Tag: charities

When Billion-Dollar Non-Profits Stop Looking Like Charities

AltaMed Health Services reported $1.72 billion in revenue in 2024, which is more than many publicly traded healthcare companies. Yet unlike a public corporation, the nonprofit entity answers to no shareholders, enjoys broad tax exemptions, and derives much of its revenue from taxpayer-supported healthcare programs.

AltaMed also reported $1.66 billion in assets and its revenues exceeded expenses by $68.4 million. It operates more than 70 clinics, employs roughly 5,000 people, and serves more than 700,000 patients throughout Southern California, making it one of the nation’s largest federally qualified health center (FQHC) systems.

But AltaMed’s extraordinary growth raises another question that extends far beyond Southern California: What happens when a nonprofit grows into a multibillion-dollar enterprise while retaining the governance structure of a traditional charity?

That question has become increasingly relevant as individual nonprofit hospital systems, universities, and other charitable organizations now control hundreds of billions of dollars in assets while benefiting from tax exemptions, government reimbursements, tax-deductible donations, and public financing. Their primary accountability mechanism is a board of directors charged with ensuring that charitable resources remain devoted to public benefit rather than private profits.

Since 2001, AltaMed has paid more than $32 million in compensation to its CEO, Castulo de la Rocha, his wife Zoila Escobar, and one of their sons – which is significantly higher than most of its peer FQHCs. For instance, the chief executives of Family Health Centers of San Diego, Family HealthCare Network, and Comprehensive Community Health Centers each earned substantially less than de la Rocha in 2024 despite overseeing similarly large healthcare organizations.

Following scrutiny of excessive executive pay more than a decade ago, AltaMed adopted a split-dollar life insurance loan program designed to help retain selected executives. The program has provided substantial loans to a small group of senior leaders to finance life insurance policies. Split-dollar arrangements are technically legal, although federal officials have cautioned that similar structures have been used improperly in certain tax-avoidance schemes.

Executive compensation is only one measure of nonprofit governance. Equally important is how charitable organizations deploy their resources and whether those expenditures advance the mission for which they receive tax-exempt status.

Over the past two decades, AltaMed has built one of the country’s most prominent collections of Chicano and Latino art. It says the collection supports its “Art as a Holistic Approach to Healthcare” initiative, and that artwork displayed throughout its clinics creates a more welcoming and therapeutic environment for patients.

However, AltaMed’s involvement in the arts extends far beyond decorating clinic walls – it owns a collection of approximately 4,000 works of Chicano, Mexican, and Latin American art, the value of which exceeds $6 million. It has spent as much as $2 million on art-related activities outside the United States in places like Mexico City, Rome, Berlin, and Madrid. More recently, it has supported plans for a Museum of Chicano and Mexican Art in downtown Los Angeles, spending at least $150,000 on lobbying related to the proposal.

Keep reading

Newsom Lashes Out at Trump When asked About Federal Investigation Into Wife Jennifer Newsom

California Governor Gavin Newsom lashed out at President Trump and the Trump DOJ when asked about the federal investigation into his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

Last month, Newsom fumed as he announced the corruption probe had expanded, and he and his wife are now under investigation.

Newsom said federal agents have contacted people and organizations close to him and his wife, Jennifer Newsom.

People close to the Newsoms have been subpoenaed for records, according to the governor.

According to Semafor, there are several investigations related to Newsom and they are focused on Jennifer Newsom’s taxes (+ his chief of staff).

Contrary to Newsom’s claims, the investigations did not originate from main DOJ in DC, but are out of Sacramento and involve whistleblowers, Semafor reported.

The investigation began under the Biden Regime, but Newsom lashed out at President Trump during a question and answer session on Thursday.

Keep reading

REPORT: So Many Transgender People Are Moving to Socialist-Run Seattle That it’s Overwhelming the City’s Nonprofits

Back in April, Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson laughed at the idea of millionaires fleeing the city over the prospect of new and higher taxes.

She is seemingly unconcerned about the fact that downtown Seattle is becoming a ghost town with tons of unoccupied commercial space. On the other hand, she is probably overjoyed that transgender people are migrating to Seattle in huge numbers.

In fact, so many of them have moved there in recent months that the nonprofit community in the city, which offers various services, is completely overwhelmed.

