By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project
Shake hands with GreenLatinos
I would like to introduce you to one of the state’s most active 501(c)(3) nonprofits–GreenLatinos.
Their website is linked first below. Near the bottom of their site, they describe themselves as (quoting):
“GreenLatinos convenes an active comunidad of environmental, conservation, and climate justice leaders rooted in the power and wisdom of our culture, united to uplift our priorities, and driven to secure our political, economic, cultural, and environmental liberation. We envision a thriving and equitable society where historically overburdened communities and future generations are able to enjoy a renewed and protected ecosystem, liberated from disproportionate environmental injustices.”
For a different perspective, I offer you Influence Watch’s description (from their GreenLatinos page linked second below–I left the links intact and the numbers are footnote links):
“GreenLatinos is a national membership-based grantmaking coalition of Latino community organizations and individuals that advocates in favor of left-of-enter environmentalist policies. GreenLatinos has also stated its opposition to the use of zero carbon nuclear energy. 1 The organization has previously received government funding including a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 2“
Left-of-center is apt: from my own experience with them, I can tell you that they are a frequently-heard testifier on all things environmental. I hear them, or people affiliated with/spurred by them (more below) testifying on bills as well as in front of the Air Quality Control Commission, etc.
There is a whole lot that I could cover about GreenLatinos, but I want to use them as a case study in something you should make a habit of checking if you are researching nonprofits on your own. If you’d like to stray from that and go deeper into GreenLatinos other activities, the links will be, as they always are, below.
Influence Watch does a good job on giving a 30,000 foot look at a nonprofit. You can see an overview about a whole lot: financials, grants, compensation, etc. When it comes to in-depth detail on financials, however, there is none better than ProPublica in my view. It’s not like you can’t get the information from Influence Watch, I just like ProPublica’s organization better when it comes to tax documents.
ProPublica’s GreenLatinos page is linked third below.
Some nonprofits are required to file, and make publicly available, their Form 990 tax returns. I want to point you to a specific part of any nonprofit’s 990, the Schedule J section. This is where the group lists out compensation for (quoting from the 990 form itself): “For certain Officers, Directors, Trustees, Key Employees, and Highest
Compensated Employees.” If you want to know who the big wheels are at a nonprofit, this is where you look.
Screenshots 1a – 1c show the Schedule J for GreenLatinos’ 2024 Form 990.
What you see here is pretty common. The list of questions at the top will often be blank; that is, the answers will almost always be no. It’s not until you get to the next page (picture 1c) that you see any detail. As you can see here with GreenLatinos, their “Officers, etc.” is just one man (who is, at least by this teacher’s standards, highly compensated indeed).
Let’s return to a tool specific to ProPublica. If you stick on their GreenLatinos main page, you see one of the really handy tools which ProPublica puts up from data scraped out of the Form 990s, the “Notable Expenses” summary.
Screenshot 2 is a collage made of screenshots from GreenLatinos’ “Notable Expenses” summary, labeled by tax year.
This is one of those cases where you are wise to pay attention to not only the percentages, but the absolute numbers too. Percentages change when the top of the fraction changes, but also when the bottom changes. Seeing swings in the percentages might mean something, but it might not. Take a second to glance over at absolute numbers to see if they are swinging wildly too. If not, it may just be the bottom of the fraction changing.
It is the expenses where I’ll end because GreenLatinos’s summary numbers tell you something about the group.
In looking over GreenLatinos Form 990s, I do see some grants, but nowhere near the scale of some of the other heavyweights in Colorado’s nonprofit ecosystem. Look at their expenses, however. If they’re not granting away lots of money, it’s going somewhere and GreenLatinos is putting a lot into salaries. A lot, again, in comparison with other nonprofits.
Put this next to their mission statement quoted above (but repeated here for convenience): “GreenLatinos convenes an active comunidad of environmental, conservation, and climate justice leaders rooted in the power and wisdom of our culture, united to uplift our priorities, and driven to secure our political, economic, cultural, and environmental liberation.”
When I say that they are active in testifying, I mean it. It isn’t just one person calling in and giving the company line. It’s several people in a group (including Spanish speakers needing translators). Their testimonies may vary (slightly), but they’re all on message together.
It’s speculation on my part–albeit an educated speculation–but I would bet you my lunch that they have full and part time staff who reach out to people, help them decide what to say, help remind them of when and how to testify, etc. That is, one of the major purposes of the organization is to get people in front of boards. Well, the people that will say the things they want said.
Get in the habit of taking a look at who nonprofits are paying big money to and where they’re spending their revenue. Where we (including nonprofits) put our money tells you what we value.
If you are looking at nonprofits and seeing something worth sharing, give me a heads up. Lord knows there is plenty of room to be shining lights around this state!
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/greenlatinos/#note-2
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/263386082
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
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