As Republicans gathered for their national convention in Philadelphia a decade ago, Rick Santorum, who was then an up-and-coming senator from Pennsylvania, launched a charity that he said would improve the lives of low-income residents in his home state.
“Wouldn’t it be a great thing to leave something positive behind other than a bunch of parties and a bunch of garbage?” Santorum told a local reporter.
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But homeless families and troubled children were not the biggest beneficiaries of Operation Good Neighbor. Instead, the foundation spent most of its money to run itself, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for fundraising, administration and office rental paid to Santorum’s political allies.
The charity also had significant overlap with the senator’s campaigns and his work on Capitol Hill. Among the leading donors to the foundation were Pennsylvania development and finance firms that had donated to his election efforts and had interests that Santorum had supported in the Senate.
Santorum, whose last-minute surge in the Iowa caucuses has brought new attention to his presidential bid, portrays himself as a common man concerned about the gap between the nation’s rich and poor. But in the case of his charity, his efforts ended up mostly helping his cadre of political friends.
Before it folded in 2007, the foundation raised $2.58 million, with 39 percent of that donated directly to groups helping the needy. By industry standards, such philanthropic groups should be donating nearly twice that, from 75 to 85 percent of their funds.
“That’s exceptionally poor,” Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, a national organization that rates charitable groups, said of the Santorum group’s giving. “We would tell donors to run with fear from this organization.”
Santorum campaign adviser John Brabender said the former senator remains proud of the cause he championed.
“Senator Santorum was very committed to helping raise funds for Operation Good Neighbor and did so with the understanding that those funds would be used to help many organizations and families located in urban areas of Pennsylvania,” Brabender said.
Group defends costs
Robert Pratter, who had served on the charity’s board, defended its management, saying its fundraising costs and payments to staff and consultants were reasonable.
“We were raising money for these very small mom-and-pop groups — the most effective way to raise money was the way we raised it,” said Pratter, who was formerly with Philadelphia risk management firm PMA Capital, a donor to the charity and to Santorum campaigns. “If you have a golf outing, it costs money to have a golf outing.”
Recipients, including an AIDS group, a local YMCA and others, received checks of roughly $6,000 to $15,000. Pratter said they were much-needed resources for tiny nonprofit groups struggling raise money on their own.
Robert Bickhart, a Republican political strategist who was Santorum’s campaign finance director, became the charity’s executive director.
He served without pay in 2001 but received payments for renting office space in his Conshohocken, Pa., consulting firm, Capitol Resource Group, to the charity. Tax records do not specify the amount paid for rent.
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