The media has been full of stories about celebrity-owned companies that received Paycheck Protection Loans. Do you think this is right?
Do you think it s right that a company owned by Tom Brady, who is reportedly the second highest paid NFL player in history, received almost a million dollars? Or that the famous Napa Valley restaurant Fresh Laundry received a $2.4 million loan? Is it ethical that dozens of charitable foundations – such as San Francisco-based Walt Disney Family Foundation and New York-based Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, each with hundreds of millions in assets – were able to get PPP loans? Or that pastor Joel Osteen s famous Lakewood Church in Houston got a $4.4 million loan?
Updated at 12:21 p.m. ET
Scores of private charitable foundations, set up by some of the nation s wealthiest people, received money from the federal government s Paycheck Protection Program, which was created last spring to save jobs at small businesses as the coronavirus tanked the economy.
NPR has identified at least 120 foundations that collectively received more than $7.5 million in PPP funding. That s a small slice of the overall program, which disbursed about a half-trillion dollars, but some of the foundations are linked to individuals of considerable means: an oil magnate, a cable television tycoon, a dermatologist called the father of modern hair transplantation, and an aviation entrepreneur who founded companies with annual sales of more than a billion dollars.
Scores Of Private Charitable Foundations Got Paycheck Protection Program Money – Nation & World News wuft.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wuft.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Koenig Private Foundation ($150,521)
Letters Foundation AKA Sunshine Lady Humanitarian Grants Program ($268,800)
Mission Increase Foundation ($277,320)
Niswonger Foundation ($200,529)
Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation ($154,800)
Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation ($150,900)
Richard Diebenkorn Foundation ($157,380)
Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation ($103,200)
Walt Disney Family Foundation ($146,700)
Willard G. Pierce and Jessie M. Pierce Foundation ($156,400)
Some of the foundations contacted by NPR said the stock market plunge early this year caused their investment portfolios to decline, and they didn’t want to sell assets at a loss to cover budget shortfalls.
The Boston-based Letters Foundation, officially known as the Sunshine Lady Humanitarian Grants Program, falls in that category. It began as a sibling partnership between Warren Buffett and his late sister Doris: Strangers would often ask them for money, so Doris decided which requests to fund, and she and War