Accountability

The scandal of Volkswagen, the German automaker, and its intentional marketing of diesel cars with fraudulent pollution measuring and monitoring software meant to circumvent polluting exhaust standards, has trumped the General Motors ignition defect scandal as potentially the worst example of corporate dishonesty in recent years. Volkswagen is a mammoth German company, employing 270,000 people…

Is "poverty porn" making a comeback? That's the term that some people used back in the 1980s to describe attention-grabbing fundraising ads. Back then, the media was filled with images of starving African children in desperate need of food, seemingly all alone in the world. And folks in the West were invited to save them…

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards defended fetal tissue research before a House committee Tuesday, arguing that it offers potentially lifesaving answers on degenerative eye disease, Down syndrome and infectious diseases. The Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is conducting one of four investigations into Planned Parenthood in the wake of a series of…

Three former H.J. Heinz employees are suing the Kraft Heinz Co. because the company ended a program that would have made large donations to charity in those employees' names. The H.J. Heinz Co. in 1989 offered the Key Employee Charitable Award Program, in which eligible top employees could donate money each year for five years…

We often hear of “competition” between organizations fighting for the same cause. Some lament the number of “competitors” seeking cures, treatments or programs to remedy the same ailment or condition. This notion, that sharing a vision for the future means competing for resources, must be dispelled. In order to flourish, like-minded organizations must support one…

Kickstarter is no old hat when it comes to philanthropy. The online funding platform has been the go-between for raising money for everything from trans healthcare awareness to resurrecting the 90s-nostalgic educational show "Reading Rainbow" via Web series to helping Bill Nye the Science Guy stop global warming and save the world with science. And now,…

Many events or activities will be completely out of our control. In the majority of cases, events have placed us in a situation of transition where we have to ride the storm out and move on. The good news with bad outcomes is we learn to cope and adjust to transitions and try to understand it...

A local-business support group has asked that Waking Life Espresso return a loan intended to support a second location as anger mounted Monday over anonymous Internet media posts in which the coffee shop owners boasted of sexual conquests. That request from Mountain BizWorks came the same day another nonprofit, Our VOICE, said it would reject…

If you donated cash to survivors of the Nepal earthquakes this year, you may want to consider exactly how—or if—your money has been used. Sixteen of the world's largest disaster-relief charities have revealed to the Thomson Reuters Foundation that they are spending up to a sixth of funds designated for Nepal on their overheads rather…

Federal legislation is being unveiled today that would force the American Red Cross to do something that it has repeatedly resisted: open its books and operations to outside scrutiny. The proposed American Red Cross Sunshine Act comes in response to a government report, also being released today, that finds oversight of the charity lacking and…