OTL reporting on NBA player non-profit organizations and their use of finances

[lightspeed5]

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/9109024/top-athletes-charities-often-measure-charity-experts-say-efficient-effective-use-money

[Quetzalcoatl]

There is definetely something to it, but that was a hit piece plain and simple.  I would like to see an unbiased look at all this before I bust out the pitchfork and torches.

I mean, saying 74% violate "fell short" of one or more of a set of unspecified guidelines is a pretty vague statement.  Then, they suprise attack a few of these people and ask them a bunch of aggressive questions when they're busy until they get angry.  Then they acknowledge that most of these places barely have a staff and take in less than $300,000, but are shocked to see the tax paperwork isn't being filled out perfectly.  Who do they expect to file it?  How many people did they set up suprise Q&A questions with that answered everything fine that they left out of the article?

[lightspeed5]

I dont think its an attack piece. Why did lamar sponsor those AAU teams with money designated for cancer research? Why does his friend make $80,000 while the org is not profitable and doesnt even do much day to day business? Lamar says its his money, but then when showed that his tax papers say its public donor money, he immedietely walks off the interview.

[bdm860]

A similar (but much shorter) article came out last month:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/alex-rodriguez-charity-gave-only-1-percent-donations-163106184--mlb.html

This is something I’ve heard about before.  How a lot of athletes’ and celebrities’ charities fail.  Though in my opinion it's rarely because of a bad heart, scam, illegal action from the founder.  It's just that the founders are terrible at business and perhaps don't realize how much time and effort it really takes to successfully run a charity.

I'm a rich, successful entertainer.  I should give back, so I'm going to start a charity to help the underprivileged (hearts in right place). Well how am I going to raise money? Let’s have a celebrity All-Star game, and all proceeds will got to charity, that will raise tons of money (but they have no business mind)!  Proceeds doesn't mean all money that comes in, proceeds means all profit.  Profit, that's the key word, because after all the expenses, there's not as much left as you think.

So ya I'll host an celebrity All-Star game, we'll sell 20,000 seats at an average cost of $50 ticket, that's $1,000,000 easy.  Even if we only sell 10,000 seats, that's still half a mil.  They forget that they have to:

Advertise the game on local tv, radio, newspapers, and magazines.
Rent the arena.
Pay the arena staff and security.
Fly celebrities in, and provide lodging and local transportation.
Rent out a club/restaurant/lounge for the after party.
Buy drinks and food at this establishment and provide entertainment, as a thank you to everybody that helped.  They’re celebrities, they have to throw a big, lavish party, or everyone will look down on them, or they won’t help out again next year.  You think stars like LeBron, Kobe, Pierce, etc. are going to fly out to play in your game if you don't give them a first class direct flight, 5 star lodging, and a good time afterwards?

All those bills rack up, and often times end up costing more than they brought in.  Or at least leaving little money for charity.

On top of all that.  There’s the matter of running the charity itself.  Well I make $2m, $5m, $10m, $15m a year, so I can support a charity, I’ll write a one time check for $50k to start them of, and then we’ll just raise the rest of the money, like we'll probably have a million coming in from my All-Star game, and then I'll just donate my time as needed.  Let’s see, I need some people to run the charity, and I want my mom and sister to have a nice job, so I’ll pay them 100k each and this can be their full time job, and maybe we’ll actually bring in someone with experience to help too, and maybe a secretary and some other people, so now we have 2-5 employees.  But they need an office, computers, phones, transportation, health benefits, etc.  The charity also needs lawyers, accountants, web site designers, etc.  Those expenses will all fall on the charity, and they’ll add up quick.

I really think a lot of athletes have their heart in the right place, they just don’t have a lot of business sense (also explains why so many go broke) and no idea how much work actually goes in to running a successful one.

[Josh88]

Corruption and misappropriation of funds are rampant in NGOs, it's not strictly limited to athletes' or celebrities' charities.

[indeedproceed]

The phone number for Randy Moss's charity goes to some lady in a town he doesn't live in who has never heard of Randy Moss, or his charity.

[Fafnir]

The phone number for Randy Moss's charity goes to some lady in a town he doesn't live in who has never heard of Randy Moss, or his charity.

Yeah a lot of athlete charities function to give athlete's friends/relatives jobs. Beyond that they don't pay any attention and usually their friend/relatives don't either.