Rick Warren's "Acts of Mercy Foundation"

[noamnety]

From someone who did some research on that last spring: http://nogoofyzone.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/rick-and-kay-warren-and-their-acts-of-mercy-foundation/

I went on their and found Acts of Mercy 990 forms from 2004 and 2005. Under the Organizations Primary Exempt purpose it states.
” Acts of Mercy foundation will conduct activities in furtherance of the purposes of the Global PEACE Fund to advance the Christian faith. Specifically, the Foundation will work under GPF to fund among other things,Christian ministry and outreach activities to the poor, the distressed or the underprivileged, micro enterprise, church planting, caring for the sick, Christian education and evangelism and promote awareness of HIV/AIDS.

Looks like advancing the christian faith is a higher priority than caring for the sick, but hey, maybe they just wrote up their statement of purpose wrong.


You can look through their tax forms from 2006 here: http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990_pdf_archive/200/200393297/200393297_200612_990.pdf

I am not a tax expert, so correct me if I am reading this wrong, but it looks like this to me:

revenue for 2006: $2,161,442 - about 900k in donations, the rest in interest and dividends for the year.

expenses:
Employee salaries: $231,631 (plus another $37k in benefits)
Travel $300k

That's more than half the donations for the year right there.

And here's their "achievements" according to their tax forms:

1. Partnered with OAFLA Uganda (Organization of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS) in an Abstinence Training Program for Young People in Schools

2 Gave funding and personnel assistance to Saddleback Church in the development of their HIV/AIDS program

3 Took the lead role in organizing, coordinating and running the Saddleback Church HIV/AIDS Conference

4 Paid for the printing of the Purpose Driven Life in the native language of Rwanda and presented a large quantity to the church leaders there for distribution

[EFerrari]

1. Gee, what a surprise. Thanks for posting this.

The Magistrate was right. This man is a grifter.

[Hydra]

2. Blatant fraud

But hardly a surprise. He rolled all that money back to himself, basically, while gaining new converts and their tithes.

What a shining example of humanity Obama picked to speak at his historic event.

[patrice]

3. Thanks very VERY much! Such a good Christmas present!! nt

:yourock:

[noamnety]

5. Thank you patrice for asking the question in the other thread.

I thought the response was worthy of its own thread here rather than getting buried in the sarcasmo thread over in GD, but I wouldn't have bothered finding the tax forms if you hadn't asked about it.

[patrice]

12. Thank YOU for doing this!

And please pass on to the Veterans that Peace-folks like me know they were ROBBED and USED; robbed not only of their physical well-being, but, in many cases, of their essence - ial psychological well-being, by the LIES. What happened to our Troops must be a living hell for some of them. And I hope, at least, America will NEVER EVER be irresponsible about War and NEVER take what our Soldiers have to do for granted again.

Thanks again lwfern. Let's keep working on this.

:hug:

[Chovexani]

4. It is all a PR stunt to win converts and get cash.

Evangelicals of the Warren stripe do not perform good works for the sake of doing good works, because their belief system teaches them that people are not saved by doing good works, but only by accepting Christ as lord and savior. Their Prime Directive is winning converts. Period, end of discussion. Anything and everything they do is a PR stunt to gain converts to their religion.

This is the same man that dismisses the social gospel as Marxism in Christian clothing, why the fuck do people actually think this man is doing this shit out of the goodness of his heart? I just wrote an OP on this, seems like we were on the same page.

[NWHarkness]

6. You know he's a fraud, I know he's a fraud

And yet, somehow, we are supposed to believe that Barack Obama doesn't know he's a fraud.

[noamnety]

7. I saw your OP just after I posted this

we were heading down the same path at the same time, for sure (with Patrice's goading on my end).

Even as cynical as I already was, I was still taken aback to see he was using the charity money to print his own damn book. That takes a special kind of boldness.

[Chovexani]

9. I'm really glad you posted the hard numbers

The book thing floored me too, especially when you consider that Purpose Driven "church growing" crap is really just a franchise scheme akin to McDonalds, with him at the head of the whole enterprise.

[noamnety]

11. I should point out, too

that those achievements I listed - those are the ONLY ones listed on the tax forms. It's not like I was picking ones to illustrate a point. No actual medications given out, no actual caring for the sick - at least not that they themselves thought noteworthy. And that's after the organization was already in existence for several years. It's not like this was just the start-up organizational year for them.

[patrice]

8. Not to mention the fact that he and his friends have decided they KNOW the mind of God regarding sin

WITHIN THEIR OWN THEOLOGY: Only a blasphemer can say that Homosexuality is a worse sin than gossipping, or lying on your taxes, or drinking too much, or cheating on your spouse, or flirting with your daughter's friends, or supporting the murder of several hundred thousands of INNOCENT Iraqis, or ____________________________.

