Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina has placed defunding Planned Parenthood at the center of her campaign, but the organization that controls her charitable organization, the Fiorina Foundation, has given nearly half a million dollars to the group since 2011, according to the Daily Beast.
The publications says Fiorina’s charitable foundation is in fact not a foundation at all. The Fiorina Foundation is actually a donor-advised fund that Fiorina and her husband have with the Ayco Charitable Foundation. According to the Daily Beast, it is used by Ayco to distribute “undisclosed sums to undisclosed recipients at undisclosed times.” Donors give up the rights to their money so, although they’re given advisor status, they don’t necessarily know where it’ll end up going.
From 2011 to 2013, Ayco distributed $467,275 to Planned Parenthood. Because of the anonymity of the forms that Ayco files, there is no way of knowing which donors’ money goes where. Fiorina’s press secretary Anna Epstein says that none of the candidate’s money went to PP, but it’s interesting that she’s comfortable being associated with a foundation that provides the program with funding given her impassioned speech opposing the women’s health organization during the second GOP debate.
Fiorina also served as the chair of Good360 from 2012 to 2015. In 2013, the organization donated $18,022 to the Abortion Access Network of Arizona.