After making billions in #TaxDeductible donations to his philanthropy, the owner of #Tesla & SpaceX gave away far less than required in some yrs— & what he did give often supported his #SelfInterests.
Before Mar 2021, #ElonMusk’s charitable foundation never announced any donations to CameronCounty, an impoverished region at the southern tip of TX that is home to his #SpaceX launch site & local ofcls who help regulate it.
#ElonMusk is under no obligation to have a #charity, & he has made clear that he believes his #ForProfit enterprises will change the world for the better far more than any #philanthropic venture could. But once he set up a #nonprofit & filled it w/ #TaxDeductible gifts, he was required by #law to ensure that his foundation served the public, & that it did not operate for the “private benefit” of its leader.
…#ElonMusk, instead, used his foundation to help groups tied to him personally, incl’g a food charity run by his brother & a “Temple of Whollyness” that was set on fire at the 2013 Burning Man, an event he often attends.
He also founded his own #nonprofit school called Ad Astra… to explore new ways to teach math & science.
But that school, too, would serve a personal purpose for Musk. In its first year of operation out of his home in #BelAir…, 5 of Ad Astra’s 14 students were his own children.
The March/April issue of Texas Observer magazine is out now, arriving in mailboxes and on select newsstands. From progressive #Democrats' battle with Kim Ogg, to historic political cartoons, this issue is packed with great reporting and memorable stories.
#OpenAI clapped back at #ElonMusk in its first public response to his lawsuit, publishing a blog post w/ old emails showing that the billionaire lobbied to merge the #AI lab w/ #Tesla & use the car company as a “CashCow.” #Musk’s lawsuit accuses OpenAI, which he helped found, of abandoning its original #nonprofit mission of making advanced AI beneficial to humanity.
#Seeking: essays/blogs (ideally stuff that’s shorter than a book 🙈) about finding work/life balance in #nonprofit work.
Is there one you love? Have you written on this topic? Please drop links! #PleaseBoost
There are no guarantees ... but we strongly believe that intentionally designed bespoke digital interventions can change unhealthy attitudes or beliefs. We've had two published studies showing our prosocial games can do just that.
And this is a technology and approach preferred by adolescents. They are more receptive to the lessons learned when their preferences are taken into consideration.
Seeking an intern to help manage Mastodon accounts for our nonprofit public charity.
🎓 Current college student
⭐ We will coordinate with your internship program for course credit (where allowed).
⭐ Must have experience using Mastodon!
⭐ Must have experience with marketing calendars and creating engaging social media content.
❤️ Nice to haves: knowlege & interest in violence prevention; consent; healthy relationships; and the use of prosocial video games to drive positive change.
🙏 Please share!
DM me and I will send you the contact info for our Community Engagement Coordinator. She will schedule a Zoom interview.
The #ConservativePartnershipInstitute (#CPI) has become a breeding ground for the next generation of #Trump loyalists & an incubator for policies he might pursue. Its fast growth is raising questions.
The group’s top exec, #JimDeMint, the fmr SC US senator, was there, as was #MarkMeadows …who is paid $847k annually as the org’s snr adviser. More than a dozen members of the #House#FreedomCaucus also turned up, as did #MollieHemingway, the editor in chief of the #RightWingjournalism website #TheFederalist, whose parent company #CPI helps underwrite.
The msg at the conf was “taking on the Swamp” from a #nonprofit w/a $36M/yr budget from private #donors that operates as a full-service nerve ctr for the #RightWing & a breeding ground for the next gen of #Trump loyalists. #Legislators can hold fund-raisers in its event rms; send their staff members to training sessions at the group’s getaway lodge; do their TV news hits [#propaganda] in its studio; or be fed, by text msg, questions for lawmakers to ask witnesses during #CongressionalHearings.
@anderseknert Fun fact: in many jurisdictions, you don't pay capital gains on the income you own on shares until you sell them.
So here's a purely hypothetical example, written with no specific individual in mind. Any resemblance to any real-world examples is pure coincidence.
So imagine you and your business partner start a little software company (with a little help from your mum and dad), and you retain a 50% stake.
Now let's imagine this personal computer thing really goes mainstream. People who don't have computer science PhDs even start to use them.
Your little startup benefits from a combination of good business contacts at IBM (thanks again mum and dad), a knockoff of CP/M that some hobbyist wrote based on a manual, copying some design decisions that Steve Jobs copied from Xerox, and a few questionable business moves that the US Department of Justice will later raise in court.
A couple of decades and an antitrust suit for anti-competitive behaviour later, your little tech company grows to a market cap of $100 billion.
Congratulations! Your 50% stake is now worth $50 billion!
At this point, you haven't had to pay tax on that $50 billion worth of shares, because it's an unrealised capital gain.
It's a huge amount of wealth, but the problem is it's all tied up in one company.
And given your firm's increasing reputation for poor cybersecurity practices and regulatory interest on at least two continents, you decide it's prudent to diversify your investments.
In this purely hypothetical scenario, you really have two choices.
You can sell off your shares. But if you do, you're likely to face a truly astronomical capital gains tax bill. We're talking tens of billions of dollars here.
Or.
You could form a tax exempt charitable foundation that you control, and donate all your shares to it.
Not only do you get out of that capital gains tax bill, but you still get to control the capital you accumulated through your foundation.
An added bonus, if your accountant is good, is that you might also potentially get a massive tax credit that will basically wipe out any income tax you may need to pay in the future.
The only real catch is that you do need to donate a portion of the wealth in your foundation to charitable causes.
But you get to pick which ones.
And not only will the amounts you have to donate be smaller than your capital gains tax bill would have been, but you also get lauded for being a visionary humanitarian.
Oh, and one more perk.
Should you choose to do so, you just make sure your kids take over running your foundation when you're done, and they'll get to control the wealth you accumulated—without any pesky estate taxes!
(They can honestly say they only inherited a few million from you, while they run your multi-billion-dollar foundation to boot!)
@PresGas Not the #OpenCollective platform or the Open Source Collective 501(c)(6) business league that hosts many #FLOSS groups. Only the OCF 501(c)(3) public charity entity is winding down.
The blog title is unfortunately misleading and, while a loss to the #nonprofit world, is also causing a lot of unnecessary panic today.
The @TexasObserver staff just issued a more detailed story about yesterday's firing and #layoffs (the latter of which included me).
I can completely cosign this quote by Gayle Reaves, who was also laid off: ”I’ve never had colleagues who were more dedicated to covering the people and the issues who usually don’t get enough attention from the news media.”
@sb
I wish there was a clear alternative, a sort-of blogger Wikipedia, an activity-pub-compliant platform for #newsletters+#blogs. We need to create synergy and network effects for small bloggers. Ghost and the alternatives don't check all the boxes yet