Charitable Contributions

I work for a business that has set up a trust from which it donates to charities throughout the year. It is a great organization and they give to really good causes that really need the support. The only thing that bothers me about this trust is that each year there is a particular recipient that always complains about how they only get x amount of dollars a year when the trust makes x amount of dollars in interest income. Somehow they feel that they are entitled to a bigger slice of the pie.

This last week I was tasked with getting the year-end financial statements and charitable contributions list ready for the yearly board meeting. I do not attend the meeting and only prepare the paperwork needed when my boss asks for it. What usually happens after this meeting is that I get an updated list (usually the list of contributions with chicken scratch notes from my boss) of what charities will be donated to this year and the dollar amounts beside them. To my surprise, this complainer charity was no longer on the list. I am guessing that enough people heard of the complaints and took them off the donor list.

I know that it is really none of my business who this trust decides who/who not to contribute to on a yearly basis. I don’t have any of my money in there and therefore can not say that anyone should/should not get the money that is so generously donated from this trust. However, when I got the list back recently I was more than a little shocked to see that this charity was removed. I just hope I’m not the one that has to deliver the bad news.