boutons_deux
11-14-2012, 08:57 PM
Some Nonprofits Look Suspiciously Like Forprofits
We took a look, for example, at the American Bureau of Shipping, which sounds like it might even be a federal agency, but it's actually a nonprofit. It's been around for 150 years. And during the seven years we looked at them, through 2010, they've earned $600 million in profits. They paid their CEO more than $20 million over the seven-year period that we looked at, and they don't resemble in many ways what you expect when you think about a nonprofit.
INSKEEP: So let me make sure that I understand what's happening here. Because, of course, there have always been nonprofits in this country. Charities have been nonprofits. Religious institutions have been operated as nonprofits. Hospitals, some of them are nonprofits. Media companies can be, NPR - just as a matter of full disclosure - is a nonprofit organization. Local public radio stations and television stations are. But you're saying that this is spreading into other kinds of business, or it has spread into other kinds of business?
EVANS: Yeah. And typically, a nonprofit hospital, for example, is going to be spending their profits quote/unquote "on providing services to the community." Here, the remarkable thing that we found was, in the case of the American Bureau of Shipping, they'd made $600 million in profits and rather than turning that back into either reducing their charges or spending most of that money on research or donations, they're doing things like sending $60 million in one year to a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands.
INSKEEP: So when you called the American Bureau of Shipping and asked them about their nonprofit status what did they say?
EVANS: Well, they point out that they're not doing anything that violates the law,
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/14/165093535/some-nonprofits-look-suspiciously-like-forprofits
Because the law sucks.
We took a look, for example, at the American Bureau of Shipping, which sounds like it might even be a federal agency, but it's actually a nonprofit. It's been around for 150 years. And during the seven years we looked at them, through 2010, they've earned $600 million in profits. They paid their CEO more than $20 million over the seven-year period that we looked at, and they don't resemble in many ways what you expect when you think about a nonprofit.
INSKEEP: So let me make sure that I understand what's happening here. Because, of course, there have always been nonprofits in this country. Charities have been nonprofits. Religious institutions have been operated as nonprofits. Hospitals, some of them are nonprofits. Media companies can be, NPR - just as a matter of full disclosure - is a nonprofit organization. Local public radio stations and television stations are. But you're saying that this is spreading into other kinds of business, or it has spread into other kinds of business?
EVANS: Yeah. And typically, a nonprofit hospital, for example, is going to be spending their profits quote/unquote "on providing services to the community." Here, the remarkable thing that we found was, in the case of the American Bureau of Shipping, they'd made $600 million in profits and rather than turning that back into either reducing their charges or spending most of that money on research or donations, they're doing things like sending $60 million in one year to a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands.
INSKEEP: So when you called the American Bureau of Shipping and asked them about their nonprofit status what did they say?
EVANS: Well, they point out that they're not doing anything that violates the law,
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/14/165093535/some-nonprofits-look-suspiciously-like-forprofits
Because the law sucks.