How do you feel about the Southern Poverty Law Centre?

CurtSibling said:
You know more about them than me - Oh great. Award yourself the prize of a cookie.

I forgot to mention how little I care about the entire issue, really...

:)
Click to expand...

Good. Will you now stop spouting all this nonsense about them being on the make then? :)
 
illram said:
Good. Will you now stop spouting all this nonsense about them being on the make then? :)
Click to expand...
I volunteer to take over for him. Courtesy of Google:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2004/12/jim-tharpe-vs-southern-poverty-law.html

Spoiler :
<snip prelude>

Here's something important I hadn't seen before: the revealing statement of Jim Tharpe, the Deputy Metro Editor of the Atlanta Constitution, which he made during a Harvard panel discussion about his experience editing a massive Pulitzer-finalist investigative series on the Southern Poverty Law Center during his days at the Montgomery Advertiser:



I&#8217;d never done any reporting on nonprofits, I thought they were all good guys, they were mom-and-pop, bake-sale, raise-money-for-the-local-fire-department type operations. I had no idea how sophisticated they were, how much money they raised, and how little access you have to them as a reporter, some of which has already been covered here.

Summary of Findings

Our series was published in 1995 after three years of very brutal research under the threat of lawsuit the entire time.

Our findings were essentially these:

The [Southern Poverty Law] center was building up a huge surplus. It was 50-something million at that time; it&#8217;s now approaching 100 million, but they&#8217;ve never spent more than 31 percent of the money they were bringing in on programs, and sometimes they spent as little as 18 percent. Most nonprofits spend about 75 percent on programs.

A sampling of their donors showed that they had no idea of the center&#8217;s wealth. The charity watchdog groups, the few that are in existence, had consistently criticized the center, even though nobody had reported that.

There was a problem with black employees at what was the nation&#8217;s richest civil rights organization; there were no blacks in the top management positions. Twelve out of the 13 black current and former employees we contacted cited racism at the center, which was a shocker to me. As of 1995, the center had hired only two black attorneys in its entire history.

Questionable Fundraising

We also found some questionable fundraising tactics. One of the most celebrated cases the center handled was the case of a young black man, Michael Donald, who was killed by Klansmen in Mobile, Alabama, and his body suspended from a tree, a very grotesque killing. The state tried the people responsible for the murder and several of them ended up on death row, a couple ended up getting life in prison.

The center, after that part of the case took place, sued the Klan organization to which they belonged and won a $7 million verdict. It was a very celebrated verdict in this country. The problem was the people who killed this kid didn&#8217;t have any money. What they really got out of it was a $51,000 building that went to the mother of Michael Donald. What the C enter got and what we reported was they raised $9 million in two years using the Donald case, including a mailing with the body of Michael Donald as part of it.

The top center officials, I think the top three, got $350,000 in salaries during that time, and Morris got a movie out of it, a TV movie of the week. I think it was called, "The Morris Dees Story." [Actually, "Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story" with, appropriately enough, Corbin Bernsen (who played sleazy lawyer Arnie Becker on "LA Law") as Morris.]

As I said, being the editor on this series really raised my eyebrows. I never knew anything about nonprofits before this. I thought we would have complete access to their financial records; we didn&#8217;t. We had access to 990&#8217;s, which Doug mentioned earlier, which tell you very little, but they are a good starting point.

Organizations Monitor Nonprofits

I also learned that there are organizations out there that monitor nonprofits. A couple of these that might be worth your time are the National Charities Information Bureau, the American Institute of Philanthropy, and the Charities Division of the Better Business Bureau. They have rather loose guidelines, I think, for the way nonprofits operated, and even with those guidelines, they had blasted the center repeatedly for spending too little on programs, for the number of minorities in management positions, just very basic stuff that they&#8217;d been criticized for but nobody had reported.

The relationship with sources on this story was pretty interesting, because like I said, most of these people were our friends, and as somebody mentioned earlier, these were the disillusioned faithful. They were people who didn&#8217;t resign. As I said, most of their jobs simply ran out, but they left the center very disillusioned and very willing to talk about it, although most of them wanted to talk off the record.

That presented a number of problems for us. We did not publish anything in the series unless it was attributed to somebody, but we went beyond that. I think if we had stuck with that tack as the only thing we did in the series, we would have ended up with people at the center could have easily dismissed as disgruntled employees.

