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

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Locke

Again....because they've been stuffing cash into a reserve fund rather than donating it. They may have a large plan for that cash, perhaps a number of scholarships, I dont know.

So? People donating want to know their money is going to some charitable cause. That's the point of charity. Not knowing where it's going, or when it's going somewhere, is a pretty big ####ing glaring issue.

And you don't know how much that 8M increases the overall percentage.

A poorly run charity, probably because they don't actually care and rack in a bunch of money because it's the local sports team is probably the best you can describe this.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

Very unfortunate the disenchantment I've had towards the Flames over the last couple years. Edwards, the arena, Bill Smith, so it's not surprising about this. But a lack of transparency and 0.30 for every dollar going to charitable causes? Other charities would be racked over the coals for that, not sure why the Flames foundation should be any different.

They are, but some people like to wait for the facts and both sides...others would rather pile on

The number looks like it does because of the funds being held, need to know what they are being held for.

[Ashasx]

nm

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Locke

Again....because they've been stuffing cash into a reserve fund rather than donating it. They may have a large plan for that cash, perhaps a number of scholarships, I dont know.

Admittedly thats a large reserve for a charity to be holding, but again, its not like its the Flames' Ownership's personal 'Hookers and Blow Fund.'

It will eventually be donated or directed into some sort of charitable endeavour, but their holding it in reserve skews the information used to arrive at that $0.30 ratio.

Its still unusual to have a reserve that large.

Hmm, my take was the the other portion of the donated money was going to overhead costs, not into a fund that will later be used for scholarships or something. If the money were destined for a charitable purpose, wouldn't it have been added to the total going to charities?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

So? People donating want to know their money is going to some charitable cause. That's the point of charity. Not knowing where it's going, or when it's going somewhere, is a pretty big ####ing mistake.

And you don't know how much that 8M increases the overall percentage.

Not knowing when, where or what your charitable contribution is going to go to is a pretty common practice among charities though unless the specific donor attaches a priority to it, this is called a 'designated donation.'

'Designated Donations' are usually large and are earmarked for specific purposes, so the donor would indicate that he wants the organization to only use his donation on scholarships or to build parks or whatever the case may be.

Most donations are general and are put into a fund for the charity to do with as they see fit. This charity saw fit to reserve them. They will still eventually have to be contributed to a charitable cause, but I agree with you, considering the past year and everything else the optics of this are very poor.

And I agree, if I were sitting on a charitable cash reserve of that size I would probably be indicating as to why. What the 'Grand Plan' is per se.

[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.

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by dino7c

They are, but some people like to wait for the facts and both sides...others would rather pile on

The number looks like it does because of the funds being held, need to know what they are being held for.

Yeah this is the key.

It's not like the Flames have that 30% ratio because of excessive events and their fundraising costing more than the other groups.

It's because they have a bigger hold of funds that haven't been spent, but also haven't been allocated to a cause yet.

And as the post above shows they are fully transparent about what they have raised, what their expenses are, and what the charitable disbursements were for the year.

It's quite possible the foundation does have some big expenditure planned and they are saving up for that.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Ashasx

https://calgaryflamesfoundation.com/...s/FDN_2018.pdf

You can figure it out pretty easily.

So the charitable disbursement accounts for 2.6M of the 4.4M raised. Where's the other 8M+ in reserve we are discussing? Not a snarky reply, genuine question given the assertion that it should be easy to figure out.

[GioforPM]

If they're holding it in reserve for later use, that's one thing. If it's overhead, that's another, and much worse.

What is almost impossible is that it's because of greed. Nothing would flow to ownership.

[Ashasx]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

So the charitable disbursement accounts for 2.6M. Where's the other 8M+ we are discussing? Not a snarky reply, genuine question given the assertion that it should be easy to figure out.

