"That is pretty significant for the head of any large charity"
/So I'm skimming Mike Fish's ESPN.com story featured under the banner headline, "Woods' foundation carries on mission," and glad to read that the foundation is carrying on as best it can in light of recent events.
I was about to close the window out though when Fish's narrative takes this turn:
However, the moneymaking vehicle driving Woods' foundation is the Tiger Woods Charity Event Corporation, which functions as an event planning company and draws the revenues to fund the foundation and learning center. It annually stages glitzy events such as the AT&T National Golf Tournament, the Chevron World Challenge Golf Tournament, the Tiger Jam Benefit Concert and the Tiger Woods Block Party in Orange County.
While charity watchdogs generally give the foundation high marks, some question the significant expenses incurred by the nonprofit in hosting these events. On its most recent tax return, the Tiger Woods Charity Event Corporation reported having spent $32.7 million staging the two golf tournaments -- including $15 million in television network fees and tourney purses -- and star-studded entertainment events like the Tiger Jam, while turning a $3.5 million profit.
"If you have a ratio of $32 million [expenses] and $3 million [profit], you are so upside-down it isn't funny," says Marc Pollick, founder and president of the Giving Back Fund, which manages and consults with philanthropic foundations. "What it is doing is paying a lot of salaries to event planners and to vendors and directors, and a little bit goes to charity."
I'm not sure the discrepancy between money spent to money distributed is entirely fair. After all, there would be no money raised without the players drawn to the tournament in question. And they aren't coming without a decent purse.
Now, this is excessive...
McLaughlin defends the foundation's practices, saying its staging of the golf events follows the PGA Tour model, and that the AT&T and Chevron stops rank among the leading charitable events on the tour. According to the most recent federal tax filings, the event corporation transferred $2.95 million to Woods' foundation.
The $503,138 compensation paid McLaughlin has also come under scrutiny by watchdogs. McLaughlin, a lawyer by trade, befriended Woods in 1992 when he gave the then-16-year-old golfer an exemption into his first PGA Tour event, the then-Nissan Los Angeles Open. At the time, McLaughlin was the tournament director in Los Angeles.
According to IRS records filed in September 2008, McLaughlin received an annual salary of $398,456 based on a 40-hour work week by the Tiger Woods Charitable Event Corporation, as well as $104,682 in salary for 25 hours a week of service to the Tiger Woods Foundation.
"That is pretty significant for the head of any large charity," says Ian Wilhelm of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which monitors salaries paid to nonprofit executives. Wilhelm added that it is not, however, so out of line as to create an issue with the IRS.