How the Left Destroyed Philanthropy
America loves underdogs. Just look at the headlines Tim Tebow is garnering these days and it’s easy to see why. The Denver Broncos quarterback represents the very ethos this country was founded upon: with enough hard work, even the little guy can achieve very big things.
It’s this idea that inspired the Pepsi Refresh Project, an initiative developed by PepsiCo to award over $20 million in grant money to grassroots organizations through an online voting competition. And though the challenge was designed for nonpartisan groups, it has been infiltrated by a professional and well-funded political Goliath that has cast a shadow over the fairness and spirit of the contest.
The group is called the Progressive Slate, a coalition of nonprofits that was formed with the sole purpose of winning Pepsi funds. So far this year, the Slate has racked up more than $2 million in Pepsi grants to advance their liberal agenda. And for an organization that claims to not engage in political advocacy, they are bedfellows with many left-leaning activists and groups. In fact, over a half-dozen Slate-sponsored nonprofits that have won Pepsi grant money have also received funding from none other than George Soros.
So how is it that groups receiving checks from the man who broke the Bank of England have been able to cash in on Pepsi’s charity despite rules against political advocacy?
That is the very question being asked by Gail Pubols and Crys Worley, two contestants who are finalists in the December round of the Pepsi Refresh Project.
Both women have joined forces as two grassroots underdogs that are connected though a common bond: they are both mothers to autistic children.
Over the summer, PJTV spent a day with Gail and her family in their Henderson, Nevada home to see how they are using innovative technology to help their son communicate. Inspired by her son’s improvement, Gail and her husband started the Gage Rufus Foundation with the mission of getting iPads into every autistic classroom in their community. For Pubols, the Pepsi Refresh Project would be a way to fulfill her dream of giving voice to those who need it most.
“We are so excited to be a part of this grant contest and so thrilled that we are in the top 20 with so many worthy groups competing,” stated Pubols. “We are just one mom and one dad, but we believe in what we are doing because we have seen our own child speak and he improves and inspires us every day.”
Worley, who is mom to 8-year old Sasha, started A.Skate, a nonprofit foundation that teaches children with autism to socialize through skateboarding activities. She runs clinics throughout the country for autistic kids and funds many of the activities out of pocket. She is hoping funds from Pepsi will help open the nation’s first disability friendly skate park in her community of Birmingham, Alabama.
“The Pepsi Refresh Everything contest was designed to help hard working individuals and organizations promoting on a grassroots level to bring their communities together in supporting an idea that will better the lives of people in their community,” said Worley.
“When I was notified that our idea was up against a coalition as strong as the Progressive Slate, I was lost for words.”
The Slate draws on its community organizing experience and expertise to dominate Pepsi’s online voting process. Daily email blasts go out to thousands of Slate backers and affiliated groups that direct supporters to vote for projects that advance the progressive cause.
“We have been waiting three years to have this opportunity to kick off the construction of a special needs skate park…only to find out that a sweatshop of voters are possibly at a computer all day plugging in votes over and over to win half a million dollars,” said Worley. “My heart is broken because it could take another three years to kick off our project if this funding isn’t won.”
And while the Slate acknowledges on their website that they help coordinate voting for participating groups, they deny that any of their activity involves political advocacy.
But a look at recent IRS reports paints a different picture, which we’ll explore right after the page break.
At least seven of Progressive Slate groups that received Pepsi Refresh grants are also benefactors of George Soros’ Open Society Institute. These groups include:
- The Advancement Project, a self-described “action tank” that is dedicated to building a national movement for social justice, has received nearly $3 million from Soros since 2003. The group has also engaged in lobbying activities and lists the very “nonpartisan” Harry Belafonte as a member of their board.
- The American Constitution Society has received over $2 million in grant money since 2008. The group was founded in response to an “activist conservative movement” that, in its view, is “eroding” the enduring values of the Constitution.
- The League of Young Voters Education Fund has received $600,000 since 2008. Their mission is to train young civic leaders and to mobilize voters from core constituencies in low-income areas.
- The Midwest Academy, which also does training for activists to promote social change, received $39,000 in 2009.
