November 15 1999

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Feed the Children, the Oklahoma City-based ministry of Larry Jones is battling to regain its credibility after a series of reports in the Daily Oklahoman.

Jones is an evangelist and former basketball star. The daily newspaper questioned the 20-year-old charity's financial procedures, employment of Jones family members, and other practices. Feed the Children's trustworthiness was already bruised after some Nashville employees were caught on videotape stealing donated supplies from a warehouse in Tennessee.

Jones closed the warehouse, inventoried donations, and reopened the facility with a new staff once everything was accounted for. Feed the Children also complied with an investigation by Tennessee state authorities and plans to help if the district attorney's office brings criminal charges against the former employees.

The Daily Oklahoman also recommended changes at Feeding the Children, including that Jones hire a chief of operations, create stricter board policies, and join a fiscal accrediting association such as the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

Feed the Children, which received about $200 million in private support in 1998, may join the Better Business Bureau. It already belongs to the Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations, which has established accountability criteria for gift-in-kind donations.

Feed the Children received an F rating in the latest charity-watchdog report by the American Institute of Philanthropy (aip), which said: "in our opinion [Feed the Children] spends only about 14 percent of its cash budget on programs that are not conducted in conjunction with fund-raising."

Consumers Digest ran a feature-length correction after publishing the findings and subsequently ...