From the website of Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, you can determine if a specific charity is registered to solicit for donations in the Silver State. But that website won’t tell you at all if that charity has spent almost none of the money raised on good works and/or is poorly rated by charity watchdogs.
Indeed, the bland, bare-bones summary financial listing available–revenues, expenses, assets and liabilities–might even provide false comfort to an unwary donor. The display seems to be in keeping with Nevada’s failing grade regarding public access to information.
For such important charity data, you have to go to sources outside Nevada. Having written for decades about nonprofits big and small before becoming New To Las Vegas, I know a little bit about how to find, interpret and explain this material. So from time to time in this space, I’ll offer an overview of specific charities allowed to ask for money in Nevada, along with my opinion. Since most of them operate nationally, my musings might be of interest to viewers elsewhere.
Today’s subject is the Firefighters Charitable Foundation, of far-away Farmingdale, N.Y. It filed its current registration to solicit in Nevada less than a month ago on July 7.
According to its latest public IRS Form 990 tax filing (which I found outside Nevada), the FFCF spent less than 4% of the money raised on what I would call good works. Equally outrageously, nearly 90% of the donations went to paid fundraisers. And from the filing, it’s appears there was no iron-clad requirement that the few dollars remaining for good works all went to firefighters or even victims of fires. Reputable charity monitors have nothing good to say about the FFCF.
Want to know some more? Read on. Continue reading