Oh wait a minute: They're SAVED; they can do whatever they want. :eyes:

Talk about dis-respecting the life of "the Reason for the Season"!!!!!

[bluedawg12]

10. Even worse, the damage that he and others do in the name of HIV/AIDS

Their program is about treatment. Medications. Medical treatment.

So good so far. After all, Churches have used the poor and the ill as a vehicle to proselytize, look at all of the denominational hospitals around the country.

It would seem cold hearted and selfish to throw good deeds out because of a gripe about, say civil rights, correct?

The problem arises, that in doing all of this tax exempt, government funded, tax payer burdened good works, their ancillary religious beliefs spill over.

The fight against any communicable disease has two aspects:

1.) Prevention
2.) Treatment

The PEPFAR group and it's church based fundamentalist allies have neglected prevention. While new cases arise they have placed significant barriers to prevention. They have politically lobbied, on a theological basis, against prevention unless it fits their narrow theological focus.

Treating sick people in need is a good cause.

Jumping on the HIV/AIDS bandwagon to spread a faith, and then have the tenants of that faith obstruct prevention is a bad thing.

Hence, this "thousand points of light" notion that is still being fostered as "faith based" health care advocacy and the mixing of Church and State is not the best standard of medical care.

[Zuiderelle]

13. K&R

I guess the silver-lining in this whole thing is our being made more aware of this cheat. I hope the publicity and the spotlight ruin him.

[immoderate]

14. Rec'd -- Warren is a superstitious snake oil peddler.

Thanks for finding this.

--IMM

[bluedawg12]

15. It would be worth snooping out where his group buys the HIV meds?

Since his and affiliated prgraoms are "allegedly" not using best practices for prevention, they are primarily intersted in pharmaceutical treatments, I wonder who PEPFAR contracts with for those drugs?

Big religion and big pharma hand in glove, at the expense of Africans they are claiming to help, "allegedly" all without effective prevention prgroams.

[noamnety]

18. They get priority for getting their drugs pushed through FDA approval

"Very importantly, FDA works intensively with manufacturers who have not interacted with FDA previously to help them prepare an FDA application and to prepare for the requisite FDA inspections of their clinical trials and manufacturing facilities. (3) Due to the significant public health impact of these products, FDA prioritizes the review of these marketing submissions and has met its announced commitment to complete the reviews in as little as two to six weeks after submission of a high-quality application. "

http://www.fda.gov/oia/pepfar.Htm (includes the list of PEPFAR drugs and manufacturers)

[dbackjon]

16. This needs to go into GD and GDP

And shoved in the face of every Obama/Warren apologist.



I get madder by the minute on this crap

[noamnety]

17. I don't know the rules on crossposting your own threads

and I'm sort of hoping that now that it's been recommended people will see it. But hey, if you want to post it there, I certainly won't stop you. :D

[Solon]

20. I'll crosspost it for you, and add some research I saw at rhrealitycheck...

if I have your permission. I'll link back to this thread.

[noamnety]

22. definitely you can post it, with or without a link here.

If obama wants more people to be familiar with his "achievements" I am happy to help. :)

[Libertyfirst]

19. Did they spend anything on actual treatment? From this statement

they only taught awareness of HIV AIDS and abstinence. How do we find out how much, if any, they spend on treatment and how that compares with their expenses for travel, etc.? Thanks

[IndianaGreen]

21. Mother Teresa raised tons of money, yet the bulk of it went to build up her order

not to the people in most need. These people are all alike, a bunch of religious charlatans bleeding the gullible.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

24. amen . nt

[simplyagape]

23. FYI

Hi to all: I'm the author of above article. My blog is specifically focused on Rick Warren. The Acts of Mercy is just one of three (at last count) foundations that Slick Rick has set up. Hey its Ricks money he can do with it what he wants. The problem I have is he brags about how he gives 90% of his income away and then he gives to the foundations he sets up and then he pays himself and his wife a hefty salary from the foundation he is giving to. Their pay is based on a 40 hour work week as well-whatever.
They are the only ones in the foundations that are getting paid (as of the 990 forms I checked out).
Plus most of what I could tell little is given to Aids most is used to advance Ricks Purpose Driven agenda.
Illegal?
No.
Disingenuous?
You betcha.
I guess it really pays off to be Rupert Murdoch's pastor as Slick Rick brags.

[SacredCow]

25. JE$U$ $AVE$.... n/t

[donco6]

26. Great. Let's elevate the crook.

This is just a backdoor way of funding his own church and lining his own pockets.

Here's OAFLA's strategy for "Kicking AIDS Out" of Africa:

Our mission statement, in our ‘Kicking AIDS out of Uganda” is to present the consequences of premarital sex and the benefits of Abstinence to both in & out of school young people and provide them with an opportunity to make a memorable commitment to be sexually pure until marriage.

Abstinence only, which has been shown to be utterly ineffective at preventing teen pregnancy (and, obviously, teen sex).