Some Charities are Keeping Sterling's Donations

Some of the many non-profit organizations to which L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling gave money over the years have returned it–most famously, UCLA, which announced last week that it would give back the portion of a $3 million donation that Sterling and his wife had committed for medical research. However, some charitable organizations in California are keeping Sterling’s donations while condemning his recorded remarks on race.

The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, which received $10,000 donations from Sterling each year from 2010 through 2012, said that it had already spent the money on free Holocaust education for “at-risk, foster and on-probation youth,” according to a report by Jordan Novack and Brett Warner in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. In an official statement, the museum said: “Perhaps Mr. Sterling and his family will choose to make amends … by redoubling his donations to organizations that combat the very corrosive disease from which he obviously suffers. That would seem to be the appropriate way forward from this debacle.”

Other community organizations that declined to return Sterling’s donations stated they would not accept future contributions from him. Typically, few charities can afford to return donations that have already been spent.