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

[combustiblefuel]

This is why I donate my time but not cash. I can't control how my donation will be used.

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

But the problem is that those events are still listed as charities. It's the Flames Charity Golf Classic. They bring in good will, people eat it up, some people do spend their 'charitable' money on those events.

If you told people the truth. "Hey guys, this event doesn't really bring in much, maybe a couple cents on the dollar after everything is accounted for. Mostly this is a circlejerk that doesn't really help the community, maybe even detrimental considering the people donating may or may not have donated elsewhere with better efficiencies. But hey you still get to rub elbows with Curtis Glencross" Maybe some people still chose to go, maybe some find other ways to donate.

That's sort of what the article is getting about the inefficiency and lack of transparency. People assume that the Flames Foundation is responsible with their money and a decent chunk of it actually gets back into the community if they do go to the charity events. But that may not be the case.

That's 100% fair and I even said the article probably should have been titled that.

A big difference in the public between:

"The Flames Foundation as a whole is inefficient and you should be careful when you donate money to them"

and

"The Flames Charity Golf and Poker Tournaments are not efficient ways of raising money, and if you attend these events you should know only 30% of your entry fee is actually going to charity"

The later headline is completely fair and should be shared with the public but the former is what the CBC article went with (with the original CBC Manitoba article providing no context and didn't mention 50/50 was removed) and I think that paints the Flames Foundation in an unfair light as a whole.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Bingo

The CBC could have closed the loop and talked to the teams to form a more complete news piece

The article makes this claim:

"Last spring, CBC News contacted each of the eight foundations attached to Canada's NHL, MLB and NBA teams requesting copies of their audited financial statements for the past three fiscal years.

With the exception of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, whose financials are made available online, and the Jays Care Foundation, which provided its financials upon request, all of the other foundations declined to provide the documents or stopped responding to emails after several follow-up requests."

Curious so to what the Foundation's reasoning would be for ignoring these requests. Too busy?

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

The article makes this claim:

"Last spring, CBC News contacted each of the eight foundations attached to Canada's NHL, MLB and NBA teams requesting copies of their audited financial statements for the past three fiscal years.

With the exception of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, whose financials are made available online, and the Jays Care Foundation, which provided its financials upon request, all of the other foundations declined to provide the documents or stopped responding to emails after several follow-up requests."

Curious so to what the Foundation's reasoning would be for ignoring these requests. Too busy?

I would wager the financials make these organisations look terrible.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

That's 100% fair and I even said the article probably should have been titled that.

A big difference in the public between:

"The Flames Foundation as a whole is inefficient and you should be careful when you donate money to them"

and

"The Flames Charity Golf and Poker Tournaments are not efficient ways of raising money, and if you attend these events you should know only 30% of your entry fee is actually going to charity"

Ummm no.

And the rest of the money, about $1.1 million, is collected via specialty events, including celebrity golf and poker tournaments.

The Foundation spent nearly $960,000 to cover the cost of hosting these events.

So 13%.

[Hot_Flatus]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

The article makes this claim:

"Last spring, CBC News contacted each of the eight foundations attached to Canada's NHL, MLB and NBA teams requesting copies of their audited financial statements for the past three fiscal years.

With the exception of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, whose financials are made available online, and the Jays Care Foundation, which provided its financials upon request, all of the other foundations declined to provide the documents or stopped responding to emails after several follow-up requests."

Curious so to what the Foundation's reasoning would be for ignoring these requests. Too busy?

Seems about as thorough as you can ask for before simply running the story on the part of CBC. It really is sad that people in this thread can actually try to brush this off as inefficient but not terrible.

There are organizations like kidsport, veterans food banks etc basically shutting down in this city over a few hundred thousand charitable dollars that have dried up over the last while, but it's ok the Flames Foundation is withholding and/or funneling away millions (maybe more) that might otherwise make it's way to places like these?

[btimbit]

Seems pretty click baity. People making it seem like the team is pocketing the rest of the money but it's being kept in reserves.

The issue is transparency (What's the reserve for) not some conspiracy to funnel money elsewhere. So the Foundation is being ran in an extremely inefficient manner, or they're saving for some big donation. Poorly managed wouldn't come as a surprise

The day they 'donate' that reserve to a fake charity to raise funds for a new arena or something, then you can make this thread.


