Penny Arcade Makes Time 100

Precision noticed that Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade fame have made the Time 100. The writeup talks about Child's Play and PAX and lavishes deserved adoration upon the pair. I've always envied their ability to maintain control over their brand and use it for appropriately portioned good and evil ;)

Comments

Popularity contest

[Enderandrew]

Kudos to them, but sadly this was a popularity contest where the likes of Justin Bieber and such were receiving votes.

I'd rather a wide-range, rational panel try to offer their opinions rather than open up a massive internet vote.

Re:Childs Play

[dank zappingly]

As I have noted from your other armchair legal opinions, you do not understand the law. You do not know anything about Penny Arcade's corporate structure or how they pay their bills or Child's Play's bills. You are accusing a charitable organization of fraud without any basis in reality. Here is a quick sample from the FAQ on their website: Q. Does Child's Play charge administrative fees? A. We try our best to have every dollar that comes in go right back to the hospitals, but there is a slight administrative cost that does get paid for with donations (for example, shipping $200,000 worth of Nintendo DS' to dozens of hospitals worldwide is not free, sadly). Historically, these charges have not exceeded 2-3%. It's true that we're a non-profit, but unlike most non-profits, we're not in it to create a self-sustainable entity. We do it to give. Again, I ask you to please stop polluting the internet with misinformation. These people are doing good work to make the lives of sick children better. By defaming them you are taking trolling to a whole new level.

Re:Childs Play

[sartin]

You can also write off the income of anyone designated at 'administrators' of the charitable organization.

Before today I was completely unaware of Child's Play, so I visited Guidestar to have a look at actual numbers. This information is from their 2007 form 990 (the latest I found at Guidestar and the one that probably looks worst for expenses). It fully discloses Penny Arcade's affiliation (gee, the IRS cares about people trying to wash salaries and actually checks this sort of thing).

• Three Penny Arcade shareholders are "Directors, Officers, Trustees, or Key Employees" - none receive any compensation from Child's Play and the three combined received $515,725.25 in compensation from Penny Arcade. Looks like they're missing a huge opportunity to wash salaries in the way described.
• They paid a $37,000 for a project manager to administer $384,059 of cash and non-cash (e.g. games) grants. They allocate the project manger half to program (giving stuff away) and half to fundraising. I am a little confused by the PM, since they list no employees or independent contractors in their highest paid list.
• They spent $41,669 on fundraising expenses, most of it in three areas: $6000 for professional fundraising, $18,500 for the PM, and $12,024 for travel.
• They held a fundraising auction that lost $23,441.

I have questions as a result of that (very quick and limited) review, but none in the area of trying to wash salaries. I'm curious about where the Project Manager expense actually goes. I'm curious about the disaster of an auction - why they did it, what they learned, whether they plan to try again. I fail to see evidence of the sort of fraud you are claiming.

Corporations get into charity for multiple reasons: good public relations, donating to related interests, belief in the cause. That doesn't make promoting or giving to a charity a fundamentally bad thing. Unless you have evidence to back up your claims, the evidence I've seen suggests they are unfounded.