Pro sports charities hoarding cash, overspending on fundraising, (Flames worst)

[RM14]

How much interest income are they generating off of that $8mm?

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Yeah agreed ... I think they've likely staffed things up too much and their bleeding G&A which is unfortunate.

If their foundation is getting too big with bureaucracy they need to look at it.

Either way you have to have transparency on things like this, and it's good that they're exposed. Hopefully it triggers an answer.

Originally Posted by Badgers Nose

In my dealings with the Flames administration (not hockey opps), nothing about them is efficient. If a job can be done by one person at a typical downtown corp, Flames will do it with two or three. So this doesn't surprise me, if the charitable organization is run the same way.

They are run like a fat charity, lots of make work manual stuff that would be automated at a typical company.


That's just my opinion from experience.

Doesn't seem to be the case TBH. According to the Annual Report:

$538k expenses for the year.

61% of that is event/fundraising costs > $328k
20% of that is Professional/Administrative > $108k
13% of that is Fernie Rink Construction > $70k
6% of that was advertising > $32k

Doesn't feel like $108k is excessive costs for professional staff and administrative to me.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

Doesn't seem to be the case TBH. According to the Annual Report:

$538k expenses for the year.

61% of that is event/fundraising costs > $328k
20% of that is Professional/Administrative > $108k
13% of that is Fernie Rink Construction > $70k
6% of that was advertising > $32k

Doesn't feel like $108k is excessive costs for professional staff and administrative to me.

So this is likely heading for two results

Money is going somewhere "good"
They haven't been visible enough in how they handle the money

[metal_geek]

Perhaps Calgarians and local corperations donate more per capita then other areas. So while Toronto may get more total donations they also have more ways to split it up. Obviously the branding and donation amounts have to match. It’s not like they can go around throwing 20’s at homeless people.

[RM14]

Originally Posted by Bingo

So this is likely heading for two results

Money is going somewhere "good"
They haven't been visible enough in how they handle the money

Which is then going to cost the charity more money in external audits and reporting costs.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Bingo

So this is likely heading for two results

Money is going somewhere "good"
They haven't been visible enough in how they handle the money

I think the real issue is that they've collected a lot of money in donations and not done anything with it nor have they indicated that the reason for the reserve is to make a huge charitable gesture like a wing in a hospital or something.

Further, their current $1M donation to the Children's Hospital is not factored into this research.

Its mostly Column B. They're holding on to this money. Why?

The thing is, this is very simple; If people donate money to you and you just keep it as opposed to donating it then the metric that analyzes how much you donate versus how much you collect is going to be skewed and thus unreliable.

But it still doesnt explain why they havent donated this money to any causes or anything.

[GullFoss]

What i actually happened: the study is bad

The flames raise money via high profile events like golf tournaments and the poker tournament. When you buy tickets to this, and it costs $500 per person, only $200 is going to charity (the profit) with the remainder going to overhead (the cost of the tournament).

I honestly don't see a problem with this. It's win-win. There is no way people buying tickets to the golf tournament think most of the money is going to charity, is there? And most of the time, the people attending these events are doing it for the event itself, not for the charitable donation.

Meanwhile this group uses the 200/500 = 40% as the spending to cost ratio.

So I guess it depends how you frame it. Perhaps the flames foundation is a bad charity. Or perhaps theyre using their Goodwill and status to raise money for charity from donations that wouldnt otherwise exist.

[Shazam]

Could be one of these:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...on-dollar-tax/ (Paywall)

Revelations that wealthy Canadians are getting multimillion-dollar tax breaks for charitable donations that do not go to working charities are prompting calls for more powers for federal tax auditors and stricter rules on how much money foundations must give away.

“It is fair to say we are largely asleep in Canada about this," said Toronto charity lawyer Mark Blumberg, who stressed he was speaking in general, not about any specific groups. “Because of the huge tax advantages of the charity system, we probably need to have more audits."

Canada has two types of charities: Foundations are required to bring in donations solely to fund charity, while registered charities are supposed to spend money doing good works.

Several people in the charity sector are urging action as a result of a Globe and Mail investigation that discovered a web of highly unusual arrangements set up by Vancouver lawyer Blake Bromley, who said he has facilitated some $2-billion in donations over four decades, most to charities his law firm set up.

[Flash Walken]

Bingo to the rescue.