People would be shocked to learn MOST charities are pretty scammy

[delayedreflex]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

They are removing the 50/50 proceeds from the donation equation which is unfair - especially for the Flames since it makes up 65% of their revenue as the report stated. You can't remove the way that they generate money easily with little cost, then only look at the one event they hosted that was expensive, and then say "Look at how inefficient they are".

The argument they used stated that they didn't include 50/50 because most people don't associate that with being a donation - which is kind of B/S the Flames are very open and transparent about their 50/50 draws and who exactly is supporting and getting the donation from that game.

Also you could make the same argument for the golf event. Nobody goes to that event expecting that their entry fee is 100% for charity. It is being spent because that person wants a day of golf, to go be able to chat with Flames and Alumni, and then get a dinner out of it.

Yeah I'd be curious to see how they went about removing the 50/50 revenue from the equation - how did they determine what % of the 50/50 revenue had been distributed to charities?

Taking a look at the Charity Intelligence Report directly, it does seem like the Flames Foundation does lag behind the others fairly significantly in spending rate. It has quite minimal spending on programs (Montreal and Vancouver are in that category as well, and the Sens one has zero program spending) and provides fewer grants as a % of total revenue compared to their peers as well. Of course, a one year snapshot may not necessarily give you the best picture - as per SuperMatt's other post with the year-by-year breakdowns some years are better than others - but all sources I've seen so far seem to suggest that the Flames Foundation isn't great at putting the money they collect to work.

Another interesting thing from looking at the CI report is that the Flames Foundation hardly collects anything through direct donations - only 8%, which is the lowest of the charities examined by a large margin. In that sense, the Flames Foundation seems the least like an actual charity (in that hardly anyone thinks of donating to them directly), despite apparently being the oldest one in the country.

I wonder if the fact that the Flames Foundation raises the majority of its revenue through 50/50 has a big impact on how it allocates and spends its money? I imagine many charities might set out with fundraising targets at the beginning of the year and work to meet those, but if the bulk of your money is coming in via a passive, somewhat unpredictable method, perhaps the foundation doesn't want to budget it before it comes in? That being said, they should be budgeting to spend the relatively large reserves that they have, so it's probably still not a great explanation for their low spend rate.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by Hot_Flatus

Seems about as thorough as you can ask for before simply running the story on the part of CBC. It really is sad that people in this thread can actually try to brush this off as inefficient but not terrible.

There are organizations like kidsport, veterans food banks etc basically shutting down in this city over a few hundred thousand charitable dollars that have dried up over the last while, but it's ok the Flames Foundation is withholding and/or funneling away millions (maybe more) that might otherwise make it's way to places like these?

Yikes withholding and funneling are pretty serious words without actually knowing what's going on.

I think it's fair to ask questions, and I think some better clarity is the the minimum that should be asked, but accusations seem over the top given the information we've seen in this topic.

[Oling_Roachinen]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...tion-1.4885145
According to them, the actual breakdown is:

4.1M total
-2.7M from the 50/50
-1.4M other
--0.3M from direct donations
--1.1M from the special events

(with some rounding errors).

Of the 1.4M donated, without the 50/50, there is 1M spent on operating. So 0.4M of it sent to the charities. 0.4M/1.4M=29% and it's where they get the 30% from. Of course this assumes relatively no operating cost for the 50/50. But this is actually worse because it accounts for the reserve fund in a round about way.

More or less this foundation is supported by the 50/50 and $300,000 of direct donations. Everything else is just paying for the parties they throw.

[Ice_Weasel]

Originally Posted by Hot_Flatus

Seems about as thorough as you can ask for before simply running the story on the part of CBC. It really is sad that people in this thread can actually try to brush this off as inefficient but not terrible.

There are organizations like kidsport, veterans food banks etc basically shutting down in this city over a few hundred thousand charitable dollars that have dried up over the last while, but it's ok the Flames Foundation is withholding and/or funneling away millions (maybe more) that might otherwise make it's way to places like these?

Please explain what is "terrible" about donating $2.6 million to local charities last year? Do you think this money would have somehow found its way into charitable organizations without the work of the Flames Foundation? I find it equally "sad" that you are shaming an entity that is putting money into our community that would otherwise no exist. Charity events are a lot of work to put on, and are not free...but if the event makes even $1 dollar for charity, its a dollar that would have otherwise not existed.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by btimbit

Click bait. People making it seem like the team is pocketing the rest of the money but it's being kept in reserves.

