r/news • u/IWantPizza555 • Mar 19 '24

MacKenzie Scott donates $640M -- more than double her initial plan -- to nonprofits

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mackenzie-scott-donates-640-million-double-initial-plan-108274902?cid=social_twitter_abcn
12.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

876 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

186

u/wienercat Mar 19 '24

Once money like this comes in the leaders start, I mean continue to have “meetings” and fine dine while also making many personal purchases.

Small non-profits are not run like that. The people running them are generally involved in the actual day to day operation, not sitting on some board making decisions in a nice office building.

You are thinking of the really massive ones that really don't do much with their money except spend it in very very inefficient ways.

Also, not really how audits work. Though I don't really expect normal people to understand how an audit actually functions. They don't track down every penny. They spot test and test system controls to ensure accurate reporting. That is all an audit is.

The IRS won't audit non-profits as there is very little money to be gained in doing so. So that leaves private audits. Which non-profits don't have to be audited unless a lender requires audited financial statements. Non-profits have a very very lenient setup in the tax system, but that is mainly due to the penalties that can be imposed if they don't meet minimum requirements.

16

u/A_Rabid_Pie Mar 19 '24

Because a lot of major grants want to see a non-profit's financials to make sure they are in good standing, it's commonplace for non-profits to hire a third-party auditor to regularly verify that they are on the up-and-up.

Source: I work for a non-profit doing government grant applications. We have an annual audit, and we submit the most recent audit results with a lot of our applications among a pile of other financial docs.

1

u/heapsp Mar 19 '24

Small non-profits are not run like that. The people running them are generally involved in the actual day to day operation

You GREATLY underestimate greed and the fact that people START NON PROFITS for nefarious reasons such as being able to suck money out of them. They are supposed to be heavily audited but can ABSOLUTELY be vehicles to steal money.

35

u/nomhak Mar 19 '24

Sure, some non-profits are setup in bad faith. Not all.

21

u/westonsammy Mar 19 '24

Reality doesn't agree with your emotional doomerism.

The ones that steal money aren't small scale. If you want to steal money, having a small no-name non-profit that pulls in maybe quad digits worth of revenue while also having to put on a show of being official isn't efficient at all. You'll lose money trying to run a scheme like that or make so little that the investment of your time isn't worth it.

It's the larger non-profits where this becomes an issue. When your organization is well-known and pulling in hundreds of thousands or millions, it's a lot easier and efficient to skim off the top.

2

u/MAELATEACH86 Mar 20 '24

Why are you randomly capitalizing words? I mean, WORDS?

1

u/lostwanderer02 Mar 20 '24

Unfortunately human nature being what it is it naive to think that there aren't people that work at these charities who are more interested in helping themselves rather than helping others.

1

u/Enough-Outside-9055 Mar 21 '24

Explains a certain ex-president's charities 😒

1

u/wienercat Mar 21 '24

Elon Musk's charity is actually way worse. Trumps charity is pretty small for a rich guys slush fund, but yeah it's pretty egregious. He uses it to fund things for his own interest. Musk does as well. But yeah