Le Sequoit

Me Frist, or Charity Begins at Home

In the fox guarding the hen house category, Bill Frist is a member of the US Senate Committee on Finance. In fact, as recently as last June this committee sat to review the state of charity and the law. Here's one highlight:

WRITTEN STATEMENT OF MARK W. EVERSON COMMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE BEFORE
THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE UNITED STATES SENATE HEARING ON CHARITABLE GIVING
PROBLEMS AND BEST PRACTICES JUNE 22, 2004

...We will be contacting hundreds of organizations. During the first stage, we will be looking at public charities of various sizes and private foundations. We will be asking these organizations for detailed information and supporting documents on their compensation practices and procedures, and specifically how they set and report compensation for specific executives. Organizations also will be asked for details concerning the independence of the governing body that approved the compensation and details of the duties and responsibilities of these managers with respect to the
organization. Other stages will follow, and will include looking at various kinds of insider transactions, such as loans or sales to executives and officers...

Do you suppose consultants' fees to two companies involved in raising funds for one's campaigns might fall under the category of "various kinds of insider transactions"? Do you suppose a payout of 10.36% of revenues in such fees might be a little excessive?

According to the AP article the net layout to charities stated on Frist's World of Hope (sigh) outfit's woefully late tax returns is about three million dollars, from a gross of about 4.5 million. The half a million's worth of consultation is only part of the 33% expense ratio of this exercise in Christian charity.

Hey, it takes a lot of man hours to program 18 numbers (the number of principal donors to this charity) on your cell phone! Or perhaps woman hours, as one of these firms is run by Linda Bond, wife of another Repuglican senator.

How extraordinary are these numbers in the charity biz? For this we go to Charity Navigator, who tracks such things:

Fundraising Organizations:

These charities serve as fundraising vehicles for other community-based charities, and appropriately demonstrate smaller overhead spending. The median administration expenses percentage among fundraising organizations is 6.3%, as
compared to 10.4% among all charities.

Frist's buddies' arm-twisting fees alone sucked up more than that! Someone, somewhere along the line apparently thought this was an aides charity, instead of AIDS.

Mark Everson of the IRS might have considered bringing a couple of agents with him up Capitol Hill last summer, because they could have gotten started with investigating corruption right there in the Senate Finance Committee room.

It's like fishin' in a stocked pond these days.

posted by sequoit @ 2:57 PM