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What more needs to be said?
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Clearly seen. Good to see it was obvious to an outsider that the majority of people were his followers. Trying, no doubt, to look like disinterested dignitaries.
Even such transparent schemes would have taken many of their minds to come up with. Prem and his PAMs and SAMs plotting to kill several birds with one stone.
Propagate, fund raise, cream off some cash to buy respect, create a new (false) image, impress followers and hoped for new ones, get more footage for DVD production,.... did I forget anything?
"This is an abuse of charities."
Absolutely.
Modified by Lp at Wed, Jun 06, 2007, 06:31:24
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Only the seven most graced beings on the planet! 
Peace is here as He promised
You're right ...no doubt a misnomer: it's not so much about his Peace Bomb anymore, more about Self Alienation Missiles.
Modified by Lp at Wed, Jun 06, 2007, 07:54:08
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not sure about a SAM but a TAM is a Twat Around Maharaji and they are plentiful!
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Rawat over-reaches himself, tries to buy a more public bit of puffery for himself and actually is scorned in one major English newspaper and the only further bit of information or publicity is one anonymous piece on XPF that could have been written by someone who didn't attend (yes, they did at least know who the speakers were).
That is not BEST OF but pretty disappointing.
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>the only further bit of information or publicity is one anonymous piece on XPF that could have been written by someone who didn't attend< Well you can't really expect much more - all the parties directly involved - VSO, the City of London/Lord Mayor and EV/TPRF all want to bury their collective embarrassment. No representative from any of those parties is going to want to be identified publicly saying what a shambles it all was. And no disinterested person was going to attend given the rumoured ticket price of around £200 - inner circle premies only plus 'dignitaries'. Queen Linda will probably put out one of her ' month after the event' press releases saying how fantastic it all was - what a honour etc etc. Apart from that I'd expect stoney silence unless someone inside VSO has the bottle to raise questions at Board level. nik
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Abuse of Charity – Just to remind folks what the ball park figures are (and how many ball parks the money gets shuffled around) : In its first three years of operation The Prem Rawat Foundation raised $3,414,404 of which a mere $23,097 was put to humanitarian purposes. In 2004 and 2005 alone Elan Vital UK (which could have donated money to the Lord Mayor’s Appeal without any fuss) sent £85,000 to TPRF, £616,000 to Elan Vital US and £800,000 to the Elan Vital Foundation a total of £1,501,000 – up to £330,000 of which came from the UK Treasury. As to the London jollies - hiring the Guildhall costs up to £9,000 plus catering, a cost dwarfed of course by the price of Rawat flying the 5,000 miles from LA to London and back - £90,000 ? All for a pathetic £25,000 donation to a fund that may help some poor folks in Africa but also is going to benefit some private schools catering for rich families. _________ For an interesting comparison on raising money for charities: http://janesappeal.com/?page_id=3 Award winning Jane was diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2000 Despite living in constant pain and frequently being very ill, Jane has participated in numerous high profile events raising a staggering £1.4 million for charity. Nik
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"£330,000 of which came from the UK Treasury" - Does this mean that the UK government actually gives money to charities on a sort of one pound for every three raised?
"In its first three
years of operation The Prem Rawat Foundation raised $3,414,404 of which
a mere $23,097 was put to humanitarian purposes." How much has been given to humanitarian purposes since? It seems you might be deliberately choosing years to make TPRF look bad and, if so, that's really a sort of Rawatism statistical ploy. I do believe that ex-premies are able to work at a higher level of ethics without Rawat's agya keeping us liars and cheats.
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Hi Ocker I'll take the opportunity of answering your two questions if that is ok with Nik. When a UK taxpayer makes a donation to a UK charity (such as Elan Vital UK) then the charity is able to reclaim from the UK Treasury the basic rate tax that that UK taxpayer had originally paid on the monies so donated. The so called 'gross-up' benefit that all UK charities have. The figures that Nik mentions in respect of TPRF are those that are published, so far, by TPRF. TPRF are behind in filing their accounts and Nik is not able to guess the figures that apply to TPRF for non filed periods. Personally I believe that Nik operates at the highest level of ethics and to imply otherwise is an unfair slur. T
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I wanted to ensure that no such claim could be made and if there were actual statistics that would look "better" for Rawat they would be published here immediately. The fact that TPRF has not published more recent figures would tend to show that they cannot be massaged to look too good as one of Rawatism's most common methods is the publishing of positive statistics no matter how tenuous the basis.
