The fallout from the Bernard Madoff scandal continues, with several local nonprofits potentially facing gaps in their budgets as a result of an alleged multibillion-dollar pyramid scheme.
The groups - including the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Juvenile Law Center - were partly funded by two foundations that have gone belly-up because the philanthropies' assets were managed by Madoff.
Rebecca Rimel, Pew's president and chief executive officer, said the nonprofit would lose about $3 million pledged by the JEHT Foundation, a New York-based foundation that worked on justice and election issues.
JEHT and Pew were jointly funding Making Voting Work, a project designed to tackle election problems nationwide. JEHT had already paid $1 million of its pledge, money that Rimel said is safe.
"They were a wonderful partner, and there really are no words to describe what an unfortunate blow this is to the nonprofit sector," Rimel said of JEHT yesterday.
Although the project will continue, JEHT's abrupt withdrawal means a slowdown in Making Voting Work, specifically in research around early voting, Rimel said. JEHT has contributed about $2.5 million of the roughly $16.5 million invested in the project since 2007.
"The research agenda will go forward - our board is deeply committed to the work - but it will go more slowly, and we hope that other sources of funding will come forward," Rimel said.
Rimel said that Pew heard from Robert Crane, JEHT president, about a week ago.
"He indicated that the donors had been decimated both personally and philanthropically, and that they were going to close their doors within three weeks," Rimel said. "I've heard stories of hundreds of nonprofits that were anticipating payment on pledges."
Madoff allegedly defrauded scores of wealthy investors in the pyramid scheme.
On top of a brutal economy already hitting nonprofits hard, the Madoff scandal fallout is especially excruciating, Rimel said.
"People need to understand that there is a local impact," she said.
Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, said the advocacy organization had received about $250,000 from JEHT to support operating expenses and appellate work earlier this year.
"We were in many ways quite fortunate to receive our latest contribution from JEHT this past fall, right before the Bernie Madoff scandal hit," Schwartz said.
