Donations

Donating to charity is a worthy action. But which charity? Would it surprise you to know that the criterion that is most often used to decide that question is also the most unreliable? Would it surprise you more to know that many charities are aware of how flawed the criterion is and play it like a violin? A few months ago a friend of mine who runs an international relief agency phoned me complaining about another charity. "Do you know what they're doing?" he fumed. "They're buying medicine in Canada for 10 cents a pill and booking the American retail cost of the medicine as an in-kind contribution.

Swift donates $4 million Taylor Swift, the country superstar who became a professional songwriter at 14 and released her first album at 16, is kicking in $4 million toward the creation of a new education center that will bear her name at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, part of the museum's $75-million expansion. The Taylor Swift Educational Center will increase the museum's educational facilities seven-fold, officials said in announcing her pledge Thursday.

If a well-heeled neighborhood of Los Angeles wanted better police protection, would it be OK for the residents to donate money to their local police station so it could assign an extra patrol car to their streets? Most people would rightly say no. Law enforcement is a public service; taxpayers support it for the safety of all, to be deployed as needed to provide the best protection for the city. Residents might hire a private security guard for their neighborhood, but they cannot reshape public allocations of resources to benefit themselves through private donations.

The FBI is investigating the apparent disappearance of an estimated $1 million in donations that about 200 nonprofits reported losing when the organization that handled their finances abruptly shut down this year, forcing some groups to curtail their charity work. The head of one nonprofit said two FBI agents specializing in white collar crime interviewed her in April about the International Humanities Center, and the director of another said she has been asked to meet with agents this month.

A good day for the UCLA basketball program started before players even took the court. Hours before the tip-off against Arizona State, the Bruins athletic department received two unexpected donations of $100,000 each for the upcoming renovation of Pauley Pavilion. Ross Bjork, a senior associate athletic director, said the gifts were part of a recent uptick that has pushed fundraising for the project to almost $62 million. "There's a buzz around the arena," Bjork said. "Lots of activity."

Every holiday season consumers get pitched by numerous charities that hope the spirit of giving will pry open hearts and pocketbooks. The appeals often have a sense of urgency as many charities struggle this year with increasing needs and declining donations because of the economic malaise. It's hard to turn down charities at times. But for giving to be truly effective, it should be well thought out overall and not done on impulse. "Most people give because they're asked," said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy.

We have been giving faithfully to about five charities a year. We are on a fixed income, so we have to limit our contributions. However, in the last three years, perhaps longer, requests for donations have dramatically increased to the point where we may stop giving donations. We decided to save all requests for donations. At the end of October there were 57 separate and distinct organizations requesting donations. In this 10-month period, one organization requested donations 18 times, another 12 times, another 11 times and so on. Most of the requests send address labels and we have enough labels to last for years.

Do you have a charitable giving plan? President Obama placed a spotlight on charity when he published his tax return information recently, showing a vast array of causes supported by the First Family. While that strategy may be wise for the Obamas, who have the means to donate generously and can use their high-profile giving to highlight the many causes that need money, it's not a good approach for most ordinary folks, experts say. In fact, when ordinary people give small gifts to dozens of different groups, it may be a tell-tale sign that their giving is off the cuff, rather than strategic.

That “substantial donation” that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson reportedly made to the pro-Newt Gingrich "super PAC" Winning Our Future last month? Pretty substantial, as it turns out. The Las Vegas mogul and his wife put another $5 million into the super PAC in February, according to Federal Election Commission reports filed Tuesday. His daughter, Shelley Adelson, donated $500,000. Altogether, the Adelson family has given Winning Our Future $16.5 million out of the $18.8 million it has raised.

Saddleback College professor Robert Kopfstein began taking food and supplies to a Mexican orphanage 13 years ago in his 1971 Volkswagen van. Now the provisions for La Puerta de Fe (The Door of Faith) have grown so great that he needs a large delivery truck. The faculty association of South Orange County Community College District has become the orphanage's single largest donor.

UC Santa Barbara, according to old stereotypes, may still conjure up the image of a lush campus by the beach, where students can squeeze in a few hours of surfing after class and live in a nearby neighborhood that is one of the nation's best-known party zones. But in reality, UC Santa Barbara over the last three decades increasingly has become a center of scientific research, and its move in that direction was strengthened Saturday with the announcement of a $50-million private donation to energy efficiency research and engineering programs.

