CharityWatch Executive Director, Laurie Styron, spoke with The Daily Beast for its November 17th, 2022 article, "Tom Brady's Charity Is Good at Giving Money--to His Own For-Profit Company."
"'A charity's board members have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the charity at all times,' Styron added. 'Doing so becomes more complicated when there are competing interests between nonprofit and for-profit legal entities, particularly when the two organizations share key staff who have to balance their fiduciary duties between the two. It has the potential to get tricky if there aren't adequate safeguards in place.'"
"'If the charity is granting or reimbursing funds to the for-profit entity, and the for-profit is then paying money to other companies or individuals, there is a danger that charitable dollars are indirectly subsidizing the expenses of the for-profit,' she added. 'Money is fungible.'"
"'Charities have pretty wide latitude to decide what programs they want to conduct without breaking any laws or hard rules,' Styron told The Daily Beast. 'But there is still a question of whether or not it is ethical for a charity to focus so much of its resources on programs that provide publicity for its founder. The answer really depends on how much public good is being provided and whether or not this publicity is what is driving the charity's decisions about what programs to conduct.'"
"'A lot of philanthropy is some combination of providing public good while garnering public goodwill for a charity's funders,' Styron said. 'But in this case, the person who appears to be benefiting from the public goodwill isn't providing significant funding to the organization.'"
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