Celebrity Philanthropy: Another View

To the Editor:

We appreciate that The Chronicle decided to include the Giving Back Fund in its survey and articles on donor-advised funds (“Problems Prompt One Fund to Adopt New Restrictions,” April 28). However, contrary to P.T. Barnum’s oft-quoted statement about publicity, we are not happy simply to be written about; we are vitally concerned with accuracy.

Unlike a tabloid, which seeks to sensationalize in order to draw attention, The Chronicle aspires to be an authentic and reliable voice for the philanthropic community. Thus my shock and disappointment to find a picture of Britney Spears attached to a story that had several serious points of fact simply wrong.

The story mentions a lawsuit that we filed several years ago against one of our former board members and his employer. As even a cursory review of the complaint makes clear, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were not parties to that lawsuit.

Rather, the lawsuit concerned claims regarding the actions of a member of our board of directors in his capacity as a board member. It is both potentially damagingto our reputation and misleading to your readership to use a picture of Ms. Spears in the story when the complaint makes clear that she was never a party to the lawsuit.

Even more regrettably, you left readers with several other wrong impressions that undermine the very essence of the story. The Giving Back Fund has closed several donor-advised funds in the past year, and one or two were closed for reasons of impropriety, but they are by far the exception and not the rule.

But perhaps most egregious of all, you created the false impression that because the assets in the fund at this moment are “just $1.5-million to $2 million” our donors are not doing substantial philanthropy.

Most of our donors use their funds as a pass-through and therefore the balance at any one moment would only be a snapshot that would describe nothing about the amount of their giving. To place the names of two of our very best celebrity role models for philanthropy, Jamie-Lynn DiScala and Jalen Rose, in a context that impugns their integrity as philanthropists is both unfair to them and just plain incorrect.

The issues underlying celebrity philanthropy and the use of donor-advised funds are serious ones. Exaggerating or sensationalizing those issues serves only to besmirch an organization and its donors, both of which assiduously aspire to “best practices” and authentic philanthropy.

Marc Pollick
President
The Giving Back Fund
Wellesley Hills, Mass.
Culver City, Calif.

Editor’s note: The Chronicle stands by the accuracy of its article. As the article noted, the two people the Giving Back Fund sued were representatives of Ms. Spears and Mr. Timberlake and the lawsuit involved demands their representatives had made on the charitable organization.