The issue is transparency (What's the reserve for) not some conspiracy to funnel money elsewhere. So the Foundation is being ran in an extremely inefficient manner, or they're saving for some big donation. Poorly managed wouldn't come as a surprise

The day they 'donate' that reserve to a fake charity to raise funds for a new arena or something, then you can make this thread.

People would be shocked to learn MOST charities are pretty scammy

I've established 'The Human Fund' and am lobbying hard.

$8M would go a long way to making my dreams of World Domination a reality!

Or at the very least a really sweet holiday and a solid retirement fund.

Donate to The Human Fund!

[Sgrath]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

The article makes this claim:

"Last spring, CBC News contacted each of the eight foundations attached to Canada's NHL, MLB and NBA teams requesting copies of their audited financial statements for the past three fiscal years.

With the exception of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, whose financials are made available online, and the Jays Care Foundation, which provided its financials upon request, all of the other foundations declined to provide the documents or stopped responding to emails after several follow-up requests."

Curious so to what the Foundation's reasoning would be for ignoring these requests. Too busy?

hmmm seems some discrepancy in who provided what to whom - from the CI article (https://www.charityintelligence.ca/n...rticles?id=264) -
"Jays Care Foundation and Calgary Flames Foundation provide financial information when requested."
and, fwiw, "This Charity Intelligence report was requested by CBC News."

also maybe someone who understands financials better than me, can explain why CI seems to spend almost all revenue on operating expenses( i assume I must be missing something here https://www.charityintelligence.ca/a...ortsfinancials). At least they do make their own available...

[Thunderball]

There's always the potential that the foundation is building up an invested base to be able to provide charitable proceeds in perpetuity from the proceeds of its investments and not rely on active donations. I believe CRA only requires charities to spend about 3.5% each year, so not immediately using donated funds doesn't necessarily mean anything negative.

Financial summaries and much of the tax return filings are freely available on CRA's charity website, and if their expenditures were considered out of line, charities get audited quite a bit. This would be doubly so if those funds found their way back to the Flames.

I'd be more concerned that the foundation is doing this because they think the Flames might not be around for a lot longer and are building up a warchest to be able to maintain their charitable pursuits without as many 50/50s and other Flames events to support them. Right now, they'll need to save a lot more than what they have to have anywhere near the same revenue, as charities are a bit restricted in what they can invest in (lower risk).

Either way, its a "get out the pitchforks" article with half the facts.

[GioforPM]

The percentage per event is a bit distressing, but I guess the bottom line on some of those is the raw dollars that go to charities. I suspect a charity who needs $100K is happy even if it took $900K in costs to make that amount of profit.

[Passe La Puck]

Originally Posted by Ice_Weasel

Please explain what is "terrible" about donating $2.6 million to local charities last year? Do you think this money would have somehow found its way into charitable organizations without the work of the Flames Foundation? I find it equally "sad" that you are shaming an entity that is putting money into our community that would otherwise no exist. Charity events are a lot of work to put on, and are not free...but if the event makes even $1 dollar for charity, its a dollar that would have otherwise not existed.

They aren’t donating a cent, they’re redirecting a subset of funds collected from other’s donations.

[Badgers Nose]

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?

Yeah the problem is with the press asking too many questions.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Passe La Puck

They aren’t donating a cent, they’re redirecting a subset of funds collected from other’s donations.

Like every charity?

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by Ice_Weasel

Please explain what is "terrible" about donating $2.6 million to local charities last year? Do you think this money would have somehow found its way into charitable organizations without the work of the Flames Foundation? I find it equally "sad" that you are shaming an entity that is putting money into our community that would otherwise no exist. Charity events are a lot of work to put on, and are not free...but if the event makes even $1 dollar for charity, its a dollar that would have otherwise not existed.

Agree with this statement. You can argue their inefficiency in raising funds, but at the end of the day, I think it's a bit naive to think the majority of the people who donated to the Flames charity would do so without some sort of benefit in return. I think someone would be more willing to donate $1,000 for tee time with the Flames than they would donating $300 anonymously.

And as people pointed out, they have the money in reserve. So eventually it has to get used in charitable donations. Why they have the reserve is for sure a legit question, but lets not get all Helen Lovejoy on the Flames Foundation here when all the facts aren't out.

[Thunderball]

You may be shocked to know that most charities and foundations in Canada are about fundraising (or "redirecting a subset of funds collected from other’s donations") and diverting the proceeds, after expenses, to various operational charities, scholarships, bursaries and grants.