Martin Scorsese’s newest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on David Grann’s nonfiction book, tells the story of how Oklahoma cattle baron William King Hale and his nephews Bryon and Ernest Burkhart outwardly pretended to be friends and benefactors of the oil-rich Osage Nation community while under cover of night and masks robbed and murdered (or tried to murder) their own wives.

Hale’s outward face included his command of the Osage language, his donations to charities, schools, and even hospitals for the Osage, and his fingers-crossed promise to “find the killers and bring them to justice” (when he was the chief killer). For a long time, he had nearly everybody fooled, and it took the predecessor to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to bring him and his nephews to partial justice (many others got away scot-free.)

Of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s donations to political and charitable organizations, one that stands out is his gifts totaling more than $2.5 million to the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center -- a leading nonpartisan political watchdog. The Center declined to return the donations to those the “crypto king” had defrauded, claiming they had spent the tainted money.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, the principals who incorporated under the appellation "Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation" collected about $90 million in donations in the years 2020-2022. The group did transfer about a third of the money to black, trans, and anti-police nonprofits (including $4.5 million to charities run by cronies), but spent $12 million buying luxury homes for themselves and allocated another $22.7 million for “expenses.”

Millions went to co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who had also scored a lucrative TV deal with Warner Bros. that ended with no shows produced. Paul Cullors (her brother) was paid nearly $140,000 in salaries on top of the $1.6 million paid to his security firm, Black Ties Security, LLC. Another $2 million plus was doled out to board member Shalomyah Bowers and her consulting firm.

Ethicist Frank Addessi cited a report from the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting on “the fifty worst charities in America," which together had raised nearly $1 billion for corporate fundraisers. Addessi noted that no more than 11.1 percent (and as low as not a single dime) of the funds these charities took in went to direct aid to victims.

While charity watchdog organizations say no more than 35 percent of donations should go to fundraising costs, charities with high-sounding names (cancer foundations, firefighter and police associations, veterans’ organizations, and “children’s” charities) turn out to just be shills for their principals to rake in sizable salaries on the backs of the truly charitable. The truly worst paid over 90 percent of collections to solicitors, and two-thirds paid at least 70 percent.

One common hustle, says Addessi, is what he calls “the name game.” While the well-respected Make a Wish Foundation spends most of its receipts directly on children, the similarly named Kids Wish Network spends just 3 percent. But they rake in far more than they deserve, he intimates, by designing their website and solicitations to look and sound like Make a Wish.

Another ethicist, Patricia Illingworth, takes on a different group of charities -- bad actor companies who either donate to or create their own charitable organizations to distract the public from the harm they do. Jeffrey Epstein tops her list for his donations to high-profile institutions like Harvard University and MIT’s Media Lab (and countless others) that bought him cover for his nefarious deeds.

Museums around the world, embarrassed that they had benefited from Sackler family charitable giving, have recently backed away from having their reputations linked to the Purdue Pharma principals whose company patented and aggressively marketed Oxycontin, helping to usher in a national opioid crisis.

New York’s Guggenheim Museum announced it would no longer accept Sackler donations a month after a performance artist staged a “die-in” protest in the foyer. The Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and London’s Tate and National Portrait Galleries all joined the Sackler deniers in recent years.

Illingworth says that many people donate to charities to cover up or provide cover for their own bad behavior. With moral credits (from giving) in hand, donors can feel entitled to be bad. While some donors are just “reputation laundering,” many recipients cover up the source of donations to prevent giving glory to the bad actor. (That is why MIT made Jeffrey Epstein’s donations to its Media Lab “anonymous.”)

Lawrence Lessig lists four types of donors. Type 1 are wealthy people whose wealth comes from doing good (like Taylor Swift or Tom Hanks); Type 2 are people who are wealthy because of their work within companies of “ambiguous good” (like Google or Facebook). Type 3 are criminals whose wealth does not derive from their crime (like Epstein), while Type 4 are those whose wealth comes from clearly wrongful or harmful or immoral behavior (like the Sacklers). 

Every university, said Lessig, takes all four types of money. But should they?

Donato Tramuto has been outed for his false claim of valor related to the September 11 massacre of Americans simply by claiming he almost boarded a plane hijacked by terrorists. Using his false narrative, he created the Tramuto Foundation and raised money donors likely thought was to benefit the families of those who had died on the airplane but which he used first to benefit a seminary outed for sexual scandals and second to endear himself to a powerful political family.

Tramuto’s million-dollar gift to the RFK Human Rights Foundation was enough to pay director Mary Kerry Kennedy’s $500,000 annual salary for two years, but it also bought him a seat on the foundation’s board and its “Ripple of Hope” award. Nobody dared ask why the money he raised went to bolster Tramuto’s public image and not to the grieving families of 9/11 victims.

It would seem that people like Tramuto do not neatly fit into any of Lessig’s four categories of donors. Tramuto raised money based on his spurious claim of “valor,” allocated the money to causes not related to the expectations of donors (who thought they were helping 9/11 victims), and used donors’ money to enhance his political reputation as he considered a run for governor of Maine.

Lessig argues that nonprofits ought to exercise due diligence for moral licensing before accepting large donations in order to protect their own reputations and to protect others from harm. It can be argued that the money Tramuto took in was “blood money,” raised in the names of those who died. 

Is such a man really qualified to lead an entire state?

These are the types of questions we would do well to ponder before donating to a “charity” that hits us up with claims of virtue. It’s not an easy task, but only by holding ourselves and others to a higher moral standard will we get the kind of leadership we claim to want and deserve.

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