Friday, May 09, 2008

Where is they Sting?

Charity Navigator, a watchdog organization in Mahwah, N.J., that rates charities’ performance, has given bad marks to the musician Sting’s charity, which has raised money to preserve rain forests, reports the New York Post.

Sting’s Rainforest Foundation is planning its next fund-raising concert at Carnegie Hall for Thursday and expects such high-profile participants as Billy Joel and James Taylor, the paper reports.

After reviewing the charity’s tax filings, the Post found that just 41 percent, or about $887,000, of the more than $2-million raised at the organization’s 2006 concert ended up in the hands of charities working to save the rain forests.

“This one would fall to the bottom of the bucket,” Sandra Miniutti, a spokeswoman for Charity Navigator, tells the newspaper.

Charity Navigator has given the Rainforest Foundation a mark of zero for the last four years, the newspaper reports.

Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, who founded the organization in 1989, did not comment in the article.

But Ms. Styler, responding to the story in the Post, tells People magazine: “The Rainforest Foundation is celebrating its 20th year. We wouldn’t still be in business or have given out millions of dollars over the years if we’d spent everything we made immediately after it came in.”

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