Philanthropy, Non-Profits and Charity

The Student and the Homeless Man: A Cautionary Ethics Tale

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Or, “Why It’s Unethical to Behave in Defiance of Reality.”

Or, “Why the old saw ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is constantly being affirmed.”

Or, “Why progressive wishcraft keeps blowing up in society’s metaphorical face”

Sanai Graden (left), a University of California at Berkeley senior (presumably you know what that means) was hit up by a homeless man as she visited Washington, D.C. He said his name was Alonzo, and told her he had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The sympathetic young woman paid for his medication at CVS. She also got him a hotel room for the night. Sanai was a TikToker , and told her followers that she needed to raise money for Alonzo, whom she called “Unc.” Soon she bought Alonzo, aka. “Unc,” a cell phone, and put him up in a hotel for a week.

Awwww. How Christian! How kind! How progressive!

Her video became a Tik Tok sensation, with millions of views. Graden started a GoFundMe account, and it quickly raised more than $400,000. Her legion of followers multiplied: one admirer set up a GoFundMe for her that eventually raised over $26,000.

Isn’t that a nice story?

Then a report from local D.C. TV station Fox 5 revealed that “Unc” was Alonzo Hebron, 64, a long-time criminal who numbered among his convictions one for a violent assault on a homeless woman. In another, he stabbed a man in the neck with a screwdriver. Donors started asking for their money back.

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It’s Time To Play That Exciting Game Show, “Cute, Silly,or Wrong?”!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Hello everybody! I’m your host, Wink Smarmy, and welcome to “Cute, Silly,or Stupid?,” the popular ethics game show where our panelists try to decide whether an individual or organization is doing or saying something that strikes a positive emotional chord with the public sincerely, or whether they are cynically grandstanding or virtue signaling to achieve popularity, influence, money, or power. Welcome panel! And here’s today’s challenge…

A video posted to Facebook by the Richmond Wildlife Center shows Executive Director Melissa Stanley dressed as a giant mother fox to feed a red fox kit (that means a baby fox, not a kit you use to assemble foxes) rescued by the center earlier this month.

“It’s important to make sure that the orphans that are raised in captivity do not become imprinted upon or habituated to humans,” the post said. “To prevent that, we minimize human sounds, create visual barriers, reduce handling, reduce multiple transfers amongst different facilities, and wear masks for the species.”

Here’s the video:

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Ethics Quiz: Slapping Down the Daughters of the Confederacy

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

On the heels of the previous post about intolerant progressives came my awareness of the news that both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly, dominated by Democrats, passed bills that would eliminate long-standing tax exemptions for the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that was founded in 1894 for female descendants of Confederate soldiers. The group’s mission was and is to honor Confederate ancestors through memorial preservation—an increasingly difficult job—and charity work. It is currently exempt from paying property taxes and recordation taxes, which are charged when property sales are registered.

This week the State House of Delegates passed a bill revoking the group’s exemptions as well as the property tax exemptions for two other Confederate heritage groups, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Inc. and the Confederate Memorial Literary Society.

To state the obvious, the three non-profit groups have been targeted because many legislators don’t like their beliefs and activities. Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said it was important to revoke the exemptions from “organizations that continue to promote the myth of the romantic version of the Confederacy.”

How dare they?

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Ethics Tip: If You’re Illiterate And Front A Literacy Foundation, Don’t Go On “Wheel Of Fortune”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Former NFL running back Rashad Jennings faced the board above on last week’s episode of “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.” He was playing to win money for the Rashad Jennings Foundation. announcing the right letter would win the game and nearly $5000 for his foundation, whose mission is to “ignite students with a passion for reading and literacy through offering incentives for their efforts.”

Rashad stared at the board, considered the options for __UENTIN, and announced, “P!” The ex-athlete was well-advised to make light of the embarrassing episode, and posted the video of his gaffe on Twitter/X, but if The Rashad Jennings Foundation doesn’t re-brand itself quickly, with the name of someone whose major exposure other than NFL games is failing a basic literacy test that a 5th Grader should pass, its leadership will be breaching its fiduciary duty.

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Ethics Dunce: The National Book Foundation

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Add the National Book Foundation to the growing list of alleged non-political non-profits that can’t stay in their lanes.

Yesterday Levar Burton, whose claim to celebrity rests solely on two iconic roles, in “Roots” and “Star Trek” but who now describes himself as an “actor, podcaster, and reading advocate” (that is, has-been) said in a statement, “It’s an honor to return as host of the biggest night for books, especially in a moment when the freedom to read is at risk.” Burton also hosted the ceremony in 2019, presumably because he hosted the PBS children’s show “Reading Rainbow” for its entire two decade run.

The “freedom to read” is NOT at risk in any way, but Burton is dutifully mouthing ideological deceit from those who believe minors should be “free to read” books with sexual content and that advocate sex-related conduct in the collections of public school libraries. That’s not a reading issue but a parental rights issue. But I digress.

