This is what 13-year-old Taylor Storch left behind when she died in a skiing accident three years ago: a heart, which went on to beat in the chest of a 39-year-old mother in Arizona; two kidneys, which saved two separate people in Colorado; two corneas, which helped restore sight to two others. In other words, life.
That, ostensibly at least, is what's being referred to by Coppell-based Taylor's Gift, the foundation her parents established in her memory. Alternately, it could be interpreted as another byproduct of Taylor's legacy: a handsome, six-figure salary for dad.
According to tax documents filed for 2011, the most recent year available, Todd Storch earned $100,000 per year as the foundation's president and collected another $8,500 in expenses.
For the head of a small nonprofit, that salary is high. For the director of a small nonprofit that had total revenues of $163,000 for that year, that figure is astronomical.
Storch defended his compensation in an interview Monday with WFAA.
"Every organization has to have an operating budget, have a strategic plan, has to have the right people in place to get their mission accomplished," he told reporter Janet St. James.
The mission of Taylor's Gift is to raise awareness about the good that comes from organ donation. The Storches' story, which played out on the national media three years ago, did that.
The $10,000 the organization currently spends per year on "advertising and promotion," on the other hand -- the only significant expenditure that doesn't cover salary, benefits, travel, or administrative costs -- doesn't do much.
You don't need Charity Navigator CEO Ken Berger to tell you that Taylor's Gift is a terrible charity, but St. James talks to him anyways, just to be safe.
"Good heavens," he told her. "More than half the money is going to just one salary? It's a very worrisome sign, indeed."
