Give, but don't look!

By now, we've all heard about the mess in which Greg Mortenson, this American humanitarian, writer and former mountaineer, has placed himself into. The co-founder and director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute as well as the founder of the educational charity Pennies for Peace, is said to have mixed fiction with the alleged reality in his books, but what's more, he's been “confused” between the finances of his charities and his own pocketbook, helping himself in the former to finance his own publishing and speaking career.

I don't care about some creative “inaccuracies” in his books, I am simply more worried about the ways he might have used other people's money for his own benefit. Today, the man claims that “managing” wasn't his cup of tea, but the key issue remains that he conveniently commingled a $20 million yearly budget with his personal expense requirements and couldn't obviously “see” this as something fishy.

I have a strong feeling that this is not just Mortenson's problem, but this might be more symptomatic of the temptations that lurk when running huge non-profit organization with no government or tax authority oversight. The could be many more of these stories going on than we've never heard about or will never know...