February 20, 2008

Nonprofits Cash In On Questionable Contributions

Well, here’s one way for charities to cash in on the presidential race. Nonprofits have been the recipients of cash contributions originally intended for campaigns…until the donors found themselves in hot water and committees looked to distance themselves by giving up the donations.

The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said it would donate more than $40,000 to nonprofits, contributions received from a former friend and fundraiser who pleaded not guilty to fraud charges.

A spokesman for the Obama campaign told the Chicago Tribune that more than $44,000 in donations related to Chicago businessman Tony Resko, referred to as a slumlord by Obama’s rival for the nomination Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been divested.

Almost a dozen nonprofits benefited from a controversy involving Clinton. The New Jersey state Democratic Committee donated almost $50,000 received from Norman Hsu, who was sentenced to three years in prison in a 1992 fraud case.

The Clinton campaign divested $850,000 that Hsu raised for the campaign, according to The Star-Ledger, while the Democratic State Committee cut checks for $5,000 each to nonprofits. Among them were Elijah’s Promise, a soup kitchen in New Brunswick, N.J., the New Jersey Community Development Foundation in Paterson, N.J., and the Love Hope Strength Foundation in Denver, Colo.

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This article is from NPT Weekly, a publication of The NonProfit Times.

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