Saturday, January 24, 2015

15 Foundation - Final Hurrah for the Late Vanity Project of Robin Quivers

In early 2010, Robin Quivers and her boy toy Brendan Murphy had big plans to save the world with the formation of their charity called the 15 Foundation.


The foundation would work as follows:

  (1) naive fans of Howard Stern donate money to the foundation,

  (2) the foundation uses the money to incur expenses and hire employees, and

  (3) Robin presents some lucky groups with a check (funded by money from other people) and takes credit for being a charitable person.

This mission could easily (and more efficiently) have been accomplished by just having people donate directly to the ultimate recipient groups, but this would not have permitted Ms. Quivers to draw attention to herself, a trait that she's mastered over the years by working with one Howard Stern.

For example, the foundation gave $45,000 to three charities in 2013, all of which were 501(c)(3) organizations which could easily have accepted donations directly from the public without the involvement of the large middlewoman:



Alas, all great things must come to an end - Robin's "relationship" with Mr. Murphy did not last very long and he was summarily removed as a director of the foundation and his bio was no longer listed on the foundation's website:

Brendan no longer listed under the "Founders"


Finally, in mid-2013, the foundation had to pull the plug on itself and the foundation recently filed its final public report for 2013.


NOTE:  although the foundation was formed in March 2010, Robin's farewell announcement in mid-2013 mentions its "four years" of inspiring work.

Time for a quick review of some of the highlights and lowlights of the three years of the foundation's operations:

In 2010, grand events like the Night at Caroline's and Robin's infamous marathon (aka the "Run for the Bagels") had big expenses associated with them (nearly $150K), so the actual amount raised for charitable purposes was a lot less than the gross amount taken in by the foundation.

Note that $8,400 worth of food/beverages was purchased in connection with the marathon fundraiser - that's a lot of bagels and cream cheese!

Back when Brendan was still in good graces with Robin, the foundation 'wisely' used donor money to purchase $7,500 of t-shirts from him:



As shown in the image above, it turned out that Robin was not very successful in getting the public to fork over dough to fund her pet project - in fact, she had to make a $50,000 personal loan to the foundation and a significant percentage of the contributions to the foundation were from one person - Robin!



In each of 2011 and 2012, the amount spent on salaries, etc. for foundation employees ($88K in each year) was more than the amount of grants which the foundation made in each year ($75K and $78K, respectively) - great use of donors' money:




In 2013, the foundation was lucky and was able to file a short version of the annual tax form with the IRS.  Therefore, it didn't have to disclose any details on how much of its 2013 contributions came from Robin.  The foundation used at least $50K to pay off the loan that it owed to its bloated founder:



Now with the foundation work complete, the svelte Robin has been giving back to the public by sharing healthy eating tips - better listen up so one can look as slim and fit as Ms. Quivers.