The NGO Complex Is Irredeemably Corrupt

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The NGO Complex Is Irredeemably Corrupt 1

My wife works for the Minnesota State Legislature, so she sees the steady stream of nonprofit CEOs and lobbyists bringing in their shiny literature, PowerPoints, and clients to lobby legislators to dump tons on taxpayer money into their coffers. 

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If you bought the lies they were selling, you would think that every third child would starve to death without the government pouring every possible dime legislators could scrape up their way. 

Imagine those commercials with Sarah McLachlan music playing, with children and puppies, and the nonprofit execs pleading for just one more dollar to save one more life. 

It is all BS. 

I don’t mean that the problems aren’t real, although by now you should know that the way the problems are described has little relationship to reality, but there are abused and neglected children, women who need help to recover from abuse, and other crises, and people in need of help. 

It’s just that most of these nonprofits aren’t so much helping people as farming them for money. Many of the nonprofits distributing food give it away to anybody who shows up, so in many places; people show up in nice, shiny cars on their way to Pilates to get some free food. I know a family that makes six figures that has their daughter on welfare, food stamps, subsidized housing, and getting other services because she is “neurodivergent.” 

A recent hearing at the Minnesota State Legislature provides a good example of what happens when an organization that started with good intentions gets big and can hide behind its “intentions,” which seem impeccable. 

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Second Harvest Heartland exists to feed the hungry. They get donations of food and distribute it those in need, which seems like an organization we can all get behind, right?

Right?

Except for the fact that Second Harvest is also an organization where Democrat politicians dump their aides to cash in, as so many NGOs really turn out to be. 

Allison O’Toole, CEO of Second Harvest Heartland, earned $721,000 in total compensation in 2022—even as the nonprofit has lobbied for taxpayer funding and warned of rising hunger across Minnesota, where 26% of households with children are food insecure, according to its own research.

Now, as O’Toole steps down after six years at the helm, lawmakers are raising questions.

Concerns first raised during legislative hearing

Rep. Pam Altendorf, R-Red Wing, told Alpha News that O’Toole’s salary issue first surfaced during a recent “food day” at the Capitol, when food shelf representatives, including O’Toole, testified before the House Children and Families Committee.

“Rep. Bjorn Olson pulled the 990 [tax form] and shared Allison O’Toole’s salary with our committee members right before she testified,” Altendorf said. “That’s when the questions started.”

Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake, later raised the issue during a March 17 House committee hearing where a DFL lawmaker questioned why a GOP bill was reducing funding for Second Harvest Heartland in a proposed agriculture budget.

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Second Harvest Heartland gets most of its resources from private companies–to the tune of a quarter billion dollars worth. Their sourcing isn’t from can collections at churches or donations from individuals–it is mostly big corporations donating surpluses for a tax write-off. it’s big business–and what could be better than diverting food from waste into the mouths of people who need it? The idea is a good one. 

But while it may be a “nonprofit,” it sure is profitable for the people who run it, and the people who run it are exactly who you would think they are. It’s not Mother Teresa living among the poor washing their feet. It is high-powered politicos raking in nearly a million dollars a year. 

Rep. Marion Rarick, a long-time Republican legislator, wants to cut state funding to the organization to the howls of rage of her opponents. She is taking food out of the mouths of babes! 

“They do have a $260 million, that’s their gross revenue,” she said during the hearing. “What’s even more interesting, I think, is that their CEO, their top person, makes $721,000. Yeah, $721,000 is the top person … and they have 10 people that make more than the governor, which is more than $150,000. So that’s well over $2.6 million in their highest-paid people.”

Basically, the State of Minnesota was paying the salaries of the top brass at Second Harvest Heartland and paying them quite well. 

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So who is Allison O’Toole, you might wonder? Perhaps she took a huge salary cut in order to get that measly $721,000 salary? Perhaps she ran General Mills and is just trying to pay her mortgage and give back to the community.

Nope. She worked for Amy Klobuchar as Senior Director of State Affairs and then for the state itself on its implementation of Obamacare, which didn’t go swimmingly, let us say. 

Let’s just say she didn’t work her way up the food shelf ladder to get where she is. She got there by being connected. Apparently the Democrats like her, and why not? It turns out that, among other things, Second Harvest Heartland likes to play in politics, too. 

Altendorf also pointed to what she sees as a deeper issue. She says the nonprofit hired a “voter engagement coordinator” in 2024 to conduct get-out-the-vote efforts—something she calls “a huge conflict of interest” for an organization receiving taxpayer dollars.

“The public is waking up to the money funneling system happening within the Minnesota state government,” Altendorf said. “And I’m hearing loud and clear—taxpayers have had enough.”

O’Toole, who previously led MNsure during its rollout and served as state director for U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, was hired by Second Harvest in 2019, according to reports.

The organization’s Chief Operating Officer, Sarah Moberg, will serve as the interim CEO while a national search is conducted for O’Toole’s replacement. Records show Moberg’s annual salary is listed as roughly $370,000.

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I’m sure that Amy Klobuchar’s former Senior State Director had no partisan intentions when hiring a get out the vote coordinator for the 2024 elections. None at all. 

Food “security” is a great business to be in. The largest single COVID-era scam was also right here in Minnesota–the Feeding Our Future scandal in which another Democrat-connected nonprofit leader organized a quarter-billion scheme to steal $250 million from COVID relief funds. She recruited people from the Somali community to create fake restaurants and feeding centers and put in for reimbursements for meals never served. 

She did it right under the noses of Tim Walz’s state government, which was writing the checks and had multiple warnings that it was all a fraud. It wasn’t until the US Attorney stepped in that prosecutions started happening. 

NGOs don’t exist to do the things they advertise, although they often do some of the work they say as a cover for their real purpose. That purpose is to skim off the top and employ politically connected people. 

Hide behind a good cause, and you can do whatever you want. Look at Gavin Newsom’s 10-year plan to eradicate homelessness, almost 2 decades in and billions have been spent, thousands employed, and the homeless problem is greater because that is how you keep the money flowing. 

Tim Walz himself has used “food insecurity” as a political tool. He is quite proud of his bill to feed every child in Minnesota lunch, expanding the program from needy kids to everyone. Taxpayers are now subsidizing the lunches of kids with parents making six figures so he could get a nice photo of him getting hugged by kids. He sells the program as if he invented the school lunch program for needy children, but needy children have been getting free school lunches for decades. 

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It was all for show. But it works. Put “food” and “kids” in the same sentence, and everybody melts. 

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