{"id":149545,"date":"2025-09-10T14:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T19:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldtribune.com\/?p=149545"},"modified":"2025-09-11T14:03:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T14:03:22","slug":"who-benefited-star-studded-concert-for-l-a-wildfire-victims-raised-100-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/who-benefited-star-studded-concert-for-l-a-wildfire-victims-raised-100-million\/","title":{"rendered":"Who benefited? Star-studded concert for L.A. wildfire victims raised $100 million"},"content":{"rendered":"

by<\/em><\/span> WorldTribune<\/strong> Staff<\/em><\/span><\/span>, September 10, 2025 <\/em>Real World News<\/span><\/a>
\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Victims of the Los Angeles area wildfires say they have yet to see a dime of the $100 million raised in a benefit concert in January which featured performances by Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish.<\/p>\n

\"\"“The massive, much-ballyhooed FireAid event \u2014 which drew heavy-hitter supporters such as former Veep Kamala Harris and her hubby, Doug Emhoff \u2014 has doled out the dough to 197 charities, many of which are focused on a variety of niche, woke and DEI causes not directly related to helping fire victims,” the New York Post reported<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“One charity is focused on buying uniforms for kiddie choir singers ($100,000) and another offers pet health care ($250,000).”<\/p>\n

The report adds that event organizers never claimed the funds would go directly to helping wildfire victims.<\/p>\n

Several grants went to nonprofits that focus on political advocacy for minority groups, including the NAACP Pasadena ($100,000), the Los Angeles Black Worker Center ($250,000), My Tribe Rise ($200,000), and the CA Native Vote Project ($100,000), which conducts voter registration drives for Native Americans across the state.<\/p>\n

One group got $500,000 to seed burned forests with restorative fungi and bacteria. Another half-million-dollar grant went to a group that provides mental health care for musicians.<\/p>\n

Other beneficiaries ranged from the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation ($100,000) to a group making podcasts about the wildfires ($100,000), to the local YMCA ($250,000).<\/p>\n

Missing from the list were the names of people with burned-down houses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of people in our group chats who are like, \u2018What\u2019s the FireAid money being used for?\u2019 Because I don\u2019t think any of us have seen any of it,\u201d said Ben Einbinder, who has become a community organizer since losing his home in the Palisades.<\/p>\n

FireAid has revealed which organizations it has given money to, but hasn\u2019t revealed what exactly the organizations are doing with the funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the organizations \u2026 it would be hard to say whether they were actually using the FireAid money for wildfire relief,\u201d Einbinder said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a s\u2014tshow, to be quite honest,\u201d said Pacific Palisades resident David Howard, whose house burned down. \u201cAnd it\u2019s disheartening because people are suffering enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The situation amounts to false advertising at best, Howard said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven the artists performing on stage were telling fans and people engaging with the concert that this money is going directly to the victims,\u201d Howard added. \u201cBut the trickle-down on that makes it so the people who need it the most haven\u2019t seen anything.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\n

Support<\/span><\/a> Free Press Foundation<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by WorldTribune Staff, September 10, 2025 Real World News Victims of the Los Angeles area wildfires say they have yet to see a dime of the $100 million raised in a benefit concert in January which featured performances by Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish. “The massive, much-ballyhooed FireAid event \u2014 which drew heavy-hitter supporters such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":149565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,3,10,12,5],"tags":[669,6],"class_list":["post-149545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-california","category-exclusives","category-top-stories","category-world-links","category-world-tribune","tag-who-benefited-star-studded-concert-for-l-a-wildfire-victims-raised-100-million","tag-worldtribune-com","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149566,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149545\/revisions\/149566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}