Ryan A.
Google
I tried to donate money to the Oregon State Parks Foundation, and ran into a couple things on their website that concerned me. They were fairly insignificant - typical information grabs so they can hit you up again - but they were required if you wanted to donate money. I think it's poor management for a charity to require excess information just to give them money (it's not like I'm getting anything back), so I asked them about it. I received a very defensive and rude response that didn't even address my concerns correctly. I forwarded this response from the website director (I believe) to the board's chair and the executive director, with no response from either. It was then that I decided I would actually do some research into this nonprofit. Being a CPA, I do have the ability to understand what is reported on a nonprofit's Form 990 filed with the IRS, and I was quite shocked. I was able to actually donate money to the Washington Foundation without problems, and reviewed theirs as well. While Washington actually gave money directly to the parks in excess of their income (some from prior years was distributed), the OSPF gave none directly to the parks. They claimed to have spent less than half on their charitable purpose, the rest went to supporting their own operations. The money they did claim benefitted the parks was very vaguely described and apparently was just the salaries of their own people in assistance to volunteers and the like. Looking to see how they justify this on their website, I noticed very specific wording about how your donation will "show support" for projects like Cottonwood Canyon's new conference center, but no mention of any of the money actually going to it. I will be staying far away from this "charity" in the future. Give your money directly to the parks if you actually want to help.
