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The American Civil Liberties Union sent out a frantic e-mail last week, asking for more contributions because the group's single largest donor could no longer give money to it."Here is the situation," the e-mail said. "The ACLU was recently notified that our largest individual donor, David Gelbaum, who contributed over $20 million to the organization in 2009, will not be able to continue his support due to a change in his financial circumstances."In the past four years, Mr. Gelbaum has given the ACLU $94 million."In one fell swoop, we have lost 22% of the entire organization's budget," the ACLU said.A statement from Mr. Gelbaum, who had donated anonymously to the group and is a wealthy California conservationist, said his investments in clean energy put him in a bad economic position."For a number of years, your organization has received very substantial charitable contributions from me," Mr. Gelbaum said. "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."Mr. Gelbaum also gave a detailed account of how much money he had given each group and for what purposes. He said he wanted all of the details public."So that everyone understands that the shift in my financial circumstances is the cause of the reduction in giving, and not any disapproval or dissatisfaction with the programs. To the contrary, I hope they will thrive with the generous support of many other donors, large and small."
