What Will It Take To Stop the Cheating of Veteran Organizations?

by Gary Snyder

We have seen hundreds of millions of dollars scammed from veterans organizations. They are popping up so fast that enforcement agencies can't keep up with the explosion. It is virtually a daily occurrence.

The key players in the latest one were just indicted. A federal grand jury named five people, including the head of the National Association of Systems Administrators Education Corp., and the Liberating Solutions Corporation, a Crystal Lake, Illinois non-profit agency, designed to work with with homeless veterans. The government says thay they defrauded veterans, businesses and the federal government.

According to its website, Liberating Solutions works with NASA Education's "Fresh Start Program," which trains and then places homeless or disabled veterans within a company. Liberating Solutions has done event planning, construction and landscaping work and has worked with the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force and the City of O'Fallon.

The indictment also charges that five defendants failed to pay legally required wages to the military veterans, under NASA's education program, for work received from federal and local contracts.

It also charges the defendants for fraudulently keeping excess federal grant funding related to NASA Education's semi-annual "Stand Down" event, which provides veterans throughout the suburbs with food, clothing, consultation and networking opportunities.

The U.S. labor department provides an organization with up to $10,000 to sponsor the event and requires the group to submit receipts for the costs for putting on the event. The indictment charges NASA Education for falsely claiming that certain expenses were incurred by Liberating Solutions.

Nonprofit Imperative gathers its information principally from public documents...some of which are directly quoted. Virtually all cited are in some phase of criminal proceedings; some have not been charged, however. Cites in various media: Featured in print, broadcast, and online media outlets, including: Vermont Public Radio, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Sun News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wall Street Journal (Profile, News and Photos), FOX2, ABC Spotlight on the News, WWJ Radio, Ethics World, Aspen Philanthropy Newsletter, Harvard Business Review, Current Affairs, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, St. Petersburg Times, B, USA Today Topics, Newsweek.com, Responsive Philanthropy Magazine, New York Times...and many more Nonprofits: On the Brink (2006) Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector (2011)

A Great Look Behind the Scenes At the Susan G. Komen for the Cure

http://nymag.com/thecut/2012/08/brinkers-way-behind-her-pseudo-exit-from-komen.html

The ruse being perpetrated by Nancy Brinker at an organization that was once a blue chip charity. Now it is a shadow of itself with one person to blame. The entire episode is a shame.

Nonprofit Imperative gathers its information principally from public documents...some of which are directly quoted. Virtually all cited are in some phase of criminal proceedings; some have not been charged, however. Cites in various media: Featured in print, broadcast, and online media outlets, including: Vermont Public Radio, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Sun News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wall Street Journal (Profile, News and Photos), FOX2, ABC Spotlight on the News, WWJ Radio, Ethics World, Aspen Philanthropy Newsletter, Harvard Business Review, Current Affairs, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, St. Petersburg Times, B, USA Today Topics, Newsweek.com, Responsive Philanthropy Magazine, New York Times...and many more Nonprofits: On the Brink (2006) Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector (2011)

Vets Again Taken For A Despicable Ride

Gary Snyder

Help Hospitalized Veterans, a California charity, raked in $65 million in just two years according to tax return, with $44 million has gone to fundraising. That very same fundraising company,  American Target Advertising, turned around and loaned the company $800,000. There is no current explanation. 

Attorney General Harris says the men behind this so-called charity have been helping themselves to excessive salaries and lavish lifestyles while using accounting gimmicks to trick the public into giving -- giving even more money. She has just filed suit. According to the charity's latest filings, the president of HHV, Michael Lynch, was paid a salary of $389,000. And that's just the start. In its complaint, California authorities say money donated for hospitalized veterans also paid for memberships in two country clubs near Lynch's home, a cost of $80,000. Donated funds paid for this condominium near Washington, D.C. for the use of charity executives. 

The Attorney General further suggested that the charity knew that they were misrepresenting the facts to the IRS on their 990 form and were misrepresenting it to such an extent that they inverted the numbers. The AG found that, in fact, over 65 percent of their went to overhead and not to the programs that were intended to help these vets. (link)

Nonprofit Imperative gathers its information principally from public documents...some of which are directly quoted. Virtually all cited are in some phase of criminal proceedings; some have not been charged, however. Cites in various media: Featured in print, broadcast, and online media outlets, including: Vermont Public Radio, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Sun News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wall Street Journal (Profile, News and Photos), FOX2, ABC Spotlight on the News, WWJ Radio, Ethics World, Aspen Philanthropy Newsletter, Harvard Business Review, Current Affairs, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, St. Petersburg Times, B, USA Today Topics, Newsweek.com, Responsive Philanthropy Magazine, New York Times...and many more Nonprofits: On the Brink (2006) Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector (2011)

Another Ruse @ Susan G. Komen

by Gary Snyder

The latest change at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure is at least the fourth time there has been a shake up. To the charity's dismay, the public has seen through the various iterations of this artifice. As a result, financial and emotional commitment has atrophied.

