Posted: Thursday, March 22, 2007 12:00 am
Commentary by Andy Caldwell
In my last column, I outlined the financial support that several South County organizations received in order to come to the North County in order to organize and politic.
I specifically referenced, as an example, tens of thousands of dollars given to three of these organizations 7 PUEBLO, The Santa Barbara County Action Network (SBCAN), and the Santa Ynez Valley Alliance.
Well, it turns out the “charityC that gave all these monies, The Fund for Santa Barbara, is actually a piker when it comes to dolling out the loot to fund the invasion of the North County by South County politicos. The deep pockets belong to the McCune Foundation.
Whereas, the Fund for Santa Barbara gave PUEBLO ,10,000 for three years to fund a field organizer, the McCune Foundation doled out ,35,000 per year for two years for general support, voter mobilization and issue campaigns. That was for 2006. In 2005, McCune gave PUEBLO ,30,000 for community organizing.
Whereas, the Fund for Santa Barbara gave SBCAN ,5,000 to create a roundtable of progressive organizations, and another ,5,000 to develop leadership and organizing skills, the McCune Foundation gave SBCAN ,35,121 for the same task, namely to support staff and program development of progressive networking.
My column space last week didn/t allow me to highlight monies that flowed to two additional organizations. The Environmental Defense Center received ,9,000 from the Fund for Santa Barbara to train trainers in order to educate farm workers about the dangers of pesticides. The McCune Foundation gave the EDC ,35,000 for the same exact task!
Another group of activists that received money from both the Fund for Santa Barbara and the McCune Foundation is an organization called the Coalition for Sustainable Transportation. COAST is the group of geniuses responsible for several things, including the project list for last year/s failed ballot initiative Measure D. They were the ones pushing for the rail line to Ventura County. They also are the impetus behind the proposed taxi service to get farm workers back and forth from field to field.
The Fund for Santa Barbara gave COAST ,3,000 to lead a coalition of progressive organizations to advocate for the approval of Measure D. They received another ,3,600 to try and get people interested in the Ventura rail line. And, if that wasn/t enough, the Fund for Santa Barbara gave COAST another ,5,750 for the farm worker unmet transit needs project.
Not to be outdone, the McCune Foundation gave COAST ,12,000 for operating and project support for the Coalition for a Fair Measure D voter education project, and ,15,000 to support advocacy for transportation needs of North County farm workers.
Does anybody else besides me see a pattern here? One would observe that the nonprofits I have mentioned here have found a couple of proverbial South County cash cows that are funding nearly their entire budgets for politicking in the North County. So what is wrong with this picture, you ask?
The first thing that is wrong with this picture has to do with the law governing disbursements from foundations. Whereas, a non-profit can be organized for virtually any purpose imaginable, and legally sanctioned nonprofits don/t have to pay income tax, the fact is the donors to the nonprofit are not allowed to fully deduct donations unless the nonprofit and the donation are wholly dedicated to charitable purposes. Charitable purposes are narrowly defined by the IRS.
Because the Fund for Santa Barbara and the McCune Foundation are charities, the monies they receive cannot legally be given to organizations that engage in activities that are not considered within the bounds of charity, i.e., advocacy, campaigning and politics in general.
In other words, every CPA and tax attorney I have spoken with agree that neither the Fund for Santa Barbara nor the McCune Foundation can legally donate money to what the IRS describes as “actionC organizations.
The other problem I have with this scenario is that these groups seek to portray themselves as grass-roots organizations. I find this money trail to be incongruent with that claim. Grass-roots organizations, by definition, spring from a broad wave of support from genuinely concerned local citizenry.
Instead, what we have here is a group of organizations that are spending monies they did not raise in direct contributions, in order to politic in a community where they have no real base of support, financial or otherwise.
Andy Caldwell is executive director of COLAB and a 39-year resident of the Central Coast. His column appears every Thursday. You may reach him at 929-3148, or on the web at www.colabsbc.org.
March 22, 2007