Big (really big) ACLU donor named

Newport Beach philanthropist David Gelbaum has given $94 million to various programs of the American Civil Liberties Union since 2005, another $48 million to the Sierra Club Foundation, and a whopping $247 million to the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund at the California Community Foundation. He has preferred to make his donations anonymously, but he was outed this week by the New York Times. Now he has announced that a serious liquidity problem with his wealth will mean a steep drop in his gifts, and possibly mean big cuts at those three organizations.

From Gelbaum's statement to those groups, released by the ACLU:

The situation is this. For a number of years, your organization has received very substantial charitable contributions from me. I am willing to be publicly named now because my investments in alternative, clean energy companies have placed me in a highly illiquid position as a result of the general credit crisis in the American and world financial systems.

Consequently, and much to my regret, I will not be able to make donations of this size starting in 2010 and continuing indefinitely. Several of the largest organizations I have funded in the last five years have had to make plans to wind down major areas of their work. These are programs I have been proud to support, including the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund that serves the needs of service members and veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the race and poverty work of the ACLU Foundation, and the Military Families Outdoors program of the Sierra Club Foundation. The future viability of these programs will depend on the generosity of others.

I have consented to disclosure so that my charitable recipients will not be constrained by donor confidentiality, may fully explain how these programs were created and financed, and may ask others to step forward to help sustain them in the future.