- The Rockwood Leadership Institute received $109,000 in 2008. Located in Berkeley, California, the group also engages in grassroots and leadership training.
- State Voices received $100,000 in 2008. The group is dedicated to helping grassroots organizations win “civic engagement victories for change.”
- The Wellstone Action Fund, which provides training and development for those in the progressive movement, received $100,000 in 2008.
- The Center for Progressive Leadership, the organization that manages the Progressive Slate, has also benefited from Soros’ generosity. The nonprofit got $300,000 in funds from the Open Society Institute in 2008.
And the political connections don’t end there.
This month, the Slate is putting forth two of their own employees, Beth Meyer and Maricela Donahue, as contenders for Pepsi grants (though they don’t disclose the relationship in their email appeals). According to her online bio, Meyer is a long-time pro-choice advocate, serving as the vice president of external affairs for Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona and as a board member of the Arizona Advocacy Foundation NARAL-Pro Choice. She has also served on the board of the Arizona chapter of the ACLU.
Donahue has a background as an immigration rights activist who helped organize national protests during her tenure at Center for Community Change which — surprise — is another Soros backed group.
Both have submitted grant proposals for programs to train civic youth leaders. While they do not elaborate on which groups will receive the training, a look at their estimated budgets reveals a large portion of their expenses go back toward salary costs. Grassroots indeed.
This isn’t the first time the Progressive Slate has received scrutiny for violating the rules of the Pepsi Refresh Project because of their political affiliations. Last year, the New York Times questioned the organization’s partisan connections after the Arms Wide Open Childhood Cancer Foundation complained that the group was tied to the Democratic Party.
For their part, Pepsi maintains its commitment to ensuring the integrity of the Pepsi Refresh Project. In an official statement, the company stated, “We take any allegations of fraudulent voting very seriously. … Pepsi diligently monitors Refresh Project voting and uses the latest technology and security measures to ensure the process is fair and transparent for all participants.”
It is unconfirmed whether or not Pepsi will continue the Refresh Project in 2012.
And while the Left once again shows their adeptness for political organization, Gail Pubols and Crys Worley continue to fight the good fight.
“We have been working on this day and night and have spent all of our Christmas money on this, but to know that we could help a parent hear their child speak for the first time is worth more to us than any Christmas present ever could be, and we hope that the value of giving to others is one we can instill in our children by living it every day,” said Pubols.
And while they may not be NFL quarterbacks, one thing Pubols and Worley do have is a devoted Army of Davids. If you would like to help the true grassroots, visit Gage Rufus Foundation or A.Skate for details on how to vote.
Merely looking at the stated goals of each group tells you the difference between real nonprofits vs progressive ones. The “conservative” groups have a specific goal, for example, using tablet technologies to allow autistic children to communicate. Progressives have a vague goal, to “organize communities” for “change”. Reminds me of the worthless placeholder of “community organizer” used as a placeholder by the MSM to cover the President’s background. What, exactly did Obama do in the slums of South Chicago? Are they better off now than before Obam’s tnure there? No. Well, what about all the money he funneled into those communities? Who’s pockets did he line? We don’t know, and probably never will.
Progressivism is an ideological disease. The driving spirit is to redistribute wealth from productive, hard working people to political aristocrats. Any progressives who say they merely want to help the poor and disadvantages are full of horse ****
The expansion of government has also hurt philanthropy. I laugh when a church approaches me for donations – I always point out that I would have money to donate to them but for all the taxes supporting government programs that the churches supported. If churches and other nonprofits want private donations, they need to stop supporting more and more government programs.
Orthodox Christian churches refrain from involvement in politics, and that includes refraining from promoting government pork-barrel spending.
These progressives are nothing more than thieves in the way they scheme to extract money from a company’s philanthropic program. Clearly, Pepsi needs to get on the ball and have a more thorough vetting process for their applicants to determine who is really worthy and who the real leeches are.
This is not surprising. The CEO of Pepsico, Indra Nooyi likened the U.S. as the middle finger of five on a hand in her commencement speech to Columbia University B School grads. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2005/nf20050520_9852.htm
While she may not have any direct decision on selections for the Pepsico grants, no doubt she has much influence over the decision makers. Her political world view seems to fit right in with Soros.