Breitbart News reports:

Report: Transgender People Leaving Red States Are Draining Democrat-Run Seattle’s Nonprofits

Increasing numbers of transgender people are reportedly leaving red states for Democrat-run Seattle, Washington, and a nonprofit in the area is struggling to keep up with the demand.

The group called Traction has assisted over 1,000 transgender people in moving to the area since 2024 but it and other nonprofits, according to a Washington Post article published on Tuesday, are running out of resources.

“Though trans people make up just 1 percent of the population in Washington state, the nonprofits that help them say their budgets are drained and their staffs are stretched so thin that last month the Seattle LGBTQ Commission asked Mayor Katie Wilson (D) to declare a civil state of emergency. Such a declaration would free up general fund dollars to bolster the nonprofits’ finances as they help transplants find housing and jobs,” the outlet said.

The report also cited a poll that suggested about 400,000 transgender adults left red states not long after President Donald Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election…

“If the city chooses not to declare a state of emergency, commission leaders said, they worry what will happen not only to Seattle’s LGBTQ+ organizations but also to ones that help all city residents. Many of the newcomers need shelter, food aid, and subsidized health care. And the city’s homeless population has already reached a record high this year,” the article stated.

Even the Washington Post is reporting on this.

Keep reading

California’s $20 Million Attempt To Silence Medical Speech

In a trial set to begin June 24, California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta is asking a court to do something that should alarm every American, regardless of where they stand on abortion: punish nonprofit organizations with ruinous fines for speaking about a lawful medical treatment.

The target is not fraud. These charities offer their services for free.

It is not patient harm. There is no evidence of any patient being harmed.

It is not even illegal conduct. The underlying treatment remains perfectly legal.

The target is speech.

Heartbeat International and Real Options are pro-life nonprofits that provide information and care to women who first take the abortion drug but regret that choice and want to continue their pregnancies. California wants to impose penalties approaching $20 million because these charities have dared to tell women that another option may exist.

Twenty million dollars. That number alone should tell us what this case is really about.

No reasonable observer can believe that bankrupting charities is a proportionate response to truthful and non-misleading statements about a free service designed to help a woman exercise her constitutional right to continue her pregnancy. This is not consumer protection. It is political warfare conducted through the machinery of a government that wishes to silence speech it does not like.

What’s most remarkable is what California cannot prove.

After years of investigation, subpoenas, discovery, and litigation, the attorney general has failed to identify a single woman harmed by APR treatment. Not one. No parade of victims. No evidence of widespread deception. He set up a website practically begging for complaints and still could not muster a single woman claiming she was misled or harmed.

Instead, seven women have publicly shared the stories of how Heartbeat International and Real Options helped them successfully reverse their abortions. Three mothers are slated to testify from the stand about their joy at reversing their unwanted abortions.

Still, the state asks the court to punish the very charities who helped these women continue their wanted pregnancies simply because government lawyers disagree with their viewpoint on the scientific evidence regarding APR.

That is a dangerous precedent.

Scientific disagreement is not fraud. If it were, much of modern medicine would not exist. Medical consensus is not handed down from on high. It evolves. Researchers debate. Physicians challenge prevailing views. Studies are published, criticized, replicated, and revised.

The proper response to disputed science is more debate, more research, and more evidence – not government censorship backed by eight-figure penalties.

Yet that is precisely what California seeks.

Keep reading

Here’s Why Jennifer Newsom’s Charity Compensation Is Raising Red Flags

Questions surrounding the finances of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Newsom, continue to draw attention as federal investigators reportedly examine matters connected to the governor’s financial affairs.

During an interview, Katie Pavlich spoke with journalist Josh Boswell about his investigation into Jennifer Newsom’s charity and the financial questions that led him to examine the organization more closely.

“What made you look into Newsom’s wife in the first place, and what did you find?” Pavlich asked.

Boswell said longstanding questions surrounding the Newsoms’ finances prompted his review.

“Well, there are just always a lot of questions that seem to be swirling around the nuisance, and their finances have been for years, and so I thought, you know, this is a man who clearly is going to be running for president. This is worth looking at, you know, what their finances are, what the shape of them are,” Boswell said.

According to Boswell, his review of Jennifer Newsom’s charitable organization revealed compensation levels that stood out compared with similar nonprofits.

