This is number 5 in a series of five illustrations of the good and the bad in program service descriptions appearing in Internal Revenue Service Forms 990.

Yad Ezra V’Shulamit

Below is the description of program service accomplishments as listed by the US charity Yad Ezra V’Shulamit. However, instead of describing its own activities, it lists the programs of its Israeli grantee. The US charity should have included only a discussion of each particular project it financed, including amounts spent on, and benefits received by, Israeli beneficiaries. (See Descriptions of Charity Programs: What the IRS Wants for more on IRS requirements for descriptions of charity programs.)

First program. THE ORGANIZATION PROVIDES GRANTS TO AN ISRAELI NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION WHICH: (1) PROVIDES APPROXIMATELY 500 MEALS DAILY IN CHILDREN’S CENTERS; (2) DISTRIBUTES 3,000 WEEKLY FOOD BASKETS; (3) DISTRIBUTES 25,000 FOOD BASKETS BEFORE HOLIDAYS; (4) PROVIDES FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD TO VICTIMS OF TERROR AND WAR; (4) GIVES YOUTH-AT-RISK COUNSELING AND; (5)RUNS A JOB DESK TO HELP THE UNEMPLOYED FIND WORK TO END THE CYCLE OF POVERTY.

Other pages in this section: Chai Lifeline follows IRS instructions in describing its program accomplishments, The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research describes its activities but does not provide quantitative measures of its performance, American Friends of the Israel Museum grants the Israeli Museum tens of millions annually, but describes its accomplishments in the same 16 words each year, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger describes its large number of programs in a single unreadable paragraph of over a thousand words.