Once upon a time, environmental organizations were at the top of their game! They made the news nearly daily with their accomplishments, advocacy, and rallied millions to their causes. What happened?
The Nature Conservancy is by far one of the wealthiest with over $7.4 billion in assets and $2 billion per year in gross revenues. But where does the money go? In 2017, $400 million went to salaries and benefits, while $64 million went to program grants around the world. That would equate to just 3.2% of gross revenue – and 7% of total expenditures. Unfortunately, a detailed list of every NGO receiving grants is not available – apparently, their donor recipients want to remain anonymous. In a world of NGO’s it bears accountability. The balance of expenses was equally disconcerting: “Other” ranked highest at $138 million, $87 million for office related expenses, $15 million for interest, $5 million for equipment, etc…
They have previously come under fire for making unsecured loans and buying and selling assets to employees, trustees, and related third parties. But even that doesn’t tell the story.
The most recent award granted the Nature Conservancy was for it’s restructuring of Sychelles’ ‘sovereign debt’ in 2016. Debt, micro-finance? What happened to the ‘environment’?
Some of their largest corporate benefactors include: Monsanto, BP, Cargill, Shell, Chevron, Conoco, Altria and Nestle. Not exactly companies with environmental friendly business models… But then, they have learned from the giants. Another supporter is Jack Ma of Alibaba who stated that he would fund his foundation with .3% of the Alibaba net revenue for such causes as education, environment, and philanthropy. In the five years since he established the foundation, he has ‘pledged’ or distributed $300 million. He is worth $48billion. That would reflect a contribution based on his net worth of .125% per year. To put that in perspective, for a person with a net worth of $500,000, that would represent a contribution of $625.
The Sierra Club is another former actionable environmental group that has succumbed to political agendas. For them, it is support for the Socialists who vie for the Green New Deal.
Greenpeace past president, Patrick Moore, has vocally outed Greenpeace for abandoning their true environmentalist actions while bowing to political agendas, fear mongering and propaganda.
World Wildlife Fund is now mostly a micro-finance organization that does little to protect the environment. Micro-lending in countries that have no usury, the interest rates are as high as 32%. Hardly a charitable cause.
Most of WWF income comes from government grants. Total revenue per their 2017 990 form tax return was roughly $300 million. Despite being a non-profit, net profit for 2017 was over $37 million, salary costs were $92 million, office related expenses were roughly $46 million, and grants amounted to about $75 million of which $70 million funded grants outside the US to unnamed NGO’s. One of their primary partnerships is with Coca-Cola.
All these environmental organizations claim to be working toward one desirable goal; sustainable water.
All of the partners of these environmental organizations have one shared need for their business future – water. All of these partners are guilty of depleting water reserves across the globe:
“Coca-Cola has been accused of dehydrating communities in its pursuit of water resources to feed its own plants, drying up farmers’ wells and destroying local agriculture. The company has also violated workers’ rights in countries such as Colombia, Turkey, Guatemala and Russia. Only through its multi-million dollar marketing campaigns can Coca-Cola sustain the clean image it craves.
The company admits that without water it would have no business at all. Coca-Cola’s operations rely on access to vast supplies of water, as it takes almost three litres of water to make one litre of Coca-Cola. In order to satisfy this need, Coca-Cola is increasingly taking over control of aquifers in communities around the world. These vast subterranean chambers hold water resources collected over many hundreds of years. As such they the represent the heritage of entire communities.
Coca-Cola’s operations have particularly been blamed for exacerbating water shortages in regions that suffer from a lack of water resources and rainfall. Nowhere has this been better documented than in India.”
The environmental organizations of lore have been hijacked and bear no resemblance to what their mission statement details or their ideology dictates. Instead they have become the progenitors of waste, subsidizing the depletion of valuable water resources across the globe, while pocketing huge sums of money that are labeled – nontaxable. As of 2015, there were 1.5 million nonprofits registered in the US, employing roughly 10% of US workers. There are roughly 160 Environmental nonprofits in the US.
We are supposed to be stewards of this planet. Each individual is tasked with protection and balance. But these organizations, many of which began with a grand ideology, have succumbed to the greed of businesses that are some of our greatest polluting threats. Instead of helping, they are decimating. Their integrity is non-existent. And they fly under the flag of ‘nontaxable status’, paying exorbitant executive wages, while gifting often less than 3%.
It is a travesty.
