Don Imus frequently talked about and raised money for his ranch in New Mexico. It was organized as a non-profit in 1999 for the purpose of housing children with cancer during the summer. He built a 21,000 square foot home on 3,400 acres of land SouthEast of Santa Fe. Each summer, about 200 children would visit – 10 children would stay in 5 bedrooms and do things like learn how to ride a horse and eat vegetarian meals. <\/p>\n
Eventually the children were sick children without cancer, and brothers and sisters of children who had died of SIDS. The operating budget of the ranch was $1.4 million, and the smaller number of children got the spending per child up to $28,000 at the peak when it got scrutiny from the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n
The ranch stopped housing children in 2014, and Imus stopped living and doing his show from there after falling from a horse and hurting himself. Over the years, authorities wondered if the Ranch was being used too much for Imus’s own personal benefit. Despite having stopped being used for its charitable purpose in 2014, it still paid over half a million dollars on salaries in 2016. At the beginning of 2016, the shuttered non-profit was sitting on over $7 million in cash. To still have some reason to exist as a tax-exempt charity, it gave $250,000 to a hospital in New Jersey.<\/p>\n