The Arizona Republic published three articles Sunday examining valuation issues for pharmaceutical GIKs at Food for the Hungry and Breast Cancer Society. They have joined the growing list of media outlets that have noticed issues in donated meds.
The articles, all by Robert Anglen, are:
- Call 12: Two Arizona charities face scrutiny
- Call 12: Food for the Hungry faces IRS scrutiny
- Call 12: Practices by cancer charity are challenged
I will comment on the articles later. Just wanted to get the links posted.
Serious allegations about Breast Cancer Society. On the IRS audit of Food for the Hungry, the above report contains a new issue that hasn’t been discussed by other reporters.
If you see published articles on GIK valuation, please let me know. You can leave a link or comment on any blog post. Since I moderate all comments, whatever you say can be filtered out if you wish.
I would like to comment on the response from the Executive Director/Founder, James T. Reynolds of The Breast Cancer Society. He states that they follow “standard accounting practices”. That is nothing but an excuse to say, “everyone else is doing it”, which shows very little integrity on The Breast Cancer Society’s behalf. I question how many other nonprofit orginizations use these accounting practices to be concidered “standard”? Further more, if they use such unethical practices, as overstating GIK value, paying high saleries to themselves, other board members and staff, giving a very small percentage of donations to thier patient services, then what else would be considered unethical that the public doesn’t have knowledge of??? The donations collected by this orginization are to benifit those in their greatest time of need, sick and dying breast cancer patients… what a shame that orginizations like this can still be collecting funds! I also see they are scheduled to have an event at the Phoenix, AZ Zoo September 22nd to raise even more funds to misuse. Orginizations like this SHOULD be scrutinized by the public, charity watchdogs, BBB, and the law. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that these acts may not be the only unethical acts commited by The Breast Cancer Societys’ Founder, board members and staff… You know what they say, you find one rat you know there’s 100 more you don’t see hiding near by. Someone should do a little digging to see if they could find out more information concerning the people affiliated with this organization such as the founder, board members, and staff.
Hi “Alice” –
Thanks for your comment. You can do some digging on your own. It looks like a large portion of the information Mr. Anglen mentioned is available to the public.
Guidestar has 990s available. You have to register, but it is free. You can find the returns for most organizations there.
Several of the state attorneys general make the filings from charities available on their web sites. North Carolina is a good site to check. You can find 990s and audited financial statements there. The California AG has 990s and RRF-1 filings available on their web site.
With internet searches, you can track down the public footprint of executives and board members. Might be able to track where they have worked before and other board involvement.
Start to put all those pieces together and you can see the wider picture.
Feel free to dive into the details. I’d like to know what you find.