Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer

Author:Jon Krakauer [Krakauer, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0307948765
Amazon: B004XHVOW4
Publisher: Byliner
Published: 2011-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

Using CAI funds, Mortenson has purchased many tens of thousands of copies of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, which he has subsequently handed out to attendees at his speaking engagements. A significant number of these books were charged to CAI’s Pennies for Peace program, contrary to Mortenson’s frequent assertions that CAI uses “every penny” of every donation made to Pennies for Peace to support schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rather than buy Mortenson's books at wholesale cost from his publisher, moreover, CAI has paid retail price from commercial outlets such as Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Buying from retailers allows Mortenson to receive his author’s royalty for each book given away, and also allows these handouts to augment his ranking on national bestseller lists. (Had he ordered the books from his publisher, Mortenson would not have received a royalty, nor would bestseller lists reflect those purchases.) According to one of Mortenson’s friends, when he learned that Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love had bumped Three Cups of Tea from number one down to number two on the New York Times paperback nonfiction list, “Greg was furious. He started buying books like crazy, with the CAI credit card, to try and put Three Cups back on top.”

Book sales aside, Mortenson’s speaking engagements—which are arranged by the Penguin Speakers Bureau, a division of the corporation that publishes his books, Penguin Group USA—are extremely lucrative for him. When Mortenson travels to speak, he typically does two or three events per city. He appears at many of them pro bono, but for some sixty events each year he charges upwards of $30,000 per event, plus $3,000 in travel expenses. According to former CAI staffers, the Institute has received none of the millions of dollars Mortenson has received for such events. In fact, CAI has never received the $3,000 per booking Mortenson gets reimbursed for travel expenses, despite the fact that CAI, not Mortenson, has paid for all of his travel costs (including chartered jets and deluxe hotel suites), as well as expenses incurred by family members and personal assistants who often travel with him. “Greg is of the attitude that CAI exists because of him,” says an ex-staffer who held a senior position in the organization’s Montana office. “Any money he raises for CAI, according to Greg’s logic, is therefore his money, and he can spend it however he wants.”

According to the CAI website, “Central Asia Institute is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to use every dollar contributed as efficiently as possible. It is our goal to spend no more than 15% of your donation on overhead (administrative and fundraising costs), and to spend 85% of your contribution on our programs.” What this statement fails to disclose is that for accounting purposes, CAI reports the millions of dollars it spends on book advertising and chartered jets as “program expenses,” rather than as fundraising or other overhead. Were they reported honestly, CAI’s fundraising and administrative expenses would actually exceed 50 percent of its annual budget.

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