BY ROBERT W. WELKOS – PART 2 of 2 The Academy Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has been given a “poor” rating by one of the country’s leading charity watchdog groups – a rating Academy officials don’t think it deserves. Charity Navigator, which calls itself “the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities,” studied the Academy Foundation’s latest Internal Revenue Service Form 990 for fiscal year 2007-2008 and gave the foundation an overall rating of 36.39, or one star. In the opinion of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit receiving only one star performs “far below industry standards and below nearly all charities in its cause.” But Ric Robertson, the foundation’s executive administrator, doesn’t buy it. He contends that the foundation actually deserves a far better rating and that Charity Navigator must not know all the facts. The lowest rating a nonprofit can receive from Charity Navigator is zero stars, which it defines as performing “far below industry standards and below nearly all charities in its cause.” The best rating the group hands out is four stars to nonprofits it deems “exceptional.” Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, based in Mahwah, N.J., told HollywoodNews.com that looking at the most recent 990 filed with the IRS, the Academy Foundation reported program expenses of about 64% and administrative expenses of about 36%. In dollar terms, program expenses amounted to $3,446,504 versus administrative expenses of $1,942,904. “That pretty high,” Miniutti said of the foundation’s overhead costs. “Obviously, that pulls down the amount spent on programs.” Robertson explained that AMPAS has four nonprofit affiliates and, taken together, their program expenses totaled $19 million. These nonprofit affiliates include the Academy Foundation, the Vine Street Foundation, the Homewood Foundation and the Academy Archive Foundation. Robertson said taken as a whole, the actual program/overhead expense ratio was 78% and 21%. That would put the Academy into the average range of most nonprofits examined by Charity Navigator. He also noted that one reason for large overhead is that some of the Academy’s operations require a large staff. For instance, the Margaret Herrick Library’s staff numbers over 50. “The lion’s share of that budget in running the Margaret Herrick Library is personnel,” Robertson explained. “[Charity Navigator] is probably not taking that into account. In order to run a world-class research facility it requires manpower.” The Academy’s library contains more than 1,000 collections including [...]