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Sorry Ocker but how you've missed that aspect of Nik's posts is beyond me, in fact patently obvious that he's almost pedantic in that regard, one of the reasons his posts carry so much weight I would have thought.
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> in fact patently obvious that he's almost pedantic in that regard< Almost - whadaya mean almost !!! Thanks for the kind words. Nik
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Yeah, Wot T said !  Of course I should have given the sources - For details of the TPRF finances you have to go to the Guidestar website and log in. TPRF's presentation on its own website is in my view not very clear. The figures for EV UK are from the Charities Commission website - the £85k is for the two most recent year's figures which actually overlap with TPRF being in existence. TPRF did (on the back of its Tsunami appeal) commit more to 'humanitarian' donations in 2005 - but those details have yet to be published. And anyway if 'humanitarianism' was to have been such a big deal surely more of the $3.4 million would have gone in that direction in the first three years. Nik
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Nik, Aren't there filing requirements and deadlines in the UK? I would think they would have had to file their financials for 2005 by now.
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>Aren't there filing requirements and deadlines in the UK? I would think they would have had to file their financials for 2005 by now.< Sorry have I caused more confusion ? The EVUK 2005 figures are indeed available on the Charity Register website, and do seem to have been filed on time. Actually I did post about those figures last month, see: http://www.prem-rawat-talk.org/forum/posts/17180.html TPRF have been slow in getting their 2005 figures up on their website, but these are never really detailed so until Guidestar posts the TPRF 2005 Form 990 we will not be able to see what TPRF has actually been spending its money on. Nik
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perhaps on Linda Pascotto's 2nd face-lift?
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Nik, As a contributor last year I have just been sent the TPRF 2006 annual report. It is a glossy magazine, 'Giving from the Heart' 16 pages within a cover photo of a young Indian girl holding a metal bowl of what looks like barley. Page 1 has a grinning Linda Pascotto alongside an editorial about all the charitable work of TPRF. Pages 2- 10 are taken up with pictures of grateful children from around the world benefiting from the largesse of TPRF in various projects (Aboriginal kids having breakfast, Indian eye clinics etc.) Page 11 explains how TPRF has expanded its production of audio-visual, print etc materials presenting the message of peace and various humanitarian inititiatives of Prem Rawat (not actually Prem Rawat's initiatives but the Foundation's surely?) and pictures of various Prem Rawat DVD covers and booklets etc. Pages 12 to 13 are given over to Prem Rawat's 7 VIP events ..little pictures of Prem next to various podia around the world to (which he had apparently rushed in response to various 'invitations') being presented with official-looking things by various suited dignitaries. Pages 14-16 present the financial review with various table and pie charts for 2002 to 2006. Contributions and fundraising revenues in 2006 were $1.8m and came from over 2000 individuals and organizations. 60% of donors from the USA, 26% from Europe and 24% from Asia and South America. Total revenue is considerably down on 2005 when contributions were $2.6m. This is attributed to there having been more contributions in 2005 primarily for natural disaster relief. My reading is that from 2005 to 2006 there was a decline in net assets because 2006 expenditure ($2.098m) exceeded 2006 revenue. This 2006 expenditure was divided into 20% on grants to humanitarian projects, 26% on various administrative matters (distribution, technology support, venue costs, general and administrative, bank fees, other fundraising, advertising and PR) and an even more staggering 54% on ‘materials development’ and ‘materials production’. This is a ‘charity’ that grudgingly gives 20 p in every pound to ‘good causes’ (when you donate you have to re-confirm that you really did mean money to the tsunami or whatever and not the ‘general’ fund) ..chosen only for their publicity impact/ cost ratio … that then shamelessly spends the other 80 purely on boasting and promotion of itself and Prem Rawat who, far from the prime benefactor is likely the major expense.
best wishes Tim
Modified by tommo at Thu, Jun 07, 2007, 17:48:23
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The report states that the yearly accounts are from audited reports with the exception of 2006, audit to be completed in June 2007
Modified by tommo at Thu, Jun 07, 2007, 17:55:22
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80 [p on the pound/cents on the dollar] on boaasting and promotion of itself and Prem Rawat who, far from the prime genefiactor is likely the major expense.Great analysis of TPRF. But, hey, a man's gotta eat. right?
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Tim, Thanks for posting that. TPRF have now included some of that material on their web site. Nik
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