By looking at 990&#8217;s, what few financial records we did have available, we were able to corroborate much of that information, many of the allegations they had made, the fact that the center didn&#8217;t spend very much of its money that it took in on programs, the fact that some of the top people at the center were paid very high salaries, the fact that there weren&#8217;t minorities in management positions at the center.

If I had advice for anybody looking into a nonprofit it would be this: It&#8217;s the most tenacious story. You have to be more tenacious in your pursuit of these things than anything else I&#8217;ve ever been a part of. These guys threatened us with a lawsuit from the moment we asked to look at their financial records.

They were very friendly and cooperative, up until the point where we said, "We want to see the checks you write," and they turned over their 990&#8217;s and said, "Come look at these." We said, "We don&#8217;t want to see those, we know what those are and we&#8217;ve seen them. We actually want to see the checks you write," and they said, "Well, there&#8217;s 23,000 checks we&#8217;ve written over two years, you don&#8217;t possibly have time to look through all those," and we said, "Yes, we do, and we&#8217;ll hire an auditor to do it."

First Threats, Eventually No Response to Questions

At that point, they hired an independent attorney. They&#8217;re all lawyers, you&#8217;ve got to understand. They hired an attorney who began first by threatening me, then my editor, and then the publisher. "And you better be careful of the questions you ask and the stories you come up with," and they would cite the libel law to us. So we were under threat of lawsuit for two years, basically, during the research phase of the series.

They initially would answer our questions in person, as long as they could tape-record it. After we asked about finances, they wanted the questions written down and sent to them in advance, and then finally they said, "We&#8217;re tired of you guys, we&#8217;re not answering anything else," and they completely cut us off.

We published the series over eight days in 1994, and it had very little effect, actually. I think the center now raises more money than it ever has. [Laughter]

The story really didn&#8217;t get out of Montgomery and that&#8217;s a real problem. The center&#8217;s donors are not in Montgomery; the center&#8217;s donors are in the Northeast and on the West Coast. So the story pretty much was contained in Montgomery where it got a shrug-of-the-shoulders reaction. We really didn&#8217;t get much reaction at all, I&#8217;m sad to say.

One of our editorial writers had an interesting comment on it. I think he stole it from somebody else, but his comment was this: "They came to do good and they&#8217;ve done quite well for themselves, and they&#8217;ve done even better since the series was published." I&#8217;m not sure what the lesson in that is, but don&#8217;t assume because a nonprofit has a sterling reputation it&#8217;s not worth looking into, and don&#8217;t assume when you start looking into it that it&#8217;s going to be easy to get the information, because it&#8217;s not.​
 
and don&#8217;t assume when you start looking into it that it&#8217;s going to be easy to get the information, because it&#8217;s not.
Click to expand...

that presumes you don't trust the U.S. government, (home page-who we are-financial statements) easy enough, unless the FEDS, board members, and staff and volunteers are all having a giant conspiracy, you link didn't have anymore than gossip and people who would only talk off the record, some how you imply these guys are better than Nixon and Regan in cover-ups

it states their capital funds and percentages quite clearly
 
CurtSibling said:
If you mean marching across the burning bodies of commies, I'm up for it!

:)
Click to expand...

you would have to go to China, or Cambodia, for that or maybe Russia but they mainly froze, in the old dart they mainly staved... or got sent down under, for redistributing property :D
 
Erik Mesoy said:
I volunteer to take over for him. Courtesy of Google:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2004/12/jim-tharpe-vs-southern-poverty-law.html

Spoiler :
<snip prelude>

Here's something important I hadn't seen before: the revealing statement of Jim Tharpe, the Deputy Metro Editor of the Atlanta Constitution, which he made during a Harvard panel discussion about his experience editing a massive Pulitzer-finalist investigative series on the Southern Poverty Law Center during his days at the Montgomery Advertiser:



I’d never done any reporting on nonprofits, I thought they were all good guys, they were mom-and-pop, bake-sale, raise-money-for-the-local-fire-department type operations. I had no idea how sophisticated they were, how much money they raised, and how little access you have to them as a reporter, some of which has already been covered here.

Summary of Findings

Our series was published in 1995 after three years of very brutal research under the threat of lawsuit the entire time.

