again-- do your fact checking.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...-foundation-c/
Priebus’ case is built on the notion that the only charitable work the Clinton Foundation does is in grant-making and, by extension, everything else is overhead.
We’ll use the Clinton Foundation’s most recent IRS tax form, for 2014, as an example. (It starts on Page 28 of this document.) The foundation reported total expenses in 2014 of a little over $91 million but grants of just $5.1 million. That’s close to 6 percent of the foundation’s money being spent on grants.
Over a five-year period from 2009-12, the foundation raised over $500 million, the conservative website The Federalist reported, but only 15 percent of that, or $75 million, went toward grants.
But that doesn’t mean everything else is overhead, people who monitor charities and their practices say.
"Although it has ‘foundation’ in its name, the Clinton Foundation is actually a public charity," Brian Mittendorf, a professor of accounting at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, wrote in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. "In practical terms, this means both that it relies heavily on donations from the public and that it achieves its mission primarily by using those donations to conduct direct charitable activities, as opposed to providing grants from an endowment.
"Failure to understand the difference led to the widespread claim (covered by the New York Post, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and others) that only a small portion of Clinton Foundation spending goes toward charity. While measuring charitable endeavors by the amount of grants awarded may be appropriate for many private foundations, it is not for an organization that acts as a direct service provider like the Clinton Foundation."
What kind of activities?
The Clinton Development Initiative is helping farmers in Malawi grow and sell more crops and has built a warehouse where farmers can store their crops for sale. The foundation is doing something similar for coffee farmers in Haiti.
In 2013, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership launched the Acceso Centro de Formacion to provide job training for people in Cartagena, Colombia.
A lot of what the foundation does is have its employees help facilitate partnerships.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative, for instance, has gotten credit for providing access to lower-cost drugs for millions of people with HIV/AIDS. The foundation program consolidated both the supply of raw materials to make the drugs and the bidding to supply the finished product. The result was lower production costs and lower drug prices. Today, the initiative tracks the going price for a menu of treatments and posts them to help health departments around the world as they negotiate with drug companies.
Mittendorf and other people who study charities say the most general way to address how much a group spends on charities versus overhead is to look at the audited financial statements that consolidate the financial results of the entities that make up the Clinton Foundation. That include the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton Climate Initiative, Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, Clinton Development Initiative, and Clinton Health Matters Initiative.
Financial statement rules require a nonprofit to split its expenses between program services, fundraising, and management/general costs (the latter two are collectively what are referred to as "overhead"), Mittendorf told us.
He said that in 2014, 87.2 percent of the Clinton Foundation’s expenses were on program services.
"Of course, this only speaks to how the organization used its funds and not whether that 87.2 percent was allocated to the most effective program efforts, but it is all we have in terms of verifiable data on this question," Mittendorf said.
The American Institute of Philanthropy’s Charity Watch, reached the same conclusion. It has given the Clinton Foundation an A rating and says it spends only 12 percent of the money it raises on "overhead."
"The Clinton Foundation is an excellent charity," Charity Watch president Daniel Borochoff said Aug. 24, 2016, on CNN. "They are able to get 88 percent of their spending to bona fide program services and their fundraising efficiency is really low. It only costs them $2 to raise $100."
Sandra Minuitti at the group Charity Navigator used the same general calculation when talking to our colleagues FactCheck.org, though she did not include the Clinton Foundation’s affiliates. By that measure, in 2013, 80.6 percent of spending was on program services.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...-foundation-c/
Priebus’ case is built on the notion that the only charitable work the Clinton Foundation does is in grant-making and, by extension, everything else is overhead.
We’ll use the Clinton Foundation’s most recent IRS tax form, for 2014, as an example. (It starts on Page 28 of this document.) The foundation reported total expenses in 2014 of a little over $91 million but grants of just $5.1 million. That’s close to 6 percent of the foundation’s money being spent on grants.
Over a five-year period from 2009-12, the foundation raised over $500 million, the conservative website The Federalist reported, but only 15 percent of that, or $75 million, went toward grants.
But that doesn’t mean everything else is overhead, people who monitor charities and their practices say.
"Although it has ‘foundation’ in its name, the Clinton Foundation is actually a public charity," Brian Mittendorf, a professor of accounting at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, wrote in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. "In practical terms, this means both that it relies heavily on donations from the public and that it achieves its mission primarily by using those donations to conduct direct charitable activities, as opposed to providing grants from an endowment.
"Failure to understand the difference led to the widespread claim (covered by the New York Post, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and others) that only a small portion of Clinton Foundation spending goes toward charity. While measuring charitable endeavors by the amount of grants awarded may be appropriate for many private foundations, it is not for an organization that acts as a direct service provider like the Clinton Foundation."
What kind of activities?
The Clinton Development Initiative is helping farmers in Malawi grow and sell more crops and has built a warehouse where farmers can store their crops for sale. The foundation is doing something similar for coffee farmers in Haiti.
In 2013, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership launched the Acceso Centro de Formacion to provide job training for people in Cartagena, Colombia.
A lot of what the foundation does is have its employees help facilitate partnerships.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative, for instance, has gotten credit for providing access to lower-cost drugs for millions of people with HIV/AIDS. The foundation program consolidated both the supply of raw materials to make the drugs and the bidding to supply the finished product. The result was lower production costs and lower drug prices. Today, the initiative tracks the going price for a menu of treatments and posts them to help health departments around the world as they negotiate with drug companies.
Mittendorf and other people who study charities say the most general way to address how much a group spends on charities versus overhead is to look at the audited financial statements that consolidate the financial results of the entities that make up the Clinton Foundation. That include the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton Climate Initiative, Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, Clinton Development Initiative, and Clinton Health Matters Initiative.
Financial statement rules require a nonprofit to split its expenses between program services, fundraising, and management/general costs (the latter two are collectively what are referred to as "overhead"), Mittendorf told us.
He said that in 2014, 87.2 percent of the Clinton Foundation’s expenses were on program services.
"Of course, this only speaks to how the organization used its funds and not whether that 87.2 percent was allocated to the most effective program efforts, but it is all we have in terms of verifiable data on this question," Mittendorf said.
The American Institute of Philanthropy’s Charity Watch, reached the same conclusion. It has given the Clinton Foundation an A rating and says it spends only 12 percent of the money it raises on "overhead."
"The Clinton Foundation is an excellent charity," Charity Watch president Daniel Borochoff said Aug. 24, 2016, on CNN. "They are able to get 88 percent of their spending to bona fide program services and their fundraising efficiency is really low. It only costs them $2 to raise $100."
Sandra Minuitti at the group Charity Navigator used the same general calculation when talking to our colleagues FactCheck.org, though she did not include the Clinton Foundation’s affiliates. By that measure, in 2013, 80.6 percent of spending was on program services.
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