Comments on: Fraudulent charity warning: Macular Degeneration Association / American Medical Research Organization

By: Whistleblower

Whistleblower — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:48:13 +0000

contact me

By: jik

jik — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:12:10 +0000

As of December 2011, CharityWatch has added MDA to its charity guide with an F grade. According to CharityWatch's analysis, MDA spends only 10% of its total expenses on charitable services (CharityWatch considers anything less than 60% to be unreasonable), and spends $74 for every $100 it raises (CharityWatch considers $35 or less to be reasonable). When a charity's service expenditures are that low and its fundraising expenses are that high, the odds are pretty good that the charity has been set up as a front whose real purpose is to enrich the people who created it and their cronies.

By: koi

koi — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:35:13 +0000

I checked MDAs website – it’s pretty slick but no info about the board, no tax info, no grants.

These guys seem to be into organizing cruises and having a good time. Kind of parasitic.

By: jik

jik — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:29:02 +0000

Foundation Fighting Blindness gets a B grade from AIP, which isn’t bad. There are vision-related charities with higher grades, though, including:

Glaucoma Foundation
Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind
Helen Keller International / ChildSight
Lighthouse International
National Federation of the Blind
ORBIS International / Project ORBIS International
Prevent Blindness America / National Society to Prevent Blindness

By: Barb

Barb — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:30:38 +0000

Foundation Fighting Blindness, 7168 Columbia Gateway Drive, Suite 100, Columbia, Maryland 21046 is the best organization to fight blindness. Their grants to researchers is awesome, having restored sight in dogs and now humans.

Look them up on the internet.

By: justin h

justin h — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:23:55 +0000

I ran across this bunch and saw something new. The Brian Curro fellow is out. By his linkedin profile, he is now running the Parkinson’s disease arm of the charity. The Macular Degeneration Association is now headed by some Donna Auger woman, who’s last work seems to have been a pharmacy technician at Walmart, its not even funny. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/donna-auger/13/ab2/826. When I used google to look for them after getting their mail I saw another group out there called American Macular Degeneration Foundation http://www.macular.org/. They look like they are in massachussets and they looked fishy too, so I asked my sister in lawwho works in a charity about how to do research on them. She turned me on to guidestar website http://www.guidestar.org. Sure enough you can get tax info. I can’t find macular degeneration but that American Macular Degeneration Foundation group has some old taxes on the site. The leaders have over $400,000 in loans to themselves for things like home imporvement. Shame! I checked out the American Health Foundation and at least found a lot of stuff about how they spend money on guidestar. there is a lot of research and they spend about There are other groups like macular degeneration foundation that look ok, but small. and Foundation Fighting Blindness that doesn’t have much on guidestar, but look like the biggest one of the bunch, the american health foundation and foundation fighting blindness are my picks. American Health Foundation has a lot of extra stuff on guidestar, foundation fighting blindess doesnt have much. Foundation Fighting Blindness looks like it makes the biggest grants overall though.

By: Jay

Jay — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:08:03 +0000

I thought the letter I received from MDA to be amateurish; The red flag to me was the lack of any specifics of how MDA is helping people. I also thought that having an umbrella organization (American Medical Research Organization) appeared strange. I did a search – your link popped up and I read your posting. I visited their website and noticed the “parkinson” (HTML) tags on the website (how sloppy – that tells me they copied another wedsites’ coding and then only half way modified it). Similar to their letter, there was a real lack of information there. I then read the responses to your posting. That confirmed all I needed to know about MDA and the Parkinson’s Research Foundation. I wonder how many other “foundations” there are that are linked to these guys.

By: concerned grandson

concerned grandson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:45:57 +0000

google mr curro’s name, and you will find multiple myspace and facebook accounts as well as your fraud warning. on one myspace, there is a huge Marine advert/banner. I didn’t read too far into it, but if he’s soliciting funds and claiming a marine affiliation, he’d better hope he really has a service record. there are also multiple accounts on all manner of free sites that show the same man (sometimes pictured w/ a beer can) claiming to be a personal trainer and the head of different companies and ventures. if the pictures weren’t there, i’d have my doubts, but this is the same person again and again. i don’t know of any reputable director of a charity this is also the director of another charity and is a personal trainer, marathon runner, website banner creator, etc. thanks again for your work on this.

By: concerned grandson

concerned grandson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:22:36 +0000

In removing my grandparents from over 50 solicitation lists, I found that the Macular Degeneration Association and the Parkinson Research Foundation have the same Florida PO BOX and that even though they have differnt area codes, their phones are answered by the same system and the same voice. No calls are ever returned. This is clearly a fraud. I phoned the Florida Attorney General’s Office to add an out of state complaint to the one shown on the blog, and was asked to use their online complaint form. Hmmm. Also, it seems Brian Curro has a Facebook page showing what bars and “luxury locations and events” he likes. http://www.facebook.com/bcurro This looks like the guy on the website. There is another site showing that Brian Curro is soliciting money to run a marathon. This is unreal. I know how easily things can get out of hand on the net, but I can’t believe that all of these accusations and shady coincidences are the result of a goole dopple. Beware, and bravo to all of you for posting these things.

By: jik

jik — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:52:49 +0000

No response was received.