The New York Times had a front-page story yesterday about a non-profit corporation that runs halfway houses in New Jersey.
It may be non-profit, but the owner and his family are making millions.
Does this remind you of anything else you have read lately?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Not just any family here, a very well connected one.
Conservative Governors like big government when it helps their friends! Even with “increased aid to schools” much of the money goes to out of state BROAD connected consultants. All in the name of “non-profit” agencies.
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There are many “non-profits” out there that are making millions in profits for their officers.
The big difference, and why we are here today and every other day, is that the corporations are now trying to make their profits on the backs of our children’s education. It is no longer the “other people”, it is now us and our students that the corporations are attacking for their profits!
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Let’s not take away from the valuable work REAL not for profits do.
As a staff member for a not for profit that has been in existence for 22 years with an incredibly small budget helping schools create experiential learning programs for high school seniors, I have, from time to time come in contact with good people who haven’t even wanted to hear what we had to offer because of the influx of these so-called not for profits….TFA the biggest culprit I can think of.
We at Wise Services and others like us offer a great deal. Please don’t throw us out with the bathwater.
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Don’t they say that 90% of lawyers make the other 10% look bad?
I’m in no position to judge your work.
I donate to my local area only where I know the people. I also have them in my will.
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We all know that government is the problem and business is the solution…
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This is why we call it the NPIC (Non-Profit Industrial Complex), and why when the CMO charter corporations rebut that they’re 501c3s we say “that’s just a tax status.”
While there are non-profits doing good things like saving house pets, helping the homeless, etc., we also have to bear in mind that The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The New America Foundation, ALEC, and The Heartland Institute are all non-profit corporations as well. On balance, we shouldn’t automatically bestow reverence on an organization just because they’re a non-profit corporation with 501c3s status.
Given the big money to be made in school real estate, farming out special ed to predatory firms, outsourcing administration, technology deals for Rocketship-like-drones stare at the computer pedagogy, books and pricy testprep materials, etc., the so-called non-profits tend to generate lots of profits for everyone they’re associated with. That’s part of why CMO charter corporation executive salaries are stratospheric too.
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Robert, I just clicked on your URL. Wow.
I want to take a minute, though, to step back from total cynicism about the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, and advocate for a vigorous defense of the precious, desperately important, authentic “civil society sector” from those same forces. To defend the non-governmantal, voluntary space of our public commons, somehow we have to be able to distinguish it in our writing from vulture philanthropy.
Last June, civil society delegates walked out of the UN Rio+20 sustainable development conference, in protest against its domination by for-profit corporate interests.
I added that video to the Wikipedia entry on civil society, and was just now gratified to see that other writers have developed a whole section on globalization and the civil society sector, and entered the history discussion as well. It’s worth reading, and maybe even writing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society
And here I go again, recommending a history book to people who probably don’t have the time to open a Wikipedia link.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Civil-Society-Philanthropy-and-the-Fate-of-the-Commons/Bruce-R-Sievers/e/9781584658955?ean=9781584658955
He’s a very mainstream academic, but Bruce Sievers is also the first person I ever heard the term “vulture philanthropy” from.
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It is so hard for a real NFP like us to get $ because we get answers like , “you are too small.” Of course, because all the $ is going to the big ones you mention and others.
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I feel just the opposite. I only donate to local charities where I know the people and can see how they live.
It always amazed me how people will donate money to somebody that wears a $2,000 suit.
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Does this remind you of anything else you have read lately?
I’m going to take a wild guess. Schools and EdReform/privatization/public plundering/piracy?
I’m wondering if the IRS will pull their tax-exempt status. Now that would be a nice gift for the New Year.
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To be non-profit, 50% of the money beyond overhead must go to the charity. As donations go up, so do salaries and the number of relatives hired. All legal.
Then the organization may inflate costs by buying supplies at inflated prices from friends. 15 years ago, all teachers in my school were told to buy from only one company because the school received a 20% discount. In the catalog, an ordinary roll of masking tape was $9.
Why else would so many people jump at the chance to open charter schools?
This is an old story. Watch the old movie with Anthony Quinn called “The Shoes of the Fisherman.” In it’s day, it did not make much of a splash because people don’t want to see things as they really are.
I receive 5 postcards from different charities a year asking for me to donate my old clothes. If somebody could wear my pants, they are not starving.
Benni Hinn (sp?), a TV a evangelist does not deny he has several luxury houses, drives a Hummer and has a private jet.
People also argue what is wrong with that as long as good works are done? Or what is wrong with that if the cost per graduate is lower for the tax payer? I reply with , why hide the fact organizers are making millions?
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“If somebody could wear my pants, they are not starving.”
I have to take issue with this. I take it your pants are large and you are implying that anyone who fits in them is overweight? Such person may not be “starving” in the traditional sense, but they may very well be malnurished and quite poor. Many homeless and otherwise very poor people are overweight because they have no access to healthy food – they live in a “food desert”, they have no cooking facilities at home, they can’t afford higher quality, healthier restaurant food. For lots of poor people, McDonald’s and other similar places are their only food options. I don’t think you can draw any legitimate conclusions about someone’s economic status by the size of their pants.
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Or unable to care for themselves due to mental illness, etc.
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Joe, you’re ten orders of magnitude off on this one. 501c3s are required to pay out 5% of their assets each year, not 50%!
Furthermore, new regulations now allow for-profit stock purchase which further the charitable mission, called “program related investments” to count toward that charitable payout.
