Meet America’s Worst Charities

charities-logo-rectToday, The Center for Investigative Reporting and The Tampa Bay Times published “America’s Worst Charities,” the first in a must-read investigative series about charities that “plead for financial support, while lying to donors about where their money goes. These nonprofits adopt popular causes or mimic well-known charity names that fool donors and rake in cash, year after year.”  For example, number one on the list of the 50 worst begins with Kids Wish Network, a nonprofit that raises millions of dollars annually in the name of dying children and their families, and spends less than 3 cents on the dollar helping kids. “Most of the rest gets diverted to enrich the charity’s operators and the for-profit companies Kids Wish hires to drum up donations. In the past decade alone, Kids Wish has channeled nearly $110 million donated for sick children to its corporate solicitors. An additional $4.8 million has gone to pay the charity’s founder and his own consulting firms.” This reporting is eye-opening and, if there is any justice in the world, will be the first step in cracking down on this kind of abuse.