What a misleading and offensive title for this article. We all know that this stuff happens on both sides (did someone forget to think of James O’Keefe?). To make a claim as sensational as “the left is destroying philanthropy” is downright wrong. Buying iPads and building skateparks is honorable. So is teaching someone how to be a community organizer and teaching someone the merits of voting. These grassroots campaigns are all over the place, and there is a lot of money at stake. I Googled the Progressive Slate and found nothing but a facebook page and the page that is linked in this article… The one page website. If they have a lot of connections, good on them… I, however, hardly think that a group with a left leaning agenda winning an online grant contest is a very strong indicator of the left “Destroying Philanthropy”. I can’t type it without rolling my eyes.
You can roll your eyes if you want to, but what you should really do is open them.
The Left hates private charity because it usurps their power as a false benefactor to the needy and threatens their hold on a reliably dependent voting block. They believe all charity should be dispensed by the government using our confiscated tax dollars. Why do you think Democrats are always threatening to do away with tax deductions for charitable donations?
And to suggest that training community organizers and teaching the merits of voting is an honorable and benign endeavor when performed by Progressive groups is beyond naive. All you have to do is look at the class warfare rhetoric of our Community-Organizer-in Chief and the fraudulent voter registration drives of the corrupt ACORN to see the pernicious intent behind this type of activity.
I don’t think anyone is taking issue with what the causes that these progressive groups are putting forward (who wouldn’t want to help homeless vets, for instance?) but rather with the way they are using their political ties to each other to milk a contest that was meant for real grassroots organizations, not for a bunch of Washington insiders to do favors for each other and line each other’s pockets under the guise that “so what if most of our budget from our Pepsi winnings is going to pay the salary of someone in our political organization, someone’s got to train these people to train their people to support our cause, and technically it isn’t political because we say it isn’t.” So yes, I do believe that in this case the left is destroying philanthropy. They are RAPING philanthropy and ripping off grassroots organizations and they think it is ok — because the fact that the leftist political organizations that are running the Progressive Slate are at least one organization removed from the groups in the contest, allowing them to fall just within the contest guidelines, and Pepsi has known about this for over a year and done nothing to amend the rules to ban groups like this. They are professional organizations and there a lot of larger scale grants that they have the ability to apply for, but they choose to rape the Pepsi contest, just because no one is stopping them. Shame on them and shame on Pepsi for tacitly approving. Pass the Coke!
“Teaching somebody to be a community organizer” is NOT charity or philanthropy. Rather, it is teaching somebody to become a leech and a tyrant by manipulating politicians to steal from productive citizens and give the loot to the “community organization” in return for votes.
Years ago, while drinking beer with friends, we somehow got on the subject of how much money we each gave to charity. One friend claimed that he gave 10% of his income because his church said so. Another friend claimed that he gave about 2-3% of his take-home money. And then one guy disgustedly said that he doesn’t give a damned thing to charity.
“Our Government already runs so many charities that I feel that my contributions to charity is just a matter of paying taxes,” he declared.
We couldn’t think of a single good argument against that. By the way, I still give money to charities I think are worthy, but I can’t help thinking about the point he made.
Your friend is right, and that is the goal of Big gov to filter all the money directly thru their agencies.
I have to point out that your friend is saying exactly what Scrooge said in refusing to contribute to charity (‘are there no workhouses? I pay taxes to support them’).
Yeah, the friend had fallen into the progressives’ snare that was illustrated so well by Dickens. Before he was converted by his Christmastime experience, Scrooge was the very model of a major Soros liberal (workhouses were the government welfare program of that day, don’t you know?).
Progressives believe that they can establish heaven on earth through their own power alone. That’s an un-Christian belief, a heresy even. And nowhere in the Bible did Jesus instruct anyone, “If you wish to be perfect, ask Caesar to take what your neighbors have and give it to the poor.”
Wow! I had no idea this piece would end up like this! When I was contacted I gave comments based on what I researched through the internet and from what other organizations running in Pepsi had contacted me about trying to expose what they have gone through in the past 2 years hoping to win funding but were at a stand still bc of the PS.
my organization has not taken or received funding from the government. We haven’t figured out how to do that just yet. For 3 years my org has been ran out of my own pocket on a dental assistants salary with small $25 here and there donations coming through once every couple of months.
