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It's December, the Salvation Army's out ringing bells, and if you're an Oregon state employee, you just got a brochure from Gov. John Kitzhaber exhorting you to get into the holiday spirit by giving a little money to a charity, like the Northwest Food and Forest Education Foundation, a group that advocates the use of pesticides. Come again? That's right. Certain groups are eligible for the state's charitable fund drive, which raised $986,694 last year--mainly through automatic payroll deductions of state employees--and the Northwest Food and Forest Education Foundation is one of them. So is the Oregon Wheat Foundation, whose mission is to develop new markets for Oregon wheat, and the Evergreen Foundation, a group that aims to "advance public understanding...for scientifically based forest policies." If these groups don't fit your idea of more traditional charities, like the United Way, Cystic Fibrosis Association and the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation, you're not alone. Dave Mazza, spokesman for the Oregon Public Employees Union, says there's good reason to be "suspicious" about the charitable credentials of groups like the Northwest Food and Forest Education Foundation. "A number of these groups have extremely close ties to corporations and do what we normally refer to as public relations for a sector of industry," says Mazza. Some of the OPEU's 18,000 members, Mazza says, probably won't be happy to learn that their philanthropic impulses are helping to support "one more piece of corporate welfare--and one that also raises questions about truth in advertising." But fair's fair in the Internal Revenue Service code and in Oregon's environmental wars, responds Terry Witt. An agribusiness lobbyist in Salem, Witt is the director of Friends of Oregon Farms and Forests, the umbrella group that the Wheat, Evergreen and Northwest Food and Forest Education foundations belong to. Back in 1988, Witt explains, state employees only had one choice when it came to making charitable payroll deductions: United Way agencies. But then another nonprofit group, the Black United Fund, following a New Jersey court case it won, claimed that it too was entitled to some of the Oregon state employees' generosity. The group's legal challenge led the state attorney general's office to say that BUF and all Oregon nonprofit groups registered under the IRS' 501(c)3 designation were eligible for the state charitable fund drive. In 1990, the state charitable fund drive was expanded to include three other groups--Oregon Health Appeal, Children's Trust Fund and the Environmental Federation of Oregon, a collection of 27 groups such as 1000 Friends of Oregon, Sierra Club and Oregon Natural Resources Council. It later added the Equity Foundation. Not surprisingly, people on the other side of the environmental debate from green groups like ONRC and Sierra Club thought it only fair that they tap some of that state workers' charity. "People like to see more money going into balanced education about the mainstays of the economy in our state," Witt says. "In many ways we provide an alternative to groups in the Environmental Federation of Oregon." So Witt's Friends of Oregon Farms and Forests applied earlier this year for the state charity drive and was approved. Now the group will start to receive donations from the annual employees' drive, which started last week. If he had his way, Witt adds, he'd like to see the state go back to the days when only the United Way was an eligible charity. "I think many of us would like to see charity narrowly defined as many in Oregon think of it," he says. "But the bottom line is it appears a number of groups--there are 27 in the Environmental Federation of Oregon--are taking advantage of the way the state elected to run the program." The state maintains that it has no real choice in the matter. "We did not solicit the groups. They approached us, and based on our rules, they were included," says Michelle Kennedy, chairwoman of the charitable fund drive. Kennedy isn't thrilled about the rules--in part because there are more than 6,000 501(c)3 nonprofit corporations registered in Oregon. All of which, in theory, are eligible for the charity drive. Nor are groups like the United Way excited about having more groups competing for scant charity dollars. "Are we going to take away from the core priority of the community as it relates to human and health care? That's the question," says York Haines, spokesman for United Way of the Columbia-Willamette. Indeed, the total amount contributed by state employees to the charity drive has declined in recent years from a high of $1.08 million in 1993. Haines thinks the expanding number of eligible charities and the diffusion of choices may play a small part in the dip. "It might be a factor," he says. "I honestly don't know," adds Kennedy, the fund drive's chairwoman. "I plan to survey employees next year." While it may seem that the pro-industry groups merely balance out the pro-environment groups, OPEU's Mazza and others say there's a troubling difference between prominent groups like the Sierra Club, which raise money from individual contributors, and the little-known Evergreen Foundation, which is supported by big business. "The Evergreen Foundation sounds like an environmental charity but in fact is a group funded by timber interests like Boise Cascade, Associated Oregon Loggers and Douglas Timber Operators," says Tarso Ramos, a researcher at the Western States Center, a Portland-based nonprofit group that studies issues and trends in eight western states. Ramos is right: According to its 1996 tax forms, Evergreen received $129,432 of its $597,640 in total revenues from those three groups. "While groups like Evergreen may be legal charities," Ramos adds, "it goes to the broader question of what is a legal charity and what is a charity in the minds of most people. I hate to think that poverty-relief organizations and homeless people might lose support because Boise-Cascade is taking money away for public-relations operations." |
