LOS ANGELES — A star-studded benefit concert featuring everyone from Billie Eilish to Lady Gaga raised about $100 million for victims of the LA wildfires in January — but struggling locals say they have yet to see a dime from it eight months later.
The massive, much-ballyhooed FireAid event — which drew heavy-hitter supporters such as former Veep Kamala Harris and her hubby Doug Emhoff — has doled out the dough to 197 charities, many of which are focused on a variety of niche, woke and DEI causes not directly related to helping fire victims.
One charity is focused on buying uniforms for kiddie choir singers ($100,000) and another offers pet healthcare ($250,000).
Organizers — who have been accused of being tone-deaf — said in their defense that they never claimed FireAid Inc. funds would go directly to helping victims.
An audit released Monday by the Annenberg Foundation, which is managing the funds, showed how the money so far has been spent — and the causes that are being funded are all over the map.
The beneficiaries ranged from the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation ($100,000) to a group making podcasts about the wildfires ($100,000), to the local YMCA ($250,000).
Several grants went to nonprofits that focus on political advocacy for minority groups, including the NAACP Pasadena ($100,000), the Los Angeles Black Worker Center ($250,000), My Tribe Rise ($200,000), and the CA Native Vote Project ($100,000), which conducts voter registration drives for Native Americans across the state.
One group got $500,000 to seed burned forests with restorative fungi and bacteria. Another half-million-dollar grant went to a group that provides mental healthcare for musicians.
Missing from the list were the names of people with burnt-down houses.
“There are a lot of people in our group chats who are like, ‘What’s the FireAid money being used for?’ Because I don’t think any of us have seen any of it,” said Ben Einbinder, who has become a community organizer since losing his home in the Palisades.
How the money raised by FireAid has been spent:
- Music Health Alliance ($500,000) — For mental healthcare for musicians who were fire victims
- The Center for Applied Ecological Remediation ($500,000) — For “post-fire bioremediation” that “uses fungi, beneficial microbes, and native plants” to restore soil health
- Home Grown ($500,000) — For “cleaning and sanitation” of pre-schools
- The Center for Nonprofit Management ($250,000) — For workshops and training for other nonprofits
- Los Angeles Children’s Chorus ($100,000) — For uniforms and supplies for your choir members
- Woodcraft Rangers ($100,000) — For “trauma-informed” camping trips for teen fire victims
- CAMP (Community Animal Wildfire Project) ($100,000) — For free vet clinics for “fire-affected animals”
- Altadena Talks Foundation ($100,000) — For podcasts about the wildfires
Some 10,000-plus SoCal residents lost their homes in one of the costliest natural disasters in state history, and many are furious over where the FireAid money has gone.
“It’s just a s—tshow, to be quite honest,’’ said Pacific Palisades resident David Howard, whose house burned down.
“And it’s disheartening because people are suffering enough.”
Concerns over where the $100 million is going to became so loud and serious that the concert’s organizer, the Annenberg Foundation, had its own audit done — resulting in this week’s document dump.
The staggering haul was not technically mismanaged or embezzled, said the report, which was written by a law firm hired by the foundation in response to demands for transparency from critics including Reps. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Local residents said they have seen some of the FireAid money in action — despite some of the far-flung causes.
For example, one organization called Baby2Baby held an event giving out toys to pre-school-age fire victims.
But even though FireAid has revealed which organizations it has given money to, it hasn’t revealed what exactly the organizations are doing with the cash.
“Some of the organizations… it would be hard to say whether they were actually using the FireAid money for wildfire relief,” Einbinder said.
The situation amounts to false advertising, at best, Howard said.
“Even the artists performing on stage were telling fans and people engaging with the concert that this money is going directly to the victims,’’ the struggling resident said.
“But the trickle-down on that makes it so the people who need it the most haven’t seen anything.’’
Howard said the issue for him and many of his neighbors is not about any individual FireAid beneficiary organization, adding that many probably do good work.
Instead, he said, there are simply too many of the charities receiving the money to put it to any coordinated, meaningful use to help fire victims.
Of course, that’s assuming all of the organizations are directly helping fire victims, which nobody has been able to verify.
“FireAid is giving money to a nonprofit that teaches other organizations how to be a nonprofit,” Howard noted, referring to the Center for Nonprofit Management, which got $250,000.
A newly formed group, Pali Strong, whose logo features prominently on signs and banners across the Palisades, took in $500,000 of FireAid money.
Pali Strong and several other FireAid grantees hired a third-party organization called Community Partners, which lets organizations piggyback on its nonprofit credentials and skip the red tape of registering with the government.
The scheme helps organizations launch faster, but Community Partners takes a 9% cut of their clients’ grant money — which means $45,000 of Pali Strong’s grant went directly to overhead before it even started doing anything.
As for the rest of its FireAid money, Pali Strong provides “critical relief and recovery information to Palisades residents via Zoom educational sessions and group text messages as well as advocating with local leaders,” according to its description on the FireAid site.
When asked for comment, the Annenberg Foundation directed The Post to the audit report, which it commissioned from the law firm Latham & Watkins LLP.
The audit found no evidence of “misrepresentations in the solicitation of charitable funds,” “improper selection of grantees,” or “fraudulent intent,” the report said.
Howard acknowledges that the event organizers never came out and said they would give cash to victims, but donors, concertgoers and even the artists themselves didn’t seem to get the memo.
“When an artist goes on stage telling you that the money is going to go directly to the survivors of this disaster, and that’s not true, that’s a problem,” he said.
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