Wind Foundation

[Guest guest]

Perhaps some clarifications will help.

Wind Foundation is a nonprofit corporation showing to be at 805 Dumont

Street, #203, South Houston, TX 77587-3303. It's taxpayer number is

12011819575.

Dun and Bradstreet lists it as a " Fund Raising Organization. "

Perhaps some of the confusion about Wind Foundation involves a

misunderstanding of what sort of organization it is.

When one thinks of a foundation, one usually thinks of a charitable trust or

other charitable foundation. Charitable foundations are funded through

bequests, generally, and dispense grants of money to organizations that meet

their

criteria.

An example of that sort of organization is The Pew Charitable Trust.

Other foundations manage charitable assets and also dispense grants. An

example is The Wood Foundation.

After exploring the matter a little bit, it seems that Wind Foundation is

hoping to become a fund raising organization similar to Community Safety, the

organization that raises funds for EMSAT. The American Red Cross is a fund

raising organization.

There are many ways of raising funds. Wind hasn't made it clear yet, at

least to me, how they propose to raise funds, but some of the possibilities

would

be through telephone solicitations, Internet email solicitations, direct

mailings, fund raising events (which can range from bake sales to Willie

concerts), and writing and seeking grants from charitable trusts and

governmentally available grants.

There is nothing sinister about this so long as proper disclosures are made,

no misrepresentations are made, proper accounting is done, and so forth.

Fund raising organizations usually come under criticism for the portion of

the money they raise that they retain for administrative expenses. Obviously,

any organization must support its infrastructure and is entitled to keep a

certain amount of money for salaries and operating expenses.

Since nobody has yet stepped forth and admitted to having entered into an

agreement with Wind Foundation, it's unknown how its agreement with an

organization would read, what percent of funds raised would be going to the

hiring

organization, and so forth.

This appears to me to be the situation with Wind Foundation. If I have

misstated the situation, please correct me.

People hire grant writers, fund raisers, promoters, and advertisers all the

time. All of those receive a fee for services.

The difference between the fund raising organization and a charitable trust

is that the fund raising organization basically has no funds of its own. In

other words, it's not an endowed charitable trust. The only money it will get

is what it raises, a portion of which it will keep for overhead and the

balance it will dispense to the client.

This is opposed to The Pew Charitable Trust, for example, which is a heavily

endowed trust that manages its endowmenet funds in order to make income, and

that income is then dispensed in the form of grants.

I think some thought Wind Foundation had a lot of money it was trying to give

away. Perhaps it failed to make clear what sort of an organization it was.

" We can help you " can either mean we can give you some money, or we can help

you raise some money for a fee. " There's nothing wrong with the latter at

all, so long as the organization is honest, above board, is effective,

minimizes its internal overhead, and maximizes the portion of money raised that

is

sent to the client organization.

Best,

Gene Gandy, JD, LP

E.(Gene) Gandy

POB 1651

Albany, TX 76430

wegandy1938@...