There has been such RAMPANT abuse of this Chuck that it had to stop
SOMEWHERE.



I do agree there was a lot of abuse.
Working within the industry, I got a real eyeful. Sometimes the organization I
worked for would be competing with other charitable groups. I've seen some
deals made (by competitors) that smelled like dead fish *after* it had passed
through an entire digestive tract.

It's true that some of the "donors" were more motivated by greed than by
charitable impulse, and some of the organizations used that motivation to
excellent advantage.

I can remember cases where people were so eager to believe the load of crap
they were fed by certain organizations that competing against those
organizations, based on reality, was pretty tough.

There are a number of organizations that have done a lot of good work with
proceeds from this type of program, many that have done at least some good work
(sounds personally familiar), and a lot that were simply using the tax laws to
buy boats well below a reasonable wholesale market value.

I got out of the business when they cut my pay. My last year in, I secured and
resold over 50 boats, almost all in the 25-50 foot category. Other fund raisers
had done 6, 8, 10, etc. A *lot* of money flowed through that office, some of it
into legitimate programs. Lesson learned, don't be the highest paid guy in the
place unless you're the owner. To this day, I'm still baffled why any company
thinks they can overpay a guy working on a percentage basis. They should have
hoped I would make seven figures a year. :-)