“And so when I had a look at Jennifer Newsom’s charity, I found that she was paying herself since 2012 $3.7 million and this is a lot of money when you look at the amount that the charity brings in, it’s sort of one to 1.7 million a year, and she’s paying up to a third of that to herself and her own company $300,000 a year,” Boswell said.

Boswell said he compared the compensation figures to other charities of similar size and found the payments ranked unusually high.

Keep reading

US To Tighten Rule Regarding Nonprofits Paying Excessive Executive Compensation

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of the Treasury issued a notice on Friday, announcing their plan to issue proposed regulation concerning taxation on high compensation paid by tax-exempt organizations to employees.

The notice relates to excessive compensation and excess parachute payments, the IRS said in a June 5 statement. Parachute payments are made to key employees when they are terminated or when the business undergoes a merger or acquisition. An excess parachute payment is any such payment that exceeds three times an employee’s average annual compensation for the most recent five years.

Section 4960 of the Internal Revenue Code imposes an excise tax on any nonprofit or tax-exempt organization paying an employee more than $1 million in remuneration in a tax year or an excess parachute payment, according to the notice.

The new rule changes tax applicability regarding excessive compensation.

Prior to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, taxes on such payments were applicable to a tax-exempt organization’s five highest-compensated employees for a tax year whose compensation exceeded $1 million.

But under the new rule, the excise tax is applicable to any employee whose compensation exceeds $1 million in a tax year beginning after Dec. 31, 2025. The requirement of being among the five-highest compensated employees has been eliminated.

The rule is also applicable to any former employee who was a top-five compensated employee exceeding $1 million for any tax year between Dec. 31, 2016, and Dec. 31, 2025.

There is no change to taxation on parachute payments. Such payments will continue attracting taxes as per existing rules.

The updates also provide certain exceptions regarding people offering volunteer services to tax-exempt organizations.

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano said the latest rule “strengthens the accountability of tax-exempt organizations.” The regulation “broadens the scope of tax from a limited group of executives to potentially any highly compensated employee.”

The Treasury and the IRS are inviting public comments on the notice until Aug. 4.

The notice comes after the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) recently raised concerns about the implementation of the new regulations.

Keep reading

MASSIVE EBT & CHARITY FRAUD EXPOSED: Dominican Immigrants in Lawrence, Massachusetts Buying Food with Your Taxpayer-Funded Stamps and Free Charity Donations, Then Shipping It Overseas to Sell for Profit in Santo Domingo Bodegas

Independent investigator Muckraker has blown the lid off a sophisticated, long-running Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) and charity fraud operation in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Dominican immigrants have been openly buying groceries with food stamps (EBT/SNAP cards) or taking free food from charities and food banks, loading it into shipping barrels, and sending it straight to the Dominican Republic — where it gets resold for profit in local bodegas. The pipeline runs from Massachusetts corner stores, through shipping hubs in New York, all the way to Santo Domingo.

According to the Muckraker Foundation:

Lawrence, Massachusetts

Lawrence is a small city about 30 miles north of Boston. It has the highest concentration of Dominican immigrants of any city in Massachusetts, and the highest rate of SNAP enrollment in the state.

John has been delivering goods in Lawrence for over 11 years, six days a week, 35 stops a day. He knows the community intimately.

“I’ve been witnessing the Dominican residents going to food bank lines and collecting non-perishable goods,” he told us, “and then packing it in barrels and in boxes, and then they ship it back to the Dominican Republic.”

We asked him how he knew the food was being purchased with food stamps.

“Some of them have openly told me and my wife that that’s what they’re doing,” he said. “And then the other way is the math.”

The math is straightforward. A 50-pound bag of rice costs $30 in Lawrence. That same bag costs $35 in the Dominican Republic. Add shipping, and the economics make no sense unless the food was free or paid for with government benefits.

John drove us through the streets of Lawrence and showed us the evidence hiding in plain sight: blue shipping barrels, stacked outside corner stores, for sale. Not one store. Not two. Store after store after store.

“These barrels aren’t trash cans,” John said. “They’re being used to ship the product.”

Every one of those stores also advertised, prominently, that they accept EBT.

Abigail has worked in Lawrence since 2011. She asked us not to disclose her profession, but her job takes her inside people’s homes on a daily basis.