Our findings were essentially these:

The [Southern Poverty Law] center was building up a huge surplus. It was 50-something million at that time; it’s now approaching 100 million, but they’ve never spent more than 31 percent of the money they were bringing in on programs, and sometimes they spent as little as 18 percent. Most nonprofits spend about 75 percent on programs.

A sampling of their donors showed that they had no idea of the center’s wealth. The charity watchdog groups, the few that are in existence, had consistently criticized the center, even though nobody had reported that.

There was a problem with black employees at what was the nation’s richest civil rights organization; there were no blacks in the top management positions. Twelve out of the 13 black current and former employees we contacted cited racism at the center, which was a shocker to me. As of 1995, the center had hired only two black attorneys in its entire history.

Questionable Fundraising

We also found some questionable fundraising tactics. One of the most celebrated cases the center handled was the case of a young black man, Michael Donald, who was killed by Klansmen in Mobile, Alabama, and his body suspended from a tree, a very grotesque killing. The state tried the people responsible for the murder and several of them ended up on death row, a couple ended up getting life in prison.

The center, after that part of the case took place, sued the Klan organization to which they belonged and won a $7 million verdict. It was a very celebrated verdict in this country. The problem was the people who killed this kid didn’t have any money. What they really got out of it was a $51,000 building that went to the mother of Michael Donald. What the C enter got and what we reported was they raised $9 million in two years using the Donald case, including a mailing with the body of Michael Donald as part of it.

The top center officials, I think the top three, got $350,000 in salaries during that time, and Morris got a movie out of it, a TV movie of the week. I think it was called, "The Morris Dees Story." [Actually, "Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story" with, appropriately enough, Corbin Bernsen (who played sleazy lawyer Arnie Becker on "LA Law") as Morris.]

As I said, being the editor on this series really raised my eyebrows. I never knew anything about nonprofits before this. I thought we would have complete access to their financial records; we didn’t. We had access to 990’s, which Doug mentioned earlier, which tell you very little, but they are a good starting point.

Organizations Monitor Nonprofits

I also learned that there are organizations out there that monitor nonprofits. A couple of these that might be worth your time are the National Charities Information Bureau, the American Institute of Philanthropy, and the Charities Division of the Better Business Bureau. They have rather loose guidelines, I think, for the way nonprofits operated, and even with those guidelines, they had blasted the center repeatedly for spending too little on programs, for the number of minorities in management positions, just very basic stuff that they’d been criticized for but nobody had reported.

The relationship with sources on this story was pretty interesting, because like I said, most of these people were our friends, and as somebody mentioned earlier, these were the disillusioned faithful. They were people who didn’t resign. As I said, most of their jobs simply ran out, but they left the center very disillusioned and very willing to talk about it, although most of them wanted to talk off the record.

That presented a number of problems for us. We did not publish anything in the series unless it was attributed to somebody, but we went beyond that. I think if we had stuck with that tack as the only thing we did in the series, we would have ended up with people at the center could have easily dismissed as disgruntled employees.

By looking at 990’s, what few financial records we did have available, we were able to corroborate much of that information, many of the allegations they had made, the fact that the center didn’t spend very much of its money that it took in on programs, the fact that some of the top people at the center were paid very high salaries, the fact that there weren’t minorities in management positions at the center.

If I had advice for anybody looking into a nonprofit it would be this: It’s the most tenacious story. You have to be more tenacious in your pursuit of these things than anything else I’ve ever been a part of. These guys threatened us with a lawsuit from the moment we asked to look at their financial records.

They were very friendly and cooperative, up until the point where we said, "We want to see the checks you write," and they turned over their 990’s and said, "Come look at these." We said, "We don’t want to see those, we know what those are and we’ve seen them. We actually want to see the checks you write," and they said, "Well, there’s 23,000 checks we’ve written over two years, you don’t possibly have time to look through all those," and we said, "Yes, we do, and we’ll hire an auditor to do it."

First Threats, Eventually No Response to Questions

At that point, they hired an independent attorney. They’re all lawyers, you’ve got to understand. They hired an attorney who began first by threatening me, then my editor, and then the publisher. "And you better be careful of the questions you ask and the stories you come up with," and they would cite the libel law to us. So we were under threat of lawsuit for two years, basically, during the research phase of the series.