The story isn't whatever cents in the dollar, the story is that the flames with one of the wealthiest ownership groups in the league, certainly in Canada, are operating the least efficient charity of their peer group to the tune of being less than half as efficient dollar for dollar as a team like Montreal.

[Ashasx]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Bingo to the rescue.

The story isn't whatever cents in the dollar, the story is that the flames with one of the wealthiest ownership groups in the league, certainly in Canada, are operating the least efficient charity of their peer group to the tune of being less than half as efficient dollar for dollar as a team like Montreal.

This isn't the story at all.

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Bingo to the rescue.

The story isn't whatever cents in the dollar, the story is that the flames with one of the wealthiest ownership groups in the league, certainly in Canada, are operating the least efficient charity of their peer group to the tune of being less than half as efficient dollar for dollar as a team like Montreal.

Also not true.

Flames Foundation issue is not that they are less efficient. Based on the annual report I would say their annual expense of $530k are probably quite reasonable.

It is a situation where they are keeping a large reserve, and are not donating as much of that reserve to the charities in the study period.

Also this isn't a good thing or a bad thing until the Flames Foundation clarifies their position.

If they have plans for something that say will cost $10M, and they are saving up for that donation, then maybe there is nothing to see here and there is actually a strong plan in place.

The CBC article itself has some flaws by just looking at money raised in a time period vs. money donated in a time period, and then stating somebody is inefficient because of that.

Candice Goudie and the Flames Foundation have been well regarded across the city as doing great work for charity. I get people have the pitchforks out for our ownership group around the arena stuff right now but don't let that, and what is a half baked article by CBC, get in the way of the great work that group does.

[Split98]

Very irresponsible reporting from CBC IMO. Loved that Ted video Thor, that was a great voice to something that I've wondered for a while.

To think of a charity as a product, 'good' is what's bought. As an outside observer, I always thought the CFF was fairly involved in that 'good' and it seemed like I would see their involvement quite a bit in broadcasts. I have definitely seen them out there more than I've seen MLSE around here TBH. A part of that good is transparency, and with the CBC skipping over any reason those numbers are they way they are is irresponsible.

I think the CFF needs to act quickly here, and start to show people the good they've done. That's a big part of marketing, and where some of this money should go. IMO, the CFF has an opportunity to demonstrate how much good they've been doing and change the colour of the spotlight that's going to be on them.

But to immediately assume this 30% is a black mark on CFF, and just leave the article with that is very damaging. Unless they had done research they didn't want to share with us, I don't know who taking shots was supposed to help. I don't know that this 30% is necessarily bad. I don't know if it's good either, as answering that wasn't important to this article. Is there something CFF is doing that we should be concerned about? Let us know! Leaving charities to defend themselves is an odd way to encourage more good to come from them. I think watchdogs are important with charities, as not everyone is as ethical as we'd like them to be - but we need to know the full-story if you're going to report on it.

A perusal though what they're up to here still leaves me with the impression that CFF is doing a lot of good for their community:
https://calgaryflamesfoundation.com/foundation-report/

...I just wish that we knew more about this 30% before this demonizing article was put out. What percentage of Flames fans will look to CFF as a bad organization now once they see this headline? Who does that hurt?

[CliffFletcher]

My guess is the large reserve is being held for a big PR push when the arena issue comes up again post Olympic bid. Lots of opportunity to wine and dine influencers at these things.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by cannon7

Without those donations, there's nothing to go to the charitable cause in the first place. So unless you're a name that everyone knows like United Way, you basically have little choice but to divert some donation money towards perpetuating further donations.

Or the Calgary Flames. 60% of their revenue or 2.64M is from 50/50. A relatively passive revenue stream.
-------


https://apps.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/haip...fpe=2017-06-30

So they brought in ~4.1M. 2.8M went to expenditures (assume the 1.2M went to reserves). Of the 2.8M that went to expenditures, there's 825,000 in line 4920: "All other expenditures not included in the amounts above (excluding gifts to qualified donees). 351,000 was spent on charitable activities, 200,000 spent on management and administration, 660,000 was spent on fundraising etc. Leaving a total amount of gifts made to be 1.685M. The Flames foundation report that year stated that 2.125M was distributed, so already some discrepancy.

But of the 4.1M donated, according to the Government of Canada, 1.685M made it as a gift that year to qualified donees. Even accounting for just expenses, it only made up 58% of the expenses. Not a great result considering that the United Way routinely posts over 75%.