The http://www.refresheverything.com/alskate Idea in Birmingham will be a model for other disability friendly skateparks around the country. We hope to start this new movement of change through our efforts. Winning this funding will be the beginning of progress for kids with autism to learn to become more healthy and active, social, aware… the list goes on.
We are doing all that we can bring our community together as well as the skateboard industry across the United States in hopes of being able to start this effort which will expand globally in no time.
I just have no words right now… my head is spinning, my heart is hurting, and I don’t know what to think. We have actual supporters across the country bringing awareness to our Pepsi idea and getting support on a grassroots effort. If in fact we are being pushed down the rankings because 9 groups joined together and several of those are one entity I don’t see how this is possible for Pepsi to allow it to continue.
Should I have applied for 9 pepsi ideas in the $50k and $25k and had my supporters vote for all of them and take all the funding? It seems like all it takes is for one to find different individuals to put it in their names and make the cause go to different titles. I need $50,000 to buy skateboarding for kids with autism, I need $50,000 to set up a chapter in Texas, I need $50,000 to train kids in Colorado to work with kids who have autism through skateboarding, I need $50,000 to give grants to families to attend clinics when they can not afford the travel even though the clinics are free…
I could create 1000 different ideas if I sit here long enough… but my heart is in winning this contest and helping my community which will eventually lead to helping communities across the United States… so off we go to promote our Idea as we do everyday!
This is why our church recently gave a reverse offering to inspire people to use their creativity to raise funds for various projects or give directly to those in need.
http://www.liquidchurch.com/broke/2/
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150348326311316.344882.10562471315&type=1
http://brandonandjessica.org/2011/11/14/the-first-liquid-church-team-2/
http://www.christianpost.com/news/liquid-church-to-give-45000-in-toys-coats-to-n-j-families-63892/
The challenge was to do good IN SPITE OF government and taxes and crap.
Now you don’t have to be religious to do this. You just have to do it.
And just where is the giant Pepsico, Inc., with its bottomless resources, while its presumably well-meant charity funds are subverted to worthless leftard “causes” that benefit no one and produce no results, except to pay the various “fund administrators” six-figure salaries for writing press releases? Sounds like a money-laundering operation to me, at the expense of Pepsico stockholders. Are any of these gold-plated “administrators” related to the company execs who approve the programs?
That’s an interesting notion. If its a rigged contest I suspect it constitutes tax evasion and/or fraud on the stockholders.
Our local United Way has been designated as the bundler and administrator of the Combined Federal Campaign for the local Navy Bases here. In the CFC, givers can designate the specific charity for their donation. However, the United Way looks at the distribution of funds it wants to make, subtracts the designated funds and then distributes the rest. Groups like the Boy Scouts get slighted for groups that the director likes. All groups receiving donations have like a 10% fee subtracted for management of the United Way, plus the cut paid by the CFC.
Further, we are not a large county, but the local United Way director is paid nearly $200K and they are in the market for a new larger office, all from funds the donors thought was going to charity. Running charities is now big business, the administration and fund raising costs take a huge cut of the total donation. Money Market funds work on less than .5% for management, many businesses operate on margins of less than 6%, why does deciding what charities and causes are worthy deserve margins over 10%.
I now donate to charities that are local, mostly supported by volenteers so the donation is multiplied. The two charities noted in this article are of this type. However, when I receive a phone solicitation for some national charity today, I just reply “Obama took my wallet”, usually I only hear stunned silence.
Every large institution runs a considerable risk of becoming corrupt. I don’t trust United Way and don’t give anything to them. I’ve given to Orthodox Church charities because I know they won’t get involved in any objectionable political activities.
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are also trying to stay ahead of the Progressive Slate groups. All votes would be appreciated. Thanks.
There should be an easy way to beat them at their own game — get Drudge to post the Progressive Slate website and a blurb about what it is doing and then encourage everyone to sign up for it and VOTE AGAINST the recommended slate nominees. Get on their email list and use it against them.