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Philanthropy News Digest invites opinion and commentary on topics of importance to the philanthropic sector. For more information on this feature, contact Mitch Nauffts, PND's publisher/editorial director, at mfn@foundationcenter.org.
Two Years After Madoff: An Argument for Foundation Audits
by
Laura
Barooshian,
Principal,
DiCicco, Gulman & Company
;
William
Jenczyk,
Principal, DiCicco, Gulman & Company
It's been more than two years since Bernie Madoff pleaded guilty to eleven felony counts stemming from an elaborate Ponzi scheme he devised and ran for years, swindling hundreds of investors out of billions of dollars. Still, fraud continues to be endemic in the financial community. And foundations, which are rarely audited, sometimes prove to be an easy mark for embezzlers and thieves. Madoff aside, fraud long has been a problem for foundations. Google "foundation fraud" and you'll get seventy million hits. And that only includes fraud that has been uncovered. So why aren't foundations audited? Good question....
Posted on January 26, 2012
Famine in East Africa
by
Don
Golden,
Vice President,
World Relief
I recently traveled to the Turkana District of northern Kenya with Kenyan pastors, World Relief staff, and a media team to witness firsthand an underreported food crisis in the Horn of Africa. In the United States, we cover Africa one story at a time, and lately the story has been neighboring Somalia....
Posted on November 18, 2011
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Commentary & Opinion From Other Sources
Opinion: The Hidden Costs of Million-Dollar Donations (Washington Post 12/30/11)
We live in a winner-take-all world. The top 1 percent controls 40 percent of the planet's wealth. In cities throughout the United States, people are still camped in public parks, holding signs that say "We are the 99%." Unemployment hovers around 9 percent, state budgets have been slashed and social programs cut. Food pantries report growing demand. The very rich, in the meantime, have never been richer.
Along with this new class of the extraordinarily wealthy comes a new kind of philanthropy, practiced by individuals such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, and eBay billionaires Jeff Skoll and Pierre Omidyar. This new philanthropy has brought an incredible infusion of resources to a range of important causes. But it also means that the very wealthy are setting the agenda on those causes — and along the way, setting policy priorities....
Op-Ed: Tax-Free Charitable Giving Deadline Looms (Centre Daily Times 12/8/11)
Earlier this year I wrote to alert folks to the congressional reinstatement of the right during 2011 to make contributions to charity from individual IRA accounts. Today I write to alert you that this provision of the law expires on Dec. 31 unless extended.
My purpose is twofold. First, to remind you that if you are at least 70 and a half you have until the end of the year to use a portion of your IRA account for charitable gifts. An ordinary withdrawal of IRA funds triggers the payment of income tax, but holders of age can make direct tax-free charitable transfers of up to $100,000....
Op-Ed: Get More From Your Donation to Charity (Money Magazine 12/8/11)
Like many Americans, you're probably gearing up this month to write a check to your favorite charity, both to show your goodwill toward men and to nab some last-minute tax savings. (December tends, after all, to be the most generous month, with about $28 billion in donations recorded last year, according to the Atlas of Giving.)
While a check certainly achieves both purposes, "there may be methods of giving that are more to your advantage," says Walt Mozdzer, a financial planner in West Des Moines, Iowa. The strategies that follow provide even greater tax savings so you can feel doubly good about doing good....
Op-Ed: A Nobel Victory for No-Strings-Attached Grants (Chronicle of Philanthropy 12/6/11)
This week’s awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize is a notable victory for three courageous women who have worked to overturn repression in the Arab and African worlds. But what won’t get any headlines is another victory: The prizes demonstrate why it’s so important to give general operating support to outstanding nonprofit leaders and not to tie their hands with too many strings.
At the Global Fund for Women, we never imagined that when we awarded grants to the Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and the Yemeni journalist Tawakkul Karman that they would become Nobel Peace Laureates, sharing the prize with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s president....
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