The noted songwriter, Irving Berlin, assigned all the royalties from his popular song, ‘God Bless America’ to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Over the decades it has earned millions for the Scouts.
Berlin said it was not just a song but “an expression of my feeling toward the country to which I owe what I have and what I am.”
He lived in abject poverty in NY after escaping Russian pogroms. He was self-taught and went on to write hundreds of songs......some of them still popular today.
God Bless America quickly became a second National Anthem.In 1954, Berlin received a special Congressional Gold Medal from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for contributing the song. (WIKI)
How the BSA benefits every time you hear ‘God Bless America’ 2/03/2016
Berlin released “God Bless America” in 1938 (though he had written it two decades earlier). In 1940, he established the God Bless America Fund, setting aside the song’s royalties “for the benefit of the youth of America,” according to this story in The New York Times. The fund’s two major beneficiaries: Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in New York.
And so, for the past 75 years, every time “God Bless America” has been performed, a portion of the royalties have gone to the Greater New York Councils (which covers the 5 boroughs of NYC) of the Boy Scouts of America.
During the last 5 years of the Cultural Marxism takeover of the BSA I recall reading an article that said that the GBA Fund board of directors were threatening to withhold its customary funding of the BSA if it didn't change its membership rules to permit openly homosexual youths and adults.