As political fundraisers go, it's set to be an "Avengers"-sized blockbuster: One hundred and fifty wealthy Democrats will dine with President Obama at George Clooney's Studio City home Thursday night, at a party that organizers expect to gross $15 million for the president's re-election campaign - the highest amount ever raised at such an event. High-profile guests including Robert Downey Jr., Tobey Maguire, Barbra Streisand, director-producer J.J. Abrams, producer Nina Jacobson, Creative Artists Agency partner Bryan Lourd and ICM President Chris Silbermann are attending the dinner, which was organized by DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and his political advisor, Andy Spahn.

WASHINGTON — Anxiety about the effect of a ban on political spending by federal contractors is prompting new caution by a company connected to such donations and a "super PAC" that accepted them. Restore Our Future — a super PAC that has spent more than $42 million on behalf of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney — had previously solicited money from federal contractors. Now it is warning the contractors to get legal advice before giving. Meanwhile, Oxbow Carbon, a major coal and petroleum supplier that gave Restore Our Future $750,000 last year, now says its contracts to sell fuel to the federal government are through a sister company that is a separate legal entity — an arrangement that allows it to skirt the prohibition on federal contractors making political expenditures.

It's technically called an egg "donation. " But if you're a young Asian woman, donating your eggs to an infertile couple can fetch enough cash to buy a used car or perhaps a semester at college. The same market forces that drive the price of cotton, copper and other commodities - supply and demand - have allowed Asian women to command about $10,000 to $20,000 for their eggs, also known as gametes or ova. Women of other ethnic groups typically get about $6,000 when they can sell their eggs, but they often can't for lack of demand, according to donation agencies and fertility clinics.

In a move that heightened competition in online education and brought more prestige to the still-fledgling field, Harvard University and MIT announced a partnership Wednesday to offer the public mainly free Internet classes. Harvard and MIT are each donating $30 million to create a nonprofit organization, to be called "edX" that will develop an Internet platform for the classes and design new ways to teach and learn with technology, according to the two Cambridge, Mass., schools.

For sale: An exotic, once top-secret radar-evading ship, dubbed the Sea Shadow, that was built by one of the world's largest defense contractors during the height of the Cold War. Specifications: about 68 feet wide, 164 feet long and around 563 tons. Price: $139,200 or best offer. If interested, please contact the General Services Administration at its website: gsaauctions.gov. That's the sales pitch from theU.S. Navy, which - after five years of trying and failing to donate the stealthy Sea Shadow to a museum - is now selling the ship for scrap metal in an online auction.

We've recently cleaned out our garage and decided to call one of the many groups that ask for donations. We marked the items and put them in the driveway for pickup. The truck pulled up and, with little more than a cursory look at what we were donating, the workers got back into the truck, saying, "Nope, not interested." We then called another "needy group" but were not home when their people came to call. They left a door hanger on our front door with the curt note: "Sorry, not good.

Some California politicians are ridding their campaign coffers of cash from a Los Angeles venture capitalist who has pleaded guilty to bribing pension officials in New York. Elliott Broidy, who had California government contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, showered his personal fortune on officeholders and candidates. Over the last decade, Broidy and his wife, Robin Rosenzweig, have made nearly $900,000 in campaign contributions in California, including $57,000 to candidates and ballot measures in the city of Los Angeles.

Donating to charity is a worthy action. But which charity? Would it surprise you to know that the criterion that is most often used to decide that question is also the most unreliable? Would it surprise you more to know that many charities are aware of how flawed the criterion is and play it like a violin? A few months ago a friend of mine who runs an international relief agency phoned me complaining about another charity. "Do you know what they're doing?" he fumed. "They're buying medicine in Canada for 10 cents a pill and booking the American retail cost of the medicine as an in-kind contribution.

Sometimes an old movie line says it best. Such a line came to mind when I read the Assembly speaker's assertion that political money doesn't influence legislative voting. "I know people love to try to create that impression," Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) was quoted as saying in a Times article Sunday about AT&T's wide-ranging lobbying operation. "But the reality is, that's not the way things happen. People give money because of whatever reasons motivate them, and we evaluate legislation regardless.