Non-profit accounting

There are four paragraphs in the FTC complaint against four cancer charities that summarizes the issues raised by the FTC. These paragraphs cover the main issues about valuation of GIK that have been under discussion in the NPO world for several years now.

These issues do not just apply to the four named charities.

The issues are not limited to the secular cancer charities.

These issues actually apply to a large number of high visibility religious charities. The issues may have drop out of news coverage, but they have not gone away.  I hope those who have ears that are able to hear, will hear.

Who might want to take a second look at the FTC’s summary?

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This is the twelfth in a series of posts diving into the detail mentioned in the complaint by FTC and all Attorneys General against four named cancer charities.

This is the fourth post on a series of paragraphs in the complaint addressing valuation of donated medicine.

The complaint can be found here. My posts in this series are visible using the FTC tag.

130. By reporting these GIK transactions as contributed revenue and program expenses, at inflated values, Corporate Defendants represented themselves to be both larger and more efficient than they actually were. They obscured the high percentage of donated funds spent on, among other things, for-profit fundraisers, executive salaries, and employee perks, and concealed the very small amounts spent on the charitable purposes described to donors. As a result, the Forms 990 and other documents filed by Corporate Defendants with the IRS and state regulators, and made publicly available to consumers, were false and misleading.

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This is the eleventh in a series of posts diving into the detail mentioned in the complaint by FTC and all Attorneys General against four named cancer charities.

This is the third post on comments in the complaint addressing valuation at an overall level.

The complaint can be found here. My posts in this series are visible using the FTC tag.

On the impact of the allegedly misstated information: (more…)

This is the tenth in a looooong series of posts diving deep into the detail mentioned in the complaint by FTC and all Attorneys General against four named cancer charities.

The complaint can be found here. My posts in this series are visible using the FTC tag.

This is the second post discussing allegations in the complaint asserting that the financial statements of the charities were misstated. Four paragraphs summarize the problems the FTC has with the accounting for donated medicines.

128. Corporate Defendants obtained the paperwork they used to claim these figures for just the cost of the payment to INTERMEDIATE (which included both INTERMEDIATE’s fees and shipping costs). For example, in connection with a 2011 shipment to Guatemala, CFA reported contributed revenue and corresponding program expense of over $8 million, but only paid INTERMEDIATE a fee of $50,550. For one 2010 shipment to Ghana for which CCFOA reported contributed revenue and program expense of over $3.8 million, CCFOA paid INTERMEDIATE just $39,960. In addition, for a 2011 shipment to Honduras for which BCS reported contributed revenue and program expense of at least $3.8 million, BCS paid INTERMEDIATE just $28,120. Although Corporate Defendants used such transactions to add hundreds of millions of dollars in program expenses to their financial reports, these “programs” existed entirely on paper. Corporate Defendants did not possess the goods and played no role in their overseas distribution. They hired no additional staff to manage these multimillion-dollar international GIK programs and in most instances spent virtually no staff time on them. In addition, the very high dollar values associated with these transactions largely resulted from overvalued pharmaceuticals.

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