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Thanks. I was given that number 40 years go. Maybe things were different then.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-12/charities-deceive-donors-unaware-money-goes-to-a-telemarketer.html Any idea on how or who to donate? I give only to the American Legion Hall that collects funds and then distributes food gift cards to the poor from a list given them by the local church. They say the only cost is for the paper used to print the flier they circulate.
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I meant to write one order of magnitude off, of course.
We have a tradition in our family of giving to Oxfam, started by my Sammy in response to the Bangladesh flooding of, lets see, 1988? And to Doctors Without Borders, and Unicef.
Raising funds in response to disasters is part of our school activities, of course, and Unicef is a good education partner, because it has an infrastructure to develop student leadership.
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Reminds me of the former superintendent for Scottsdale Unified School district who made:
$195,000 salary per year
$11,000 In lieu healthcare per year
$600 per month car allowance
$3,000 per year for civic memberships
All this while his former district in Illinois was paying for his and his wife’s health insurance, with no deductibles or co-pays, through the year 2022
AND
At the same time he was receiving his $237,195 per year pension from the state of Illinois
This superintendent left Scottsdale after only 2 years and now collects a pension from the State of Arizona on top of his Illinois pension.
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The first thing that popped into my mind was the College Board. This “non profit” collected about $660 million in 2010, primarily from high school students like me through AP and SAT testing fees. In return for the $89 I pay per AP test, I will get a test booklet, scoring services, and a slip of paper in the mail that has my name and score on a 1-5 scale. I can’t imagine all of that costs almost $100. The extra money is probably used to maintain nine snazzy offices where the organization’s CEO (who is paid $750,000 each year) and his coterie of executives work, subsidize the annual AP conference in Las Vegas, and pay for its extensive lobbying efforts to promote its tests for which I could find no total expense report. Despite all of these rather exorbitant costs, the College Board still boasted a net revenue of $65.6 million. Something is not right here.
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You got it buddy. But, this kind of thing is all over the place.
In the school business, there is no real real competition. Would you not start your own test company to compete for that kind of money? Just the good old boy network.
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And competition somehow prevents bloated executive salaries, short term greed, graft, nepotism, and all other sorts of malfeasance? Did you miss the 2008 Financial Crises?
What’s needed is far less corporate involvement in education. Let’s let individual educators design and implement their own assessment models based on the needs of their students and stop treating children as a commodity.
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It does not stop there. Do a little math on how much it really costs to get a college education. Assume professors make $100,000 a year. Most don’t make what that much unless they publish a lot of books and have a reputation so it looks good to have them on the faculty. Divide that by the number of students in the lecture hall, etc. etc. Universities don’t pay real estate tax. I bet a dollar you can’t figure out where 80% of where your tuition money went. State schools are subsidized by the state.
To add insult to injury, tuition goes up faster than the cost of living. How can that be possible when they don’t pass big raises, 80% of most business is labor.
If you come up with a number, let me know. I’m out of that loop now.
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This “Non Profit” status, claimed by so many charter “schools” is part and parcel of this enormous scam.
The “charter school” in Florida, just recently forced to close, was a “Non Profit”; this was the school where the principal made $305,000 per year, made over $800,000 her final year, and paid over $440,000 to her husband as a “consultant” to the school.
Every dime came from taxpayers, in a school district that was also laying off teachers and closing vital school programs. It’s a scam we’re seeing everywhere.
Don’t by the “Non Profit” nonsense; if anything, their practices are even worse than the for-profit “schools”.
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Here are some details:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-10-25/features/os-troubled-orange-charter-northstar-20121025_1_charter-school-charter-law-english-language-learners
AND
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-12-01/features/os-northstar-charter-high-husband-20121201_1_charter-school-schools-use-public-money-state-auditor
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I would like to know the name of that Fl charter school so I can splash their name around to show what “can” happen.
This is what happens when there are no checks and balances.
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Did you see how the same guys running this “non-profit” applied to start a charter school?
Leonie Haimson
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This is the most recent installment in a series of stories about halfway houses which have been a disaster in NJ. I do not have the link to the first one, but it is worth looking into. Christie’s hands are very dirty here.
Of course, these halfway houses are being run by people with no experience in the area at all. Hmmm…
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Tax laws are different for different flavors of non-profit, so its hard for a civilian to sort out how to actually challenge the tax exempt status of simple incorporated poverty pimps, middle-man money funnels for corporate profiteers, and the big fish enabler foundations.
Here are the IRS instructions for starting your own 501(c)(3)
http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1023/ar01.html
Public charities can engage in political lobbying, if they fill out the appropriate form, but if private foundations do that, .they lose their tax exemption (I know, you said, “Wait, what… ?!!”).
This is my favorite Eli Broad citation of all time:
““We’re often accused of having too much influence in education,” Broad said. “I’m not sure how you’d restrict that.” While foundations and nonprofits are barred by law from getting involved in politics, they might expand their reach by spinning off organizations with a different tax status that allows them to back political candidates and lobby for pieces of legislation, Broad said. He said the Klein-chaired Education Equality Project is considering doing just that.”
http://gothamschools.org/2009/03/11/eli-broad-describes-close-ties-to-klein-weingarten-duncan/
If that arouses your interest in exactly what kind of slimy self-dealing Klein was engaged in, when he was a public servant, here’s a quick tour of the other levels of 501(c)(3) corruption, in action
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2009/04/02/public-schools-private-money/
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Yes. This sounds very familiar. Privatize public services and let your friends and cronies rob the public blind. But, of course they are from people who want “small government” because the government misuses your funds due to laziness and incompetence. This is legalized criminality.The nicest thing of all is that your lobbiest can write legislation that allows you to line your pocket full of public tax money while providing sham services.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/08/05/white-hat-must-open-books.html
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lobbyist
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