Mayor Daley's Wife's Compensation for Charity Consultation

Charity Governance has an interesting blog entry from a month ago dealing with Senator Daschle.The name of Mayor Daley's wife Maggie comes up:

Senator Grassley should not limit his investigation to Daschle's personal tax transgressions. Daschle also may have been instrumental in the abuse of a charity. EduCap, a Section 501(c)(3) organization, makes student loans. Its board chair, CEO, and mastermind is Catherine Reynolds. She received over $1 million in compensation from the charity for its fiscal year ending September 30, 2007, according to its 2007 Form 990. EduCap made its largest grant for that tax year— $8,041,955—to the Academy of Achievement, another Section 501(c)(3) organization.

Catherine Reynolds is married to Wayne Reynolds, who is the chairman and CEO of Academy of Achievement. Interestingly, nobody at the Academy of Achievement receives compensation as an employee, but this Section 501(c)(3) organization paid ASC Management $612,193 in support services fees for the fiscal year ending September 20, 2007 according to Academy of Achivement's 2007 Form 990. Wayne Reynolds is the sole shareholder of ASC Management according the Academy's Form 990. Also of note are payments to one Margaret C. Daley as site consultant of $90,000 in the same year. We are unable to confirm, but believe that this is Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s spouse. She is shown in at least one picture attending the Academy’s 2008 summit in Hawaii, where her husband also was present.

Senator Daschle traveled aboard EduCap’s corporate jet to vacation locations in order to speak with members of the board of directors of Academy of Achievement. One trip was to the Bahamas and the other one was to the Middle East. We are a bit troubled by a U.S. charity holding meetings outside the United States at desirable vacation locations. The claim is that Daschle was helping them with site selection—at least in the case of the second trip. We thought Margaret Daley was doing that.

For more on the charity world of Maggie Daley.