At best, he didn’t know, which means he really didn’t care enough to even check to make sure the money was going to where it was supposed to be going? Like, the ONE thing a charity does? Even so, in 10 years, he wasn’t suspicious at all about not hearing back from these organizations (like a “Thank You for your donation letter”)? He didn’t give a shit about the charity, and used it to flaunt his own brand and ego. And that’s the BEST case scenario.
Worst case scenario he is knowingly committing charity fraud…by using his own Mother as bait. Fucking deplorable if you ask me.
I don’t know about anyone else but I usually check my account before taking out anything over a certain amount. Especially if it was in the thousands as he says.
I think I've watched maybe 2 The Completionist videos ever. I'm not in denial about anything here. I am waiting for the other side to respond, and possibly for the IRS to get involved before any final judgement. I just know his brothers statement sounded incredibly sketchy. Like I wouldn't be surprised if he was embezzling money from the charity sketchy, while Jirard seemed genuine. Maybe Jirard is just a better actor/more charismatic, it is his job after all. Time will tell.
As a board member of his own charity, he has to be aware of it at some point. Heck, he even acknowledged to know this since 2021 and still nothing happened.
I don't see how there's any good explanation though for having a website quote thanking them for donating from someone who was fired for money issues 7 years prior.
Jirard has never come across as the type of guy who would knowingly just sit on something like this. Another video and thread here seems to imply his brother is running the account and Jirard didn’t know until last year that the money hadn’t been donated, so the brother may be the one primarily at fault? The fact that it was just sitting there unused also implies to me more incompetence or negligence instead of bad intent, so I do want to give them at least a bit of BOTD. That said, that still leaves a whole year where both brothers were just sitting on the money. If they really are looking for “the right place” to donate the money to, they’d better pick a place/places fast and get that money out. Either way they’re probably gonna see a lot fewer donations in the future. If they’re just collecting money from their followers and donating it somewhere else, they may as well just do what a bunch of other content creators do (and what I think they do for their other charitable stuff IIRC) and just do marathon videos/streams with links to just donate to the charities directly in the chat/comments. Cuts out the middleman and keeps them out of this kind of trouble.
That said, that still leaves a whole year where both brothers were just sitting on the money. If they really are looking for “the right place” to donate the money to, they’d better pick a place/places fast and get that money out.
Sorry I don’t know much about these guys and how they operate, so it may need explaining, but that rings alarm bells for me. Why didn’t they know and communicate that with everyone donating to begin with? I’m not sure I’d have parted with any money if I didn’t know upfront where it was going.
Jirard was asked essentially that by Mutahar and Karl and he said that the foundation was “looking for the right place to donate it to that aligns with our values”, and that when he found out, there was internal conflict within the foundation about when and where to donate, with Jirard himself, by his own account, being in favor of getting the money out sooner than later. Unfortunately, that just led to further delays. Just terrible incompetence by all parties involved.
Yeah, unless it’s a specific fundraiser (as in, “We match all external donations up to X”), there’s no reason not to donate directly, in particular for cases where it’s easy enough to find a charity to directly support that isn’t someone’s personal tax deduction scheme.
The mechanics are similar but it’s a very different game. I would say look up gameplay and decide for yourself if you’d enjoy a 2D version of Risk of Rain.
Funny enough, I think the most blatant and consequential example of this not being able to be taken in good faith is the use of the quote from the UCSF person on the charity website. A person who was fired for money problems 7 years before the charity existed.
No matter what explanation they can give for why they have a quote from him thanking them for donating to UCSF, I see no way for the explanation to be good.
I’d say watch both videos, Muta’s video is a little more in depth, but it is just odd to hold onto the money for so long. At least they aren’t spending it on nonsensical things, but if they get audited, that will be a big problem with how they filled out their taxes. I’m hoping for the best though, I do like Jirard and I can’t imagine how it is with your parent/family going through that
It’s more than odd, it’s deception. He has been talking to his donators as if the money has been going to charities for years. He has named specific charities that haven’t received a single dime from them.
Even after he found out it didn’t go anywhere he was still shilling it as it was ALL going to charity. Using his dead mother too. As someone who’s Father died with Alzheimer’s, fuck this guy.
The only thing the charity has done with the money donated has been to pay for it’s own expenses. The rest has just been sitting in an account somewhere. No grants or anything have been made with the money so far.
How can it have expenses at all if it’s just a bank account held by the guy’s brother? Why does it need to be a charity or exist at all if they’re just donating the money to another group, why be a middle man?
This whole thing reeks, imo.
Edit: Duh, stupid of me. The charity streams and website cost money. Still stinks. How does that add up to 11k expenses one year and 29k expenses another year. How does that make any sense?
In all honesty I’m shocked. Jirard is one of the few YouTubers I have (well, had) a tonne of respect for.
Part of me wants to hope there’s a rational explanation for why he and his foundation sat on viewer donations for a whole decade whilst knowingly misleading donors that their funds were going to a charitable cause, but I really think this is going to end his career. Just wait until every other YouTuber picks this story up, or when it goes viral on Reddit…
Either the OHF have been incompetent with filing their annual returns, have been incompetent with actually ensuring the money goes to the right people, or there’s some embezzlement going on.
Well, Jirard admitted on the call in the video that he knew almost two years ago that the charity had never donated to anything. So strike those options off your list.
Same with feeling shocked. He always seemed so wholesome and I like his videos. If this is a bad at it seems, then yeah. His channel is going to start hemorrhaging subscribers.
Even if keeping the money on on a bank account for nine years was an honest mistake: Don’t tell that every penny will be donated and then deduct expenses.
Is it not normal for a charity to deduct expenses from donated funds? I didnt think that was the scandalous part, I always thought that was standard practice for charities in general.
Yes, it is normal but then credible organizations then won’t make the claim that everything will be donated. When such statements are made, the reasonable expectation is that costs are covered by 3rd parties.
youtube.com
Aktywne