Don't Be This Small Non-Profit 3

In 2018 and 202, I posted about issues I had with trying to renew my membership in a small nonprofit organization (SNP) and then about what I saw as some issues in that organization.

Today I received this from SNP, and JFC. This organization hasn't followed basic principles of record keeping, considering that they are missing legally required documentation. I really have to wonder what will happen when they've been audited. I'll note, in passing, that Pro Publica's Nonprofit Explorer's last 990 for this organization is from 2011. It's possible that the IRS is behind in processing whatever they've submitted, but I wonder whether anyone on the board knows what a 990 is.

When we, your 2023 Board, took the reins this year, 3 of the 6 of us noticed an alarming amount of past mismanagement and financial discrepancies. The other 3 Board members have since resigned. The three of us remaining have been working hard to investigate and clean up our compliance and financial issues and had hoped it was all a case of innocent naivete on the part of past boards and not the intentional Theft by Transfer that our organization has been threatened with in recent months.

Unfortunately, this is not or at least not entirely the case. SNP has been the target of an intentional, attempted takeover event from inside the organization. We are not at liberty to say who at this point in the criminal investigation, but we can tell you that the core breach happened in the last half of April this year and the only people with access to our accounts were 2023 and 2022 board members. We are frustrated, angered, disappointed that someone(s) in our community who we elected to protect this organization has broken the trust we all put in them.

We know that member names were taken, along with email addresses, and any other contact information you supplied to SNP; phone, physical address, etc. Due to how our web host works, we do not have reason to believe that individual credit card numbers have been stolen, but our thief(s) have, since the breach, had the ability to charge/refund charges if you had payment on file with us. So if anything suspicious shows up, please let us know.

Separate from this breach, SNP is also missing a great deal of legally required documentation from the past 5-7 years. If anyone, past board member or otherwise, has any copies of old board meeting minutes and especially financial records, please send them to either [email address1] or [email address2].

While this breach of trust from some of our own is very serious, we and our legal counsel know SNP has the law on our side and we are working hard to bring about accountability and ensure the security of this organization and your information going forward.