Just Who Is JDRF Therapeutic Ventures, LLC? Why is it such a secret?

You might not have realized it, but a few years ago, the folks at JDRF secretly (it wasn't generally publicized, although some organization bigwigs, board members, etc. knew about it) established a legally separate organization to handle their industry partnerships which is legally organized as an LLC rather than a non-profit organization.  This enables the JDRF to not have to disclose much detail in the nonprofit's 990 tax returns which are subject to more scrutiny from just about anyone, as the tax returns for the nonprofit must be disclosed to the public.  Some this quite beneficial and perhaps even useful, as industry partners often demand a level of secrecy that really wasn't feasible as a nonprofit organization.  That's probably the "official" line the organization would give you if it was ever pressed on it.  But some of it also enables the organization to effectively hide (from financial scrutiny, anyway) where its putting at least some of your money as a fundraiser because the LLC has absolutely no legal obligation to disclose anything, even if the LLC is run by JDRF.  If the LLC was consuming a top-5 slot among recipients of JDRF's funding, we might see some clues in the organization's tax returns, but that seems unlikely, hence its really a big black hole that the JDRF can use to shield itself (and industry partners) from greater financial scrutiny -- and its perfectly legal.The organization is known (un)officially as JDRF Therapeutic Ventu...
Source: Scott's Web Log - Category: Endocrinology Tags: industry partnerships JDRF JDRF Therapeutic Ventures LLC nonprofits Source Type: blogs