I guess it's not that easy to determine since we don't know what the current year contribution is to the $8 million, but I suppose that report might just give you a better idea on what the organization is actually currently spending.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Locke

Not knowing when, where or what your charitable contribution is going to go to is a pretty common practice among charities though unless the specific donor attaches a priority to it, this is called a 'designated donation.'.

Not when it's at 0.30 per dollar given with an 8M reserve. That's not a common practice.

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

So the charitable disbursement accounts for 2.6M. Where's the other 8M+ we are discussing? Not a snarky reply, genuine question given the assertion that it should be easy to figure out.

So that view is just June 2017 to June 2018.

Based on what I see there it's.

$4.4M Revenue
-
$0.5M Expenses
-
$2.7M Charitable Disbursement

= $1.2M in Revenue Savings for the fiscal year/

My guess is if you went back through the last 5-6 years of their financial reports. They would have $1.0-$1.5M of saved revenue each year - adding up to the $8M the CBC report shared.

It's also not clear how exactly CBC got to $0.30 per dollar raised being shared to charities - according to the high level financial report it was $2.7M donated out of $4.4M raised for last year or much closer to 0.60 and very much in line with the other groups. Plus only 0.10 per dollar going to expenses which seems pretty good, and not at all in line with the CBC claim of the fundraising costs taking up too big of a chunk of the money. I feel like the CBC is actually really bad at being transparent in their own findings in these cases, and likes to be very alarmist while not sharing the full picture.

The real question now is what are they saving that money up for because it's hard to see if that's really a problem until they share that info. Or if it's more to Locke's point (below) and they are actually doing too good of a job at raising the money without actually having a plan on how to spend it.

[cannon7]

There's a lot of reasons a charity might keep a reserve and it is not guaranteed to go to the charitable cause. Charities take their operating expenses out of donations, so it is possible the reserve is in place to ensure that the charity can meet their operating expenses should there be a downturn in donations. Operating expenses include charity employee salaries and marketing spend. There's sort of a chicken-and-egg situation here for a lot of charities, in order to drum up donations, you need to spend marketing dollars to spread awareness of your charity. 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.

That being said, there's a ton of scam charities out there so I encourage everyone to do their research before donating. But don't expect 100% of your donation to go straight to the cause, running a charity isn't free.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Probably just waiting to donate a nice cool 10M to the Houston charities to build some good faith in the community.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

Not when it's at 0.30 per dollar given with an 8M reserve. That's not a common practice.

Very correct. That is not a common practice.

But again, as I indicated, its not as though the owners are going to take that $8M and go to Vegas and put it all on Black or anything.

This actually kind of seems like a part of a bigger plan.

Or they're so inefficient that they have been collecting more money than they know what to do with and have no plan.

I think this was the plot of a movie? Operation: Dumbo Drop? No, I dont think that was it.

[Ashasx]

Does the discrepancy in charitable spending in the CBC report versus the Flames Foundation report exist because CBC is looking at the calendar year and The Flames Foundation is from June 2017 to June 2018?

Flames report $2.7 million in charitable spending whereas CBC has less than $2 million.

[cannon7]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

If they're holding it in reserve for later use, that's one thing. If it's overhead, that's another, and much worse.

What is almost impossible is that it's because of greed. Nothing would flow to ownership.

While I think (hope) you're right in this case. This isn't entirely true. It is very much possible that a charity could funnel money back to it's operators. For less reputable charities, it's not unusual for family members and friends to be hired to run the charity and collect large salaries. Not saying that's what's happening here, just that this is something that is done.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Ashasx

Does the discrepancy in charitable spending in the CBC report versus the Flames Foundation report exist because CBC is looking at the calendar year and The Flames Foundation is from June 2017 to June 2018?

Flames report $2.7 million in charitable spending whereas CBC has less than $2 million.

Well they did just donate $1M to the Children's Hospital, but that was done this month and wouldnt be accounted for in this study.

[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.

[dissentowner]

I am not nearly informed enough on how charity dollars work to make a comment one way or another.