Hard to find many dollars associated with the high profile PR.
After the New York Times (Katie Hafner) technology section reported on Google's for-profit philanthropy last week, regular nonprofit reporter Stephanie Strom files a story on the Virgin charities of Sir Richard Branson. The charity, called Virgin Unite, puts a bit more emphasis on volunteering and partnering with public groups doing the same.
From Guidestar UK, it looks like Virgin Unite is a business name for the Virgin Foundation (UK Charity # 297540 Guidestar UK Summary, Report and Financial Statements). But there's something missing, because the financial statement only shows a couple of hundred thousand pounds, not the $4 million to $5 million per year claimed by the NY Times article.
In the US, it is said that Virgin is working with two groups:
- StandUp for Kids (EIN 33-0414855 Form 990) is an all-volunteer group that does outreach to homeless youth through chapters in a number of cities across the US. It appears to be genuinely all-volunteer, reporting a mere $280,967 in cash contributions in 2004 (along with about $400,000 in-kind contributions). Founder Richard Koca does not take a salary from the organization. Browsing around its old fashioned looking web site, it looks like there are a number of pretty active chapters along with many that don't report much activity. It's not clear what the contribution from Virgin will be for this group.
Youth Noise, a group whose charitable affiliation is hard to determine from its web site. But its Google search listing (click on the image on the right for a popup) tells us that it is affiliated with the mega-charity Save the Children Federation (EIN 06-0726487 Form 990). It seems to be a social networking site with an emphasis on getting youth involved in causes. Again, it's not obvious what Virgin can do for this group.- And then there's mention of a general interest in doing something about global warming, to complement Virgin's for-profit research on alternative fuels.
So we are left scratching our heads as we often are with celebrity charities (see previous posts on Jessica Alba and Alicia Keys). What, exactly, does this organization do?
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