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Ethics Quiz: Oprah’s Surprise

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I did not see this coming at all. Obviously, neither did Oprah Winfrey.

On August 31, Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson united on their Instagram and TikTok accounts to promote their People’s Fund of Maui, which they had co-launched with a combined $10 million donation. The fund would support the victims of the Maui wildfires, and O joined with The Rock to call on the public for more contributions. The following accompanied their joint video, shot in Hawaii, naturally:

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Ethics Quiz: Fox News’ Charitable Gifts

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Fox Giving” facilitates charitable donations using the donation management platform “Benevity.” The Fox News Corp. matches donations up to $1,000 to various non-profit organizations and charities that satisfy the the platform’s criteria. But…Oh Horror!... among the organizations Fox ends up contributing to under this system are the Satanic Temple, the Trevor Project, Planned Parenthood (and local Planned Parenthood branches), and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Fox’s donation policy states: “FOX will not match or provide volunteering rewards to : Donations to organizations that discriminate on the basis of a personal characteristic or attribute, including, but not limited to, age, disability, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity characteristics or expression, marital status, … pregnancy or medical condition either in its selection of recipients of the organization’s services, funds, or other support; in delivery of services; or in its employment practices.”

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The Merchant Checkout Scam

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, I feel like an idiot.

PetsMart asks me to contribute a few bucks to dog rescue organizations when I check out. Oh sure, why not? 7-11 has a jar where you can drop change to help Jerry’s Kids, or what ever that organization goes by these days. Hell, I’ll throw in some coins, at least when the jar hasn’t been stolen. These “oh, by the way, as long as you’re here” fundraising asks are so common—“Would you like to ’round up’ today, sir?”—and routine that I usually accede to them, and most of the time, don’t really know what I have contributed to.

That ends now.

Haggen, with 2,200 stores in 34 states and one of the grocery store chains owned by Albertsons Companies, including Safeway, Shaw’s, Vons, and Randalls, asks customers during checkout to donate to a pool of organizations promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.” How many customers know what they are supporting? How many think DEI is just the acronym for the latest dread disease, like “COPD”? How many think about what they are giving money to when they are solicited in the middle of a basic transaction that one is seeking to complete as quickly as possible?

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The Associated Press’s Stunning Corruption [Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The corruption, bias, and ethical void within the mainstream media is now difficult to overstate. The latest revelation is so damning, 95% of the media isn’t reporting it, since it points to the ethics rot of one of its most esteemed members. This is the news media’s recent tactic to avoid being exposed as the lying, manipulating propaganda agents they and their partisan allies in Big Tech and social media are. Hide the facts

The Associated Press, the august and once respected newswire service, accepts donations to fund its climate coverage. In 2022, the AP received $8 million in donations to fund its climate doom reporting, with money coming from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, all climate change alarmists. The AP isn’t alone: what it calls philanthropy-funded news is a trend, with other news sources accepting charitable funds as well. The Salt Lake Tribune, The Seattle Times and the New York Times are also accepting grants from interest groups.

Yes, non-profits are interest groups.

The $8 million over three years allows the AP to hire 20 more “climate journalists.” AP News Vice President Brian Carovillano says without giggling that the money comes “without strings attached” and asserts that funders have “no influence on the stories conducted.” He’s lying. He’s unquestionably lying: if I give a publication 8 million dollars to hire ethics specialists to report on the importance of ethics, those hires are certain to influence the publication’s content. Is there any chance the “climate journalists” will write stories about how so much climate science is speculative, politically-slanted hooey? I think not.

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Riddle Me This: How Is The Republican National Committee Like Black Lives Matters?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Like all good riddles, this one has more than one answer, though none of them are funny. Ironic, perhaps. Infuriating, surely. Nauseating, absolutely.

The first answer is that both misappropriate money donated to them by passionate supporters who foolishly trusted their leadership and staffs to use the funds to accomplish the organizations’ promised mission. Another answer is that the unethical betrayers of trust in both organizations will fall back on Rationalization #13. The Saint’s Excuse: “It’s for a good cause” to try to justify and minimize their betrayal.

The GOP’s resounding flop in the recent mid-term election despite conditions that historically have guaranteed a large number of Senate and House victories to the advantage of the party not holding the White House has donors asking questions and pointing fingers. The conservative website RedState acquired a report dated October 7, 2022 that examined the RNC’s 2021-22 spending up to that time. What it shows is an unethical, incompetent, unprofessional untrustworthy non-profit organization that took millions in donations it solicited with promises of turning them into national policy and regime change and wasted millions on the whims and comfort of its managers instead.

The report calculated expenditures of more than $500,000 in private jet expenses, $64,000 at clothing retailers, and $321,000 in floral arrangements, among other details. Here is the full list—remember, this is only for the 2021-2022 cycle:

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