Those three kids deserved a lot better than they got and the least we can do is make sure the money raised in their names does not end up paying for someoneâs boat.
Thanks for reading and sharing everyone! Lily and the Wise Wolf really appreciate it.
Help keep the Wise Wolf howling.
The Children Lindsay Clancy Killed
On the night of January 24, 2023, a labor and delivery nurse named Lindsay Clancy sent her husband out of their million dollar house in Duxbury, Massachusetts to pick up dinner and stop at CVS. While he was gone she took her three children to the basement and strangled them with exercise bands. Then she cut her wrists and her neck and jumped out a second story window to try to kill herself. She survived. They did not. Three and a half years later her murder trial is in its final hours in a Plymouth courtroom and as I write this the jury has already told the judge once that it cannot agree on a verdict. Her lawyer holds court on the steps outside every afternoon. Yesterday he bragged that her supporters have mailed her enough letters to fill three bankerâs boxes.
One that advertises on TV all the time with real tear jerker pictures of old destitute Jewish women is the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ0). There latest pitch is for Ukraine. Their CEO gives a very convincing sob story to raise funds. The last time I checked she was making $931,098.00 in salary and other benefits per year. Thatâs just one person in this huge organization. It would take approximately 37,244 $25 donations just to pay her salary and benefits. Exploiting misery is big business. Of course this organizationâs HQ is in Chicago on âWackerâ drive⊠says it all.
You are absolutely correct!
Many non-profits are very much profit for the top administrators and it is a disgrace. Some churches, too for that matter.
I worked for a hospice in michigan that was found to have committed millions of dollars of Medicare fraud in 1995 (a year before I started working there). It was all in the news here in Michigan, especially the Detroit Press.
They were ordered to pay back the millions they stole.
What did they do? They started committing a different kind of Medicare fraud to the tune of even more millions ($10 million per year at a minimum) in order to pay back the millions they stole. That fraud involved ordering nurses to chart a type of intensive care for patients having been provided when it wasn't.
The CEO drove a new Red mercedes convertible and made over $500,000 a year at the time which is like a million now. Anyway, patients who were truly ill were denied simple medications that helped them but were given the "formulary" medication which was cheaper, as an example, but the CEO and others got paid top dollar.
Now you know one of the stories that involved whistleblowing reports to the State, the U.S. Attorneys Office, US OIG, etc
Hospices are one of the worst in terms of committing Medicare fraud. It's been in the news over and over but they always portray themselves as angelic leaders of the community. The staff may be dedicated, but many administrators act like skunks, actually worse. Just plain greedy rather than serving the mission it's all truly supposed to be about.