Reporter’s investigation exposes inefficient charity
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public records
In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jane Friedmann used simple tax documents and a local woman’s complaint to show that most of the money raised by the Austim Spectrum Disorder Foundation goes toward sustaining the foundation’s fundraising, not toward families living with autism. It’s a brief, effective piece of reporting of the sort that can and should be localized more often. For the record, here are the numbers Friedmann got from the return.
The charitable group pulled in $1.2 million in 2009, according to its IRS filing, but the charity listed a negative balance of $29,679 at the end of the year. It listed three employees and 89,128 “volunteers” …
The group hired two companies to raise funds for ASDF in 2009, but neither did much to help the cause. Ohio-based Infocision kept all $876,832 it raised, while Missouri-based Precision Performance Marketing kept all but $37,842 of the $203,227 it raised.
The tax form reveals the group held no “structured, formal meetings” in 2009. It spent $313,751 on “materials and fulfillment” and $120,241 on postage.
She also called local and national autism charities for their perspective on the dubious foundation, then included a few paragraphs which helped readers make more informed choices when doling out charitable contributions.
To investigate charitable organizations in your area, find out how to to understand an IRS 990 form, the tax return that nonprofit organizations file. It tells you the organization’s revenues and expenses, and its assets and liabilities. You can see whether or not it is making a profit, and how its fund balance, or net assets, has changed over the past year.
Reporter digs up Seattle hospital salaries
John Ryan of KUOW News in Seattle used publicly available data and records requests to localize the national debate on nonprofit compensation with a piece on top earners at Seattle-area hospitals. Ryan details his information-gathering process here and shares his list of top local earners.
Tip sheet
Digging Into Hospital Finances:
Five key documents for reporters and recent trends
Previous coverage
Ryan used a mix of local and national sources, getting explanations from some of the top earners (and perspective from some of the bottom earners) and quotes from those who believe nonprofit workers should not be earning that much money. He also included the thoughts of those who believe nonprofit hospitals need to pay competitive salaries in order to bring competitive talent.
Another story looks at the role of charity care and how much of it is provided: “Only three of the nonprofit hospitals in central Puget Sound give away more than 2 percent of their care to the poor: Providence Regional in Everett, Saint Clare in Lakewood, and Saint Francis in Federal Way. The Washington Department of Health tracks those figures.”
Wis. nonprofit hospitals provide less charity care
David Wahlberg of the Wisconsin State Journal looked into the state’s nonprofit hospitals and found they “provided significantly less free health care and made more money than the national average in recent years.” Ninety-eight percent of Wisconsin’s hospitals are nonprofit, though the national average is closer to 59 percent, not including the 25 percent of hospitals that are run by the government and also tax-exempt.
Wahlberg focused on the budget surpluses and charity-care obligations of these nonprofit hospitals, reporting that the issues is “likely to take on more relevance this year in the state and the nation as unemployment soars and tax revenues plummet.”
Wahlberg reports: “The amounts of help provided by hospitals can vary greatly, according to an IRS survey of nonprofit hospitals released in 2007. Nearly half of the hospitals said they spent less than 3 percent of their budgets on charity care and bad debt; a fifth said they spent more than 10 percent of their budgets on those benefits.”
In part two of the series, Wahlberg looks at the question of whether a nonprofit hospital become too much like a business, focusing on St. Mary’s Hospital, which made a lot of money and gave relatively little charity care in recent years.
In part three, Wahlberg reports that some public officials are making nonprofit hospitals contribute more to their communities and that the troubled economy could expand this trend.
-
Join us in Atlanta
for Health Journalism 2012
Fellowship applications
due Feb. 27
New at HealthJournalism.org
- Data gives depth to investigation of patient safety
- What reporters should know about Alzheimer’s and related dementias
- Apply for fellowships to attend Health Journalism 2012
- AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of arguments in health reform case
- Tips for print, online journalists to embrace broadcast opportunities
- Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
