Salon.com > charities

Is the small nonprofit in big trouble?

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:01:00 +0000

IN A RECENT Los Angeles Times article about Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) efforts to raise $100 million, a fundraising consultant said, “People like to give to excellence. It’s excellence, not need that generates big gifts.”

If that were really the case, author Ken Stern argues, then D.A.R.E., the darling drug abuse education program started by former Los Angeles Police chief Daryl Gates and now in more than 75 percent of the school districts of this country, wouldn’t raise a dime, most after-school programs would be bankrupt, and the next disaster the Red Cross should be attending to would be in its own executive offices.

The ability to survive, even thrive, with programs that have been proven not to work is just one of the many oddities With Charity for All documents in the topsy-turvy, misunderstood, and mostly ignored world of nonprofits.

NBC, ABC raised nearly $40 million for Hurricane Sandy relief

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:56:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) -- ABC says its national "Day of Giving" raised nearly $17 million for superstorm Sandy relief.

Throughout its programming Monday, the network urged viewers to contribute to the American Red Cross to help victims of the storm, which affected several Northeastern states, but hit New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area particularly hard.

Appeals were aired all day on ABC programming, on Disney's syndicated shows and across other Disney-owned networks.

Major contributors include ABC personalities Barbara Walters, George Stephanopoulos and Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner and star of ABC's "Shark Tank." The Samsung Corp. also made a major gift.

In addition, the Walt Disney Co. made a $1 million contribution to local charities.

NBC held a telethon Friday for storm victims that raised nearly $23 million.

Romney’s plan to defund the left

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Mitt Romney is not big on specifics. He’s got a fairy-tale five-point plan, tax math that doesn’t add up, and who can tell where he stands on foreign policy these days. So when Mitt is willing to get specific ... we should all be paying attention.

Romney has proposed trillions in new tax cuts, and so far has only proposed one concrete way to offset that budget-busting cost: Capping itemized tax deductions at $17,000, $25,000 or $50,000 (he’s floated several different numbers).

Let’s ignore, for the moment, that this cap could still hit middle-class families. Let’s skip over the fact that the richest folks will still make out like bandits thanks to the massive rate cuts that Romney proposes. Let’s even pretend that capping deductions would come close to paying for those tax cuts. It’s still an incredibly dangerous proposal.