Ruth Graham has an interesting article in the Atlantic about a mega church pastor that paid a consulting firm $210,000 to promote the pastor’s book. She questioned whether church money should be used to promote the pastor’s brand.

A couple of weeks, a college’s PR department sent me information about the president’s new book. They probably bought an e-mail list of bloggers and writers. I get e-mails from PR flacks every day asking that I review books or products, but this is the first plug that I received from a university. I was a little annoyed. College tuition money was used to promote the college president’s personal brand. The college website had a whole page devoted to her latest book.

Is this a similar problematic use of funds? Tuition money benefitted an administrator, not the students. I angrily deleted the e-mail.

And tangentally related is Lady Gaga’s Foundation.

The nonprofit — which took in $2.65 million in revenue — paid out a staggering $406,552 for legal fees, $300,000 for “strategic development” and $150,000 for “philanthropic consulting,” the latest filings show.

Fees added to the hefty expenses. They included $348,000 for the bus-tour production; $77,923 for travel; $62,836 for stage production; $60,000 for research; $58,678 for publicity; $50,000 for social-media development; and $47,825 for meeting and event coordination.

Total expenses came to $1.85 million.

Among all that, the foundation paid out a single $5,000 grant.

Charities, churches, foundations, and universities have to account for the expenditures in clear ways.