They initially would answer our questions in person, as long as they could tape-record it. After we asked about finances, they wanted the questions written down and sent to them in advance, and then finally they said, "We’re tired of you guys, we’re not answering anything else," and they completely cut us off.

We published the series over eight days in 1994, and it had very little effect, actually. I think the center now raises more money than it ever has. [Laughter]

The story really didn’t get out of Montgomery and that’s a real problem. The center’s donors are not in Montgomery; the center’s donors are in the Northeast and on the West Coast. So the story pretty much was contained in Montgomery where it got a shrug-of-the-shoulders reaction. We really didn’t get much reaction at all, I’m sad to say.

One of our editorial writers had an interesting comment on it. I think he stole it from somebody else, but his comment was this: "They came to do good and they’ve done quite well for themselves, and they’ve done even better since the series was published." I’m not sure what the lesson in that is, but don’t assume because a nonprofit has a sterling reputation it’s not worth looking into, and don’t assume when you start looking into it that it’s going to be easy to get the information, because it’s not.​
Click to expand...

You know you could have saved me some time and linked to a reputable link, like the referenced Silverstein article from Harper's regarding their fundraising efforts. As opposed to a crazy-time blog that is trying to sell us a book about Obama called the "Half-Blood Prince."

So what we know, according to Silverstein, is: 1) Morris Dees and Levin make 350K/ year. Not bad, but chump change compared to what others with that kind of trial experience and at that age could be making; and 2) their fundraising efforts are not looked upon highly by other non-profit watchdogs.

Fair enough. They still take on good cases for free and give all their winnings to their clients without taking a nickel from them. I still call the rank and file of their organization good people. I still say that the majority of what they do and what they're about is positive. And I still say they're by and large not on the make. So what if suckers like me donate? I'm not really shedding a tear for people in my demographic getting shook down by outfits like this. (I have never actually donated to them but I am certainly in their target demographic.)
 
CurtSibling said:
You certainly are going all out to support them.

:)
Click to expand...

Says the guy going all out to discredit them? Obviously, you've had legal problems with them before. It's the only Logical (tm) reason for you to spend time attacking them on a random internet forum, instead of going out selling the souls of kittens for fun and profit, as everyone secretly does.
 
Miles Teg said:
Says the guy going all out to discredit them? Obviously, you've had legal problems with them before. It's the only Logical (tm) reason for you to spend time attacking them on a random internet forum, instead of going out selling the souls of kittens for fun and profit, as everyone secretly does.
Click to expand...

It's that man Miles again! :D

Hah!
Now we come to the old: "You dislike them, so you have a bad experience with them" gambit.
That accusation is a big favourite of religious apologists too. The ones who claim to be
neutral, but side with religion due to them secretly applauding oppression.

I find leftist supporters seem to follow this mindset closely too.
Many posters here prove it also.

PS
And to keep you on track, I merely stated I distrust their motives.
Somehow you have upgraded this to me wishing total carnage on them.

No-one has been able to provide any proof that they are not on the make,
beyond shaky 'personal experiences' and destructed brain commie rants...

Naturally, I am off now to barter kitten souls.

:)
 
Curt, the bit about "you dislike them, so you must have had a bad experience" was a parody of some of your statements up-thread. ;)

Again, other than a generalized misanthropism, makes you think that these guys aren't good, decent people? They make decent (although hardly outrageous) money from their work, but that's the only black mark I can find against them.

Also, I find it best to starve cats until their souls can pass for those of kittens. Less expenses that way.
 
Miles, feel free to explain me to illram at length since I'm short on time just now. illram, this is Obama's mother and this is Obama's father. Karalysia, IIRC the mods issued a ban on linking to Stormfront here.
 
Miles Teg said:
Again, other than a generalized misanthropism, makes you think that these guys aren't good, decent people? They make decent (although hardly outrageous) money from their work, but that's the only black mark I can find against them.
Click to expand...

I could counter that your generalised idealism blinds you to the true natures of most lawyers?

Miles Teg said:
Also, I find it best to starve cats until their souls can pass for those of kittens. Less expenses that way.
Click to expand...

Thanks, sir.
Always good to trade kitten expiration tips!

:D
 
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