Even with this latest reorganization, all remains the same. The agency's lightening rod, Nancy Brinker, remains in place and continues to call the shots as she has done from her multitude of positions as CEO, Board chair, chief financial officer or simply in management. Affiliates have called for her resignation. Disdain for the organization continues while all of her functionaries are moved around or out. The Komen brand image has plummeted. Turnout at pink-ribbon fundraising events is substantially down, some by as much as 40%.

But the fading pulse of the organization remains in place and keeps her tight reign. Brinker has has fired staff en masse. Virtually all of the staff in prominent positions has left, either voluntarily or otherwise. Many board members have vacated their roles as well as loads of family and friends. Some positions have been vacant for three years. Terminations have cost the agency many hundreds of thousands of donors' dollars in severance.

This is an organization in total disarray. Where is the leadership? The agency's public exposure has been devastating.

The foundation has failed to publicly address its many systemic problems. The organization’s defense of conflicts of interest (the board was stacked with family and close confidantes), poor business practices (Brinker’s use of charity funds for her own personal use; boosters buying Brinker’s endorsement; paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance; huge travel expenses, office, and consulting fees), her leadership (the use of intimidation and firing those that did not follow her directives precisely) are plaguing issues.

The Komen Foundation may also be vacating it central mission by canceling of one of its most important events...its annual “Lobby Day”. This use to be a push for cancer research and early detection and treatment for underserved women.

The organization's bunker mentality has not served it well which is too bad. Susan G. Komen had a brand like no other...truly pristine, but it seemingly has its own reality now.

Nonprofit Imperative gathers its information principally from public documents...some of which are directly quoted. Virtually all cited are in some phase of criminal proceedings; some have not been charged, however. Cites in various media: Featured in print, broadcast, and online media outlets, including: Vermont Public Radio, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Sun News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wall Street Journal (Profile, News and Photos), FOX2, ABC Spotlight on the News, WWJ Radio, Ethics World, Aspen Philanthropy Newsletter, Harvard Business Review, Current Affairs, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, St. Petersburg Times, B, USA Today Topics, Newsweek.com, Responsive Philanthropy Magazine, New York Times...and many more Nonprofits: On the Brink (2006) Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector (2011)

Boy Scouts and Sexual Predators

Internal documents from the Boy Scouts of America reveal more than 125

cases in which men suspected of molestation allegedly continued to abuse 
Scouts, despite a blacklist meant to protect boys from sexual predators. 
A Los Angeles Times review of more than 1,200 files from 1970 to 1991
found suspected abusers regularly remained in the organization after
officials were first presented with sexual misconduct allegations. 

Predators moved from troop to troop because of clerical errors, computer

glitches or the Scouts' failure to check the blacklist, known as the

“perversion files," the newspaper said. 

In at least 50 cases, the Scouts expelled suspected abusers, only to discover 

they had re-entered the organization and were accused of molesting again. 

In other cases, officials failed to document reports of abuse in the first place, 

letting offenders stay in the program until new allegations came to light, the 

Times reported. 

One scoutmaster was expelled in 1970 for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old 

boy in Indiana. After being convicted of the crime, he went on to join two 

troops in Illinois between 1971 and 1988. He later admitted to molesting 

more than 100 boys, was convicted of the sexual assault of a Scout in 1989 

and was sentenced to 100 years in prison, according to his file and court 

records. 

In 1991, a Scout leader convicted of abusing a boy in Minnesota returned to 

his old troop shortly after getting out of jail. 

Many of the files will soon be made public as a result of an Oregon Supreme 

Court decision. The Associated Press, the New York Times, the Oregonian 

and other media outlets petitioned for the release of 1,247 files from 1965 to 

1984 that had been admitted as sealed evidence in a 2010 lawsuit. 

