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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNRA money flowed to board members amid allegedly lavish spending by top officials and vendors
A former pro football player who serves on the National Rifle Association board was paid $400,000 by the group in recent years for public outreach and firearms training. Another board member, a writer in New Mexico, collected more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications. Yet another board member sold ammunition from his private company to the NRA for an undisclosed sum.
The NRA, which has been rocked by allegations of exorbitant spending by top executives, also directed money in recent years to members of its board the very people tasked with overseeing the organizations finances.
In all, 18 members of the NRAs 76-member board, who are not paid as directors, collected money from the group during the past three years, according to tax filings, state charitable reports and NRA correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.
The payments received by about one-quarter of board members, the extent of which has not previously been reported, deepen questions about the rigor of the boards oversight as it steered the countrys largest and most powerful gun rights group, according to tax experts and some longtime members.
The NRA, founded in 1871 to promote gun safety and training, relies heavily on its 5 million members for dues. Some supporters are rebelling publicly and questioning its leadership.
I will be the first person to get in your face about defending the Second Amendment, but I will not defend corruption and cronyism and fearmongering, said Vanessa Ross, a Philadelphia-area bakery owner and lifetime NRA member who previously worked at the Virginia headquarters managing a program for disabled shooters.
Among the revelations that have burst into public view: CEO Wayne LaPierre racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique and on foreign travel, invoices show. Oliver North, forced out as president after trying to oust LaPierre, was set to collect millions of dollars in a deal with the NRAs now-estranged public relations agency, Ackerman McQueen, according to LaPierre. And the NRAs outside attorney reaped extraordinary legal fees that totaled millions of dollars in the past year, according to North.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/nra-money-flowed-to-board-members-amid-allegedly-lavish-spending-by-top-officials-and-vendors/2019/06/09/3eafe160-8186-11e9-9a67-a687ca99fb3d_story.html?utm_term=.e0b6b102b15d&wpisrc=al_news__alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1
empedocles
(15,751 posts)struggle4progress
(118,328 posts)NCjack
(10,279 posts)keithbvadu2
(36,876 posts)NRA Cuts More Operating Costs-and Lavishes Executives With Perks
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/nra-money-executive-perks-pay-cutting-costs/
The NRA Is Being Sued Over Its Relentless Telemarketing Campaigns
When begging for bucks goes wrong.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-nra-is-being-sued-over-its-relentless-telemarketing-campaigns
The NRA has employed InfoCision since 2012 under a contract that grants the fundraising company up to 65 percent of the funds it raises on the NRAs behalf. InfoCision gets between $2.50 and $3.75 for each completed call to potential NRA donors, and up to half of the regular payments for new or renewed NRA memberships.
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If those high fees are unavoidable, they can also have the effect of obscuring, for a potential donor, exactly where his or her money is going. Many of those speaking with an InfoCision fundraiser, after all, will not know that a majority of their donation is not going to the charity that fundraiser is representing.
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NRAsolicitations
comment from a blog (DU I think)
I had a coworker who was a big time gun owner who kept a gun in every room in the house just in case someone broke in (lots of problems with that idea, may be worth a blog article someday, but thats what he did). He even went so far as to start buying more guns for each room after a school shooting, like home invasion and mass shooting are correlated somehow. He had let his NRA membership lapse and refused to renew it because he got tired of nonstop requests for donations. To him all the membership did was give the NRA to badger him for more money with phone calls, and direct mailings. If the
organization is as strapped for cash as it appears, those solicitations may have gone way over the top and people are simply tired of being badgered for money and are choosing to let their membership to lapse.
IronLionZion
(45,514 posts)manipulating their members through fear to enrich their leaders