Even if keeping the money on on a bank account for nine years was an honest mistake: Don't tell that every penny will be donated and then deduct expenses.
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Is it not normal for a charity to deduct expenses from donated funds? I didnt think that was the scandalous part, I always thought that was standard practice for charities in general.
Yes, it is normal but then credible organizations then won't make the claim that everything will be donated. When such statements are made, the reasonable expectation is that costs are covered by 3rd parties.
I'm not sure if this fits here, but that's the main difference between "100% of profit" vs "100% of revenue"
Jirard has never come across as the type of guy who would knowingly just sit on something like this. Another video and thread here seems to imply his brother is running the account and Jirard didn't know until last year that the money hadn't been donated, so the brother may be the one primarily at fault? The fact that it was just sitting there unused also implies to me more incompetence or negligence instead of bad intent, so I do want to give them at least a bit of BOTD. That said, that still leaves a whole year where both brothers were just sitting on the money. If they really are looking for "the right place" to donate the money to, they'd better pick a place/places fast and get that money out. Either way they're probably gonna see a lot fewer donations in the future. If they're just collecting money from their followers and donating it somewhere else, they may as well just do what a bunch of other content creators do (and what I think they do for their other charitable stuff IIRC) and just do marathon videos/streams with links to just donate to the charities directly in the chat/comments. Cuts out the middleman and keeps them out of this kind of trouble.
That said, that still leaves a whole year where both brothers were just sitting on the money. If they really are looking for "the right place" to donate the money to, they'd better pick a place/places fast and get that money out.
Sorry I don’t know much about these guys and how they operate, so it may need explaining, but that rings alarm bells for me. Why didn’t they know and communicate that with everyone donating to begin with? I’m not sure I’d have parted with any money if I didn’t know upfront where it was going.
Jirard was asked essentially that by Mutahar and Karl and he said that the foundation was "looking for the right place to donate it to that aligns with our values", and that when he found out, there was internal conflict within the foundation about when and where to donate, with Jirard himself, by his own account, being in favor of getting the money out sooner than later. Unfortunately, that just led to further delays. Just terrible incompetence by all parties involved.
Of course, none of that involved any public disclosure of the issue, nor did it prevent them from continuing to raise donations for their charity.
I watched both of the videos, it sucks. I like him as a YouTuber, but it sounds like they are about to get in a lot of trouble even if the IRS doesn't do an audit. Very odd they just say on the money, I'm sure they'll be donating it within the next few weeks
TLDW?
The only thing the charity has done with the money donated has been to pay for it's own expenses. The rest has just been sitting in an account somewhere. No grants or anything have been made with the money so far.
At least that what the charity's filings claim.
How can it have expenses at all if it's just a bank account held by the guy's brother? Why does it need to be a charity or exist at all if they're just donating the money to another group, why be a middle man?
This whole thing reeks, imo.
Edit: Duh, stupid of me. The charity streams and website cost money. Still stinks. How does that add up to 11k expenses one year and 29k expenses another year. How does that make any sense?
How does he admit to taking out expenses from the account and not know the money was there?
I never even heard of them, but fuck. Damn. ☹️