The Times analyzed a set of files that were submitted in a California court 

case in 1992. Their contents vary but often include biographical information 

on the accused, witness statements, police reports, parent complaints, news 

clippings, and correspondence between local Boy Scout officials and 

national headquarters, according to the newspaper.

Nonprofit Imperative gathers its information principally from public documents...some of which are directly quoted. Virtually all cited are in some phase of criminal proceedings; some have not been charged, however. Cites in various media: Featured in print, broadcast, and online media outlets, including: Vermont Public Radio, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Sun News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wall Street Journal (Profile, News and Photos), FOX2, ABC Spotlight on the News, WWJ Radio, Ethics World, Aspen Philanthropy Newsletter, Harvard Business Review, Current Affairs, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, St. Petersburg Times, B, USA Today Topics, Newsweek.com, Responsive Philanthropy Magazine, New York Times...and many more Nonprofits: On the Brink (2006) Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector (2011)

A Very Bad Year For Komen Foundation...Criticized Again

by Gary Snyder

After more than a year of significant missteps, Susan G. Komen for the Cure proclamations have been called into question. Komen's messages in its 2011 campaign stated that 98 percent of women who get the screening tests survive at least five years, while 23 percent of women who do not get mammograms survive that long — a difference of 75 percentage points.

Now, two researchers argue that randomized controlled trials have shown mammograms reduce the risk of dying from the disease by far less. One authority, Harvard Medical School radiologist Dr. Daniel Kopans, said that screening has been associated with a decrease in mortality due to breast cancer, but the decrease is not as dramatic as Komen suggested. "The ad campaign doesn’t present screening as a genuine choice — it suggests you'd have to be crazy or stupid not to get screened," said editorial author Dr. Steven Woloshin, a professor at Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine. 

Randomized control trials have found, in general, that screening reduces the number of lives lost to breast cancer by approximately 30 percent, said Kopans. In the U.S., deaths due to breast cancer also have decreased by about 30 percent since screening was instated in the 1980s.

Organizations pushing cancer screening "have their work cut out for them," Kopans said. "They're trying to convince women to take a test that nobody wants to take." In this case Komen exaggerated, he said. The Komen website does provide accurate information on the benefits and harms of screening, but Woloshin said he hopes Komen reconsiders their use of statistics if they run a similar ad campaign this October.

Komen's campaign was promoted last October and was designed and funded by the Komen foundation, which has raised over $1.9 billion for breast cancer awareness, research and support to patients. (link)

Nonprofit Imperative gathers its information principally from public documents...some of which are directly quoted. Virtually all cited are in some phase of criminal proceedings; some have not been charged, however. Cites in various media: Featured in print, broadcast, and online media outlets, including: Vermont Public Radio, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Sun News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wall Street Journal (Profile, News and Photos), FOX2, ABC Spotlight on the News, WWJ Radio, Ethics World, Aspen Philanthropy Newsletter, Harvard Business Review, Current Affairs, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, St. Petersburg Times, B, USA Today Topics, Newsweek.com, Responsive Philanthropy Magazine, New York Times...and many more Nonprofits: On the Brink (2006) Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector (2011)

No One Seems To Care...a typical but painful charity fraud

by Gary Snyder
The executive director of a nonprofit helping people with disabilities did it all. He converted $900,000 of state funding, federal grants, nonprofit grants and personal donations for his own use. The results: the closure of the Center for Independent Living of Southwest Florida. 

The exec lived an extravagant lifestyle and international travel but is now living in the Lee County (FL) Jail without the amenities. 

Others that have been overlooked in this investigation include those (state, federal and local officials) that doled out the funds without consideration as to where it is going. Obviously the governing body failed to do its duty, also. They are usually not held accountable in similar circumstances. 

The losers: the disabled; taxpayers and the charity sector that is suffocating on such abuses with no diminution in sight. (link)

Nonprofit Imperative gathers its information principally from public documents...some of which are directly quoted. Virtually all cited are in some phase of criminal proceedings; some have not been charged, however. Cites in various media: Featured in print, broadcast, and online media outlets, including: Vermont Public Radio, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Sun News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wall Street Journal (Profile, News and Photos), FOX2, ABC Spotlight on the News, WWJ Radio, Ethics World, Aspen Philanthropy Newsletter, Harvard Business Review, Current Affairs, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, St. Petersburg Times, B, USA Today Topics, Newsweek.com, Responsive Philanthropy Magazine, New York Times...and many more Nonprofits: On the Brink (2006) Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector (2011)