Sftball Junkie wrote:UUHHH!!! LUCY can u esplain to me what dis say's???? The man say's he is no do nothing wrong but dis say's he owes a lotta cash to someone. I no understand.....
Garcia's senior or senorita improve now I am most confused
In June 2010, a settlement was reached between the CA Attorney General's office, CPYC, and CPYC's for-profit fundraisers.
Restitution:
- The for-profit fundraisers are jointly and severally liable to pay CPYC $200,000 in damages.
- CPYC and their Executive Director, Christopher Eaton, are jointly and severally liable to pay $900,000, as follows:
* To the CA Attorney General-$100,000, for attorney's fees
* Stayed penalties: $800,000 subject to Defendant's compliance with the terms of the settlement
When I read it, it is pretty much as CYPC laid it out. They used a questionable telemarketing firm. That telemarketing firm was probably collecting a ton of money for CYPC, which is a good thing as the charity seems to do good with the money they get. The problem is that the telemarketing firm was turning over something like 13% (3.7M revenue with 1.8M going to the telemarketing folks) of the funds they were collecting. Also a bit shady having the CYPC Payroll costs funded by NCI folks.
Charities do find it hard to turn down these deals, cause they need the money.
There are a couple of other things in the BBB post that show badly for CYPC, such as not including the charities mail address when literature was requested. Again, in the past I have seen charities duped by sophisticated telemarketing firms. When you are short on staff it is appealing to take the telemarketing firms offer to send out your mailings for you and hard to consistently check their quality.
To me the fact that the DA settled $1M liability for $200k indicates that DA was not really going out of their way to put CYPC out of business. Add in the fact that the telemarketers covered the $200k, and see not much was taken out of CYPC pockets. The DA did want CYPC to stop using these telemarketing practices, hence the $800k stayed penalties.
Their financial statements are available here:
http://www.calpyc.com/calpyc.com/CPYCFinancials.pdfYou probably need to look a little more at the charity to weigh good or bad. From their website, I would say things that look good:
- Good board, good people
- Celebrity apprentice gave them $168k, true scam charities do not seek media attention like this.
- A number of of programs. It would be easy for someone to go see some of the programs they are involved in and ask how CYPC is involved.
- Lots of associations to other charities.
- Picture gallery actually shows a number of the board members including executive director participating in charity events. Hard to fake those.
Things that could be improved:
- No board minutes published. I do not like to donate money to organizations that operate in a closed fashion.
- Last financials posted were from '08.
