Press Release

Philanthropy Notes: January 2007

In one of his final acts as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked the IRS to investigate “serious allegations of inappropriate activity” by the tax-exempt group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has been linked to numerous instances of voter fraud. Grassley wrote in his letter that four ACORN employees were indicted for allegedly filing false voter registrations in Missouri, and that ACORN failed to respond to his requests for information. Separately, ACORN, a longtime proponent of a “living wage” for workers, was accused of stiffing its employees last year by failing to pay back wages.

Conservatives are more generous than liberals, according to economist Arthur C. Brooks, author of the recently published, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. Conservatives are one or two percentage points more likely to give money each year than liberals and households headed by a conservative give about 30% more to charity than households headed by a liberal, even though liberal families earn 6% more annually than conservative families, according to Brooks, who is director of nonprofit studies for Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Who says beggars can’t be choosers? Fairfax County, Virginia, that’s who. The county is barring residents from donating home- or church-prepared food to the poor, unless the county first approves the kitchen in which the food was prepared, the Washington Post reported. Tom Crow, a top county health bureaucrat, said the new policy imposing restaurant-like standards was aimed at protecting “a medically fragile population…more susceptible to food-borne illnesses than the general population.” Jim Brigl, chief executive of Fairfax Area Christian Emergency & Transitional Services, said the policy was absurd: “We’re very aware that a number of homeless people eat out of dumpsters, and mom’s pot roast has got to be healthier than that.”

Calling foundations “the least accountable major institutions in America,” a nonprofit veteran has written a new book urging foundations to make their activities more transparent or risk increased public distrust and possible government regulation, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported. Grantmakers must “open their doors and windows to the world so that all can see what they are doing and how they are doing it,” Joel L. Fleishman, a Duke University professor writes in The Foundation: A Great American Secret – How Private Wealth Is Changing the World. If foundations fail to play ball, a federal Foundation Freedom of Information Act might be needed, he said.

And the Democracy Alliance, George Soros’s billionaires’ club that aspires to push America to the left while building a permanent Democratic majority, is finally promising to make its surreptitious grantmaking operations more transparent. DA founder Rob Stein said November 30 that his group plans to begin cooperating with journalists. “We’re two years old, now, and we’re more mature and confident of ourselves, and I think that over time, there will be more coverage of us,” he said. Stein made the comments at a November 30 panel discussion hosted by the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy & Civic Renewal. The Democracy Alliance was profiled in last month’s issue of Foundation Watch.

Meanwhile, activist Gara LaMarche, a principal in the Democracy Alliance, has been appointed chief executive officer of the $4 billion Atlantic Philanthropies effective April 2007. The left-leaning Bermuda-based grantmaker, which is among the 20 largest foundations active in the U.S., plans to give away its entire endowment over the next decade. It pledged last year to give $2.25 million through 2010 to the Center for Constitutional Rights to help give America’s terrorist enemies access to the U.S. civilian justice system. LaMarche is currently vice president and director of U.S. programs for Soros’s Open Society Institute.