Though YouTuber Jirard Khalil — a.k.a. The Completionist — may be all about following through when it comes to video games, it appears he took a very different approach when it came to philanthropy.
On Monday, fellow gaming creators Karl Jobst and SomeOrdinaryGamers headed to YouTube with allegations that a charity founded by Khalil’s father in honor of the streamer’s late mother had not donated any of the roughly $600,000 it had raised for dementia research.
After delving into the Open Hand Foundation’s tax documents, the gaming YouTubers discovered that despite incurring administrative costs, the organization — which Khalil had been an “active” part of along with his siblings per the charity’s website — hadn’t actually contributed funds to any relevant groups at least since landing nonprofit status in 2014.
“For the past ten years, they have raised over $600,000, and it’s all just sitting in their bank account,” Jobst said of the charity, which was founded in 2003.
While the Open Hand Foundation did list the University of California San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center — possibly incorrectly — as one of their “benefactors” on their website, documents hinted that the research group hadn’t received any donations from the charity in at least nine years.
”Despite Open Hand saying the money goes to help fund research, and despite the fact that everyone believes their money is going to a worthwhile cause, this is simply not the case,” Jobst continued. “In 10 years of filings, they have not dispersed a single dollar to anyone. They have kept everything for themselves.”
Though one of Khalil’s siblings quickly fired back against these claims, alleging that prior to gaining nonprofit status, the Open Hand Foundation had “donated body parts for research and made financial contributions to an institution that, in our view, made insufficient progress,” Jobst wasn’t sold.
“Essentially, Open Hand is claiming that because they made donations before they were registered in 2014, which we cannot confirm because it wasn’t public at the time, this means it is acceptable to not pass along of the money that the public has given them until they find someone they deem worthy,” he explained.
These alarming revelations come less than a month after the YouTuber’s annual IndieLand event, a 30-hour charity live stream in which "all proceeds earned during the event” went to “The Open Hand Foundation."
Though it remains unclear whether or not that $600,000 will actually go towards dementia research, one thing is certain — somewhere in the ether, George Costanza is weeping tears of pride.
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