The star-studded Hollywood charity “Time’s Up,” founded after dozens of women came forward to speak up about sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and even sexual assault in the entertainment and media industries, raised more than $3 million last year, the New York Post reports, but spent most of that on salaries, not helping victims.
“Time’s Up” has plenty of A-list backers, ranging from media mogul Oprah Winfrey to Hollywood social justice elites like Brie Larsen, Reese Witherspoon, and Amy Schumer and, at one time, stood on the front lines of the battle to expose exploitative behavior in the entertainment industry, backing many of the women who came forward with claims against Harvey Weinstein and others.
A few years on, though, the New York Post says, the organization is spending more on posh conferences and salaries than it is on victims’ causes.
“The organization, which is comprised of the Time’s Up Foundation and Time’s Up Now Inc., raised $3,670,219 in 2018, its founding year, but spent $1,407,032 on salaries and only $312,001 on the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund for people who have experienced sexual harassment,” the outlet reported Monday.
Altogether, Time’s Up spent nearly 40% of its income on salaries.
An additional $150,000 went to conferences and retreats designed, the Post notes, “to build community and spark critical conversations about gender equity,” even though the organization’s stated mission, at least originally, was to root out harassment in Hollywood, not necessarily to promote worker’s rights.
Now, the organization’s website says its mission is to pursue “safe, fair and dignified work for women of all kinds. We work to make sure that women are free from harassment and other forms of discrimination on the job, have equal opportunity for economic security, and can achieve the highest positions of power wherever they work.”
The group did splash out hundreds of thousands on “legal” expenses, but the Post seems to suggest that money went to high-profile lobbying firms, not defending the victims of high-profile Hollywood aggressors.
Time’s Up has seen its share of controversy since launching in 2018, beyond its expenditures. In early 2019, former CEO Lisa Border stepped down amid claims that her son had groped a California woman, according to the New York Post. And despite their pledge to assist the alleged victims of all high-profile aggressors, Time’s Up adamantly refused to aid Tara Reade, a former aide to then-Senator Joe Biden who came forward, in the summer of 2020, to accuse the then-Democratic presidential nominee of sexual assault.
The founder of the #MeToo movement, which gave birth to Time’s Up, even sided with Joe Biden at the time, claiming that Biden was still fit to be president despite Reade’s allegations of misconduct.
“My stance has never wavered: survivors have a right to speak their truth and to be given the space to heal,” Tarana Burke wrote. Biden, she said, however, “could demonstrate what it looks like to be both accountable and electable.”
Biden did not allow access to private documents, though, that could have shed light on Reade’s claim that she notified human resources of problematic behavior in Biden’s office at the time. Instead, Biden offered a qualified apology while denying Reade’s claims.