This is the ninth in a 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 first post in a series discussing allegations in the complaint asserting that the financial statements of the charities were misstated. Paragraphs 127 through 130 provide a condensed summary of the massive concerns the FTC has over the accounting for GIK shipments. There are severe accusations embedded in these four paragraphs.
To give you a hint where the FTC is going with this section, my paraphrase of the last sentence of paragraph 130 is the FTC alleges that the charities’ audited financial statements and 990s as provided to the IRS, state regulators, and the general public were “false and misleading.”
Deceptive Impact of Reporting GIK Transactions
-
The increased contributed revenue and program spending Corporate Defendants reported – collectively over $223 million – had the effect of diminishing the reported percentage of revenue they spent on fundraising and administrative costs and increasing the proportion of reported expenses they spent on program services, making Corporate Defendants appear more efficient to donors than they actually were. Thus, the reported international GIK revenue for the five years from 2008 through 2012 resulted in CFA’s reported fundraising expenses being 25.4% of total contributions. In reality, 67.4% of consumers’ donations (including revenue from CSS), or 82.9% without counting CSS’s “contributions” to CFA, were spent on fundraising. For the same period, CCFOA used its international GIK revenue to report fundraising expenses of 47% of total contributions. In reality, 81.5% of consumers’ donations were spent on fundraising. Similarly, BCS reported fundraising expenses of 29% of total contributions, while in reality 84.6% of consumers’ donations were spent on fundraising. Corporate Defendants also used the inflated contributed revenue amounts when choosing purported “comparable organizations” for setting their executives’ pay, thus improperly increasing the Individual Defendants’ salaries.
You might wonder what’s the big deal if a charity records a GIK shipment when it should not, as alleged by the complaint. Revenue is increased by the valuation of the shipment and expenses are increased by the same amount. Impact on the bottom line, or change in net assets, is zero.
Why does it matter?
