In addition to the crazy and heinous revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s decades of preying on young women with impunity (mostly), some other pieces of information have been revealed — information that serve as warnings for those involved in philanthropy.
There is a lot of chatter about the question of Epstein’s “vast wealth”, and if it really exists. Several publications have discussed the issue this past week, including the NY Times and The Week, among scores of others. It does seem strange that a high school teacher who goes on to Bear Stearns for 5 years and is let go (for financial irregularities) now claims to be a billionaire. Wondering if the reason that he was so quick to pledge his NY Mansion was because there’s not much equity there…
Regardless, what seems clear is that he doesn’t have the money that his longtime public image suggests. What’s the lesson for those in the non-profit world? Look carefully — very carefully — at the people you’re working with. Epstein is clearly a brilliant manipulator, and by surrounding himself with signs of wealth (mansion, airplane, swanky people), he built the illusion of extreme wealth and, unfortunately, success. The thing that seemed to seal the deal, though, was his blatant promotion of his philanthropic contributions to universities, hospitals, health care organizations, and many other charitable institutions. Somehow the “fact” that he was a big deal philanthropist made everyone around him feel comfortable with whatever other improprieties they sensed (or knew about).
Now we find out that — surprise! — many of the non-profits that he has touted as being a great supporter of show no record of his donations. Many of the organizations questioned by the press, when asked to confirm or deny the donation that Epstein said he gave, declined to comment.
This all reminds me of a situation I was made aware of several years ago, when I was involved with the operations of a particular non-profit. We got a completely unsolicited call from a member of the community saying that he wanted to give us funds to create a garden in front of our facility, and despite the fact that we hadn’t thought of creating a garden in the first place, we thought it was a nice gesture. We readily agreed to a further conversation, and then we were told that this donation came with a few strings attached — namely, that we agreed to promote the donation with the donor’s name, and that the donor would be able to promote the donation himself however he wished. After a bit of research (it didn’t take much), we found out that the prospective donor was involved in some heavy legal issues, and was facing a jail sentence. As a non-profit in the business of raising charitable funds, should we have accepted the donation, knowing that we were just a pawn in this guy’s scheme, with the mitigating circumstance that we needed the money to meet our budget goals? Or should we have said “no, thank you.”. It’s the no, thank you that’s the hardest.
Since then, I’ve heard of multiple uses of this tactic, typically from people with looming dates in court.
Taking that money or not is an ethical question. Although taking the money may help the organization in the short term, doing so has long-term implications. In Epstein’s case, many of those organizations, when made aware (as they surely were) that Epstein was claiming he had given them more money than he had, said nothing. (In one case, Epstein bought tickets for an event, but had not given the large amounts that he had claimed — but the charity didn’t speak up.) The overall impact of so many of these organizations not speaking up when someone was saying they contributed something that they didn’t was that Epstein got to add to his public persona of important, philanthropic, wealthy-guy, when we really wasn’t. Or so it seems.
Again, look carefully at the people you’re working with. The information is typically right there in front of you — you just need to be willing to look.
-Lisa
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