Admittedly I don't know what that line 4920 entails, but something happened in 2013 when it went from ~85k and jumped to ~500k and increased since to ~800k. Best guess is that it might be that they started funding programs that don't qualify as a donee (which could account for the other discrepancies) or it paid for Murray Edwards London mansion.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Bingo to the rescue.

The story isn't whatever cents in the dollar, the story is that the flames with one of the wealthiest ownership groups in the league, certainly in Canada, are operating the least efficient charity of their peer group to the tune of being less than half as efficient dollar for dollar as a team like Montreal.

What is that supposed to mean?

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Split98

Very irresponsible reporting from CBC IMO. Loved that Ted video Thor, that was a great voice to something that I've wondered for a while.

To think of a charity as a product, 'good' is what's bought. As an outside observer, I always thought the CFF was fairly involved in that 'good' and it seemed like I would see their involvement quite a bit in broadcasts. I have definitely seen them out there more than I've seen MLSE around here TBH. A part of that good is transparency, and with the CBC skipping over any reason those numbers are they way they are is irresponsible.

I think the CFF needs to act quickly here, and start to show people the good they've done. That's a big part of marketing, and where some of this money should go. IMO, the CFF has an opportunity to demonstrate how much good they've been doing and change the colour of the spotlight that's going to be on them.

But to immediately assume this 30% is a black mark on CFF, and just leave the article with that is very damaging. Unless they had done research they didn't want to share with us, I don't know who taking shots was supposed to help. I don't know that this 30% is necessarily bad. I don't know if it's good either, as answering that wasn't important to this article. Is there something CFF is doing that we should be concerned about? Let us know! Leaving charities to defend themselves is an odd way to encourage more good to come from them. I think watchdogs are important with charities, as not everyone is as ethical as we'd like them to be - but we need to know the full-story if you're going to report on it.

A perusal though what they're up to here still leaves me with the impression that CFF is doing a lot of good for their community:
https://calgaryflamesfoundation.com/foundation-report/

...I just wish that we knew more about this 30% before this demonizing article was put out. What percentage of Flames fans will look to CFF as a bad organization now once they see this headline? Who does that hurt?

They are the worst team in Canada for spreading that fund raising around.

Compared to their peers they are the worst charity at actually distributing the funds that they raise.

That should be a Paramount concern for anyone donating to that charity.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

They are the worst team in Canada for spreading that fund raising around.

Compared to their peers they are the worst charity at actually distributing the funds that they raise.

That should be a Paramount concern for anyone donating to that charity.

Are you even reading what is being written? They are the worst among their peers because they havent distributed the funds.

What you're seeing is a timing discrepancy. They could contribute all of that (I'm going assume $7M since $1M just went to the Children's Hospital but isnt encapsulated within this study) so of course their metrics look bad.

Their overhead is not outrageous so it stands to reason that at some point they're going to distribute those funds.

You're confusing the reality with the optics in conjunction with a flawed report.

[Split98]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

They are the worst team in Canada for spreading that fund raising around.

Compared to their peers they are the worst charity at actually distributing the funds that they raise.

That should be a Paramount concern for anyone donating to that charity.

If that money was gone, I'd agree completely. But if it's sitting in reserve I wonder if this is more terrible timing for CFF than anything else. A large event (and surprise) in 2-3 years could have been the roadmap, for example. These unplanned surprises always garner more media, thus more attention, thus more donations.

It's just one theory, as they could also be doing some shady stuff and I'll be glad whistleblowers are there to sniff that out. But this article does nothing to answer that, or even look into a 'why'. It would be like someone walking into your backyard as you're having a pool dug and immediately labeling you as the crappy neighbour with a mess of a backyard.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Split98

If that money was gone, I'd agree completely. But if it's sitting in reserve I wonder if this is more terrible timing for CFF than anything else. A large event (and surprise) in 2-3 years could have been the roadmap, for example. These unplanned surprises always garner more media, thus more attention, thus more donations.

This ...

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

My guess is the large reserve is being held for a big PR push when the arena issue comes up again post Olympic bid. Lots of opportunity to wine and dine influencers at these things.

... is likely the root of it.

[Split98]

Originally Posted by nik-

This ...



... is likely the root of it.

I don't know that all of it would be, but it's definitely another theory. They'd be demonized for that too, TBH.