“Many of them will have large boxes, large bins in their apartments full of the food that they give out at the pantries here,” she told us. “And when I ask them what it’s for, they say they mail it back so it can either be given to their families there or be sold in the bodegas there.”

We asked if these patients knew they were doing something wrong.

“No,” she said, and laughed quietly. “They feel entitled. They feel like that’s what we come here for.”

We asked how widespread she believed the fraud to be among the patients she visits.

“About half,” she said. “Half the people I see.”

Keep reading

German Gov’t Handed Out Millions to Charity Allegedly Tied to Muslim Brotherhood: Reports

Millions in taxpayer cash were directed towards an Islamic organisation with alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood by the German government, reports have revealed.

According to reports from Berlin’s Federal Audit Office, obtained by paper of record Die Welt, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office (AA) gave Islamic Relief Germany (IRD) nearly 8.5 million euros ($9.9m) between 2013 and 2016 and millions more on top of that.

This is despite the group’s parent organisation, Islamic Relief Worldwide, having been classified as a terror group in 2014 by Israel, which accused the group of having funnelled money to Palestinian Hamas terrorists, a charge the supposed charity denies. A 2009 report from Germany’s Baden-Württemberg Office for the Protection of the Constitution also accused the group of being tied to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to impose Sharia on the world.

A later 2019 government report found that the IRD had “significant personnel connections to the Muslim Brotherhood or organisations close to it,” following which the Foreign Office ceased funding the group.

The reports from the Federal Audit Office concerning the grants provided by the German government to IRD were classified and withheld from the public for over five years, with the government arguing that the release of the information could “lead to polemics” and would risk public discourse that would not be “conducive to the welfare of the federal government.”

However, the findings were finally disclosed following a lengthy lawsuit from attorney Seyran Ateş and the Institute for Secular Law. According to Die Welt, the first report found that the Foreign Office was “unable to explain on what basis” it had decided that Islamic Relief Germany was a reputable charity and worthy of millions in government grants.

Keep reading

RAPE AND TORTURE: Prince Harry Under Pressure to Quit African Parks Charity After Allegation of Horrific Abuse Against Indigenous Populations

Harry has said that he was ‘born to be an activist’ – but was he?

By now, we are all used to seeing the prodigal son of Britain’s King Charles III involved in ugly controversies related to his work in African charities.

Recently, his resignation from Sentebale, a charity that he co-founded with the Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, was splashed in the world’s headlines after Chairwoman Sophie Chandauka accused him of bullying and harassment.

Chandauka went as far as suing him for libel.

But all this pales in a sense, compared to the problems involving the ‘African Parks’ charity he presided until two years ago.

We have been reporting on this story since back in April 2024, as you can read in Prince Harry’s Charity in Africa Accused of Widespread Torture and Rape.

Yes, you read it right: ‘African Parks’ rangers protected animals by raping and torturing local tribes.

Keep reading

Bessent Signals Crackdown On Dark-Money Funded NGOs In “Weeks, Months Ahead”

Last year, readers were briefed on what was then the investigative phase into dark-money-funded NGOs and alleged foreign influence operations routed through far-left activist networks. These NGOs and activist networks advance anti-capitalist agendas, mobilize protests and riots to fuel unrest under the banner of toxic social justice, and have also served as a permanent protest-industrial complex designed to delay, deny, and destroy President Trump’s pro-America agenda.

Fast forward to late spring, and there now appears to be a clear transition inside parts of the Trump administration from the investigative phase to the action phase.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled just that during a Thursday press briefing.

Here, the exchange between a reporter and Bessent suggests the potential enforcement phase has already begun:

Reporter: “I want to ask you about Antifa. In October, the Treasury Department started working with the FBI to investigate who’s funding Antifa. Can you give us an update on that investigation? How close are you guys finding out who is funding it?”

Scott Bessent: “It is ongoing. We made substantial progress, and I think in the weeks and months ahead, we are going to have a lot to report“”

(Bessent continues on IRS guidance for nonprofits): “The IRS is now giving guidance on the Form 990, which nonprofits they have to file. We are going to demand that nonprofits know their grant recipients. So if a grant recipient is violent, if they are suppressing people’s rights, then YOU are responsible for that. And I think that’s a very good first step.”

Keep reading