If you’re among those who gave into the tug on your heartstrings and purse strings to help pay for Aurora cops going shopping with poor kids for Christmas gifts and school supplies, the Sentinel’s months-long investigation published last week was heartbreaking news.
It’s certain that few of those who gave to the win-win Shop With a Cop proposal knew, or even suspected, that if they agreed to tap their credit card for $100, the telemarketer donation collector company on the other end of the phone got to keep as much as $75 of the donation.
It’s scandalous, but not newly scandalous.
News reports about the outrageous “commissions” levied by telemarketing companies like Outreach Marketing LLC in collecting for Shop With a Cop and other similar programs across the nation aren’t new.
What’s discouraging is that the fleecing industry continues to prey on police departments and the public without resistance.
There is virtually no limit of federal, state and local governments that should immediately work to rein in one of the nation’s most prolific and persistent scams in the country.
Current and former members of Congress, current and former Colorado state lawmakers and a bevy of local elected officials have worked hard to limit the damage created by dangerous “payday loan” companies. They are commercial leeches that feed off the economic blood of the poor. They continue to persist by arguing they provide a needed service.
The same reality check that is working toward effective regulation of an industry rife with fraud and contempt must focus on the dubious liaison of public safety workers and suspect telemarketing companies.
The Aurora Police Association Charitable Foundation serves as a template for investigation and regulation.
It isn’t that the work this foundation does isn’t valuable and laudable. Local cops shopping for toys and school clothes with underprivileged children is a praiseworthy project, and one that builds good will in the community.
This is a police department trying to pull away from its ruined reputation of abusive force and obfuscation. It can use all the good public relations it can get.
But revealing that the police union allowed its chosen telemarketing firm to fleece the public of $2.08 million of the $2.8 million raised, all the while providing government-mandated financial reports that are, at best, spotty, incomplete and inaccurate, begs government attention and intervention.
First off, the U.S. Department of Justice and Congress must work together to closely investigate the practices of Outreach and other charity telemarketing firms. Congress must then regulate them to create transparency, equity and reason.
Besides national intervention, Colorado must step in immediately to protect the public, and possibly protect police and other rescuer agencies from themselves.
Colorado lawmakers should immediately pass legislation requiring the use of charity telemarketing services to enlist only those regulated by and fully audited by state or federal agencies.
Congress should regulate and cap the “commission” these services can charge.
In addition, news reports of similar problems in other states demand that these charity telemarketers not only be regulated but audited to ensure that fees charged for telemarketing accurately reveal profits and expenses.
Just as important, it is imperative that telemarketers be forced to disclose to potential donors — clearly — how much of their contribution will be kept by the telemarketer,
Colorado State Lawmakers must also require the Secretary of State to increase regulation and review of police and fire charity groups, or any charity that relies on telemarketing donations for fundraising.
The Sentinel investigation reveals that required IRS charity reporting forms and schedules are incomplete or inaccurate, making it difficult for the public to determine how their donations are actually used and distributed.
In the case of the Aurora Police Association Charity Fund, the Colorado Attorney General should complete an audit of the agency’s financial reporting to determine an accurate accounting of financial transactions. The Colorado Secretary of State should join in the audit to determine how much more information is needed to give the public a clear and comprehensive picture of charity finances. The secretary of state must also determine how it can best present those reports to the public.
The work that APACF does is laudable and beneficial for both police and recipients, but not when it’s hidden in a quagmire of unregulated and unreported scam and scandal.
Both congress and the state must act now.
Your editorial does only one good thing and that is to warn more people that cold call marketers will keep most of the money they raise for themselves and not those that they are collecting for. This is not new, current news as it has been happening for longer than Dave Perry has been alive.
The bad news is that all local Police and other charities, will have a terrible time fund raising for years to come. The longer you terrorize them the more difficult it will be for them to properly fund raise anything from the public because the public will only remember your editorial and assume they are being taken advantage of. This certainly is not always the case.
Your idea about any Department of the State of Colorado auditing in any way a true not for profit, Federal 501(c)(3) organization, as you should know is untruthful. It’s all in the Fed’s hands. I’m assuming, what you call APACF, is the APA Charitable Foundation, which I know is a IRS deductible charitable entity from my past experience. Later in the editorial you call this to be APA Charity Fund, I don’t know if this is a separate entity or the same entity as the Charitable Foundation. Either way your in depth reporting to a CPA is somewhat lacking in the editorial. In summary, the Sentinel’s program to make the APD look as bad as possible continues.