At Building Blocks for Kids our team has begun a new branch of the organization which is doing investigative journalism as a watchdog over the nonprofit industry. We have been looking at hundreds of 990’s (a public form that informs the public about a non-profit organization's financial information) during 2021 and we have been noticing some alarming issues. In the spirit of tax season we are going to discuss nonprofit organizations that took out PPP loans. We will be doing this once a week for the next year, starting with the Motion Picture And Television Fund and United Way of Greater Los Angeles.
Some of the questions we had for Motion Picture And Television Fund are:
Why did you take out a PPP loan for $7.38 million when the organization has over $70 million net assets?
Why does your organization feel that your program needs to pay $1.9 million in pensions when you just lost $16 million for the year?
What was included in other employee benefits for $7 million?
What happened with Scherer Strategies for $50,000 (fundraising consulting), but you didn’t raise $1?
Did you lose $2.5 million off your 5 fundraising events?
Some of the questions we had for United Way of Greater Los Angeles are:
Why did you take out a PPP loan for $1.39 million when the organization has over $41 million net assets?
Why did your CEO (Elise Buik) increase her salary during 2020 from $400,000 (on average for the last few years) to over $800,000 (even if some of that was deferred compensation)?
Your 990 also showed $1.5 million in pensions, do you not believe that is a little too high?
Over $5 million other/miscellaneous expenses (staying right under the 10% mark, therefore not having to disclose exactly where it goes) seems very suspicious, what was the reason for this?
Why was your total expense towards ads so high? ($1.4 million for reference)
Your expenditure for lobbying was $861,000 (over $48 million since 1962 and most that was spent more than likely in the last 20 years), does this not seem like too much money?
Throughout the country, United Way took in over $70 million dollars worth of taxpayers’ money. This international network is abusing governmental systems meant to support other communities, taking money through PPP loans when it is obvious that they do not need it. We reached out to the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and Motion Picture And Television Fund, but they never responded to comment.
In conclusion, we are very privileged to live in such a great country that whenever people need a helping hand we have systems in place to get them back on their feet. When individuals or groups take advantage of the system, it takes away from those that truly need it and gives the entire concept a bad name. This is why the Motion Picture and Television Fund and United Way of Greater Los Angeles should give the money back just like Fortune 500 companies did, but with a twist. Half should go back to the government and the other half should go back to Building Blocks for Kids. The City National Bank and CRF Small Business Loan Company, LLC can give back any revenue made for creating these loans. We’re unsure what the government will do with their half, but BBFK knows exactly what it will do with its share.
Building Blocks for Kids would get a total amount of $3,500,000 & $690,000. Here is how that breakdown of that money will look like:
$110,000 towards our website.
$4,080,000 for 136 classrooms in Los Angeles
Helping 136 teachers, over 3,800 students with financial literacy and career discovery education for a full year. To learn more about the BBFK: MORE Program visit: https://bbfkids.org/
Motion Picture and Television Fund and United Way #doBetter and with this amount we can do #MOREtogether to truly help Los Angeles end homelessness, give our youth a better chance for financial freedom and a better place to live. #doMORE