Before becoming New To Las Vegas in July, I lived for five years in Seattle, where I also had a blog, NewToSeattle.com. I wrote about the culture and controversies of Seattle. But, having covered charities at Forbes for a long time, I also described the many dodgy nonprofits from around the country that called the New To Seattle World Headquarters asking for money. They generally were dodgy because their regulatory filings revealed that almost none of the money donated went to a legitimate charitable purpose.
Over time I managed to expose many such organizations. The ones that called again asking for money after they were profiled, I nominated for a list I created of America’s Stupidest Charities. I mean, what can be dumber than trying to get a gift from a known critic who has a public platform? You can see that list nearby in the left rail.
But with only a few exceptions, no matter how dodgy the nonprofit, charity regulators allowed it to stay in operation. It was a sad commentary on our government.
But now we have a rare event. One of the charities on my list that I first went after in early 2014 is shutting down on its own. It is the Alexandria, Va.-based National Vietnam Veterans Foundation, which in recent years solicited money under the trade name American Veterans Support Foundation.
According to CNN, which sometimes eats my dust in reporting on such matters, the operation just closed in the wake of an earlier CNN report in May that the long-time head of the dubious charity, J. Thomas Burch Jr., is actually a highly paid lawyer at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA is supposed to champion the rights of ex-soldiers but has been having more than a few problems of its own. Continue reading
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