Among the projects that complain that Help Is Here took their money is Gregg’s Goals, of San Diego, which provides scholarships for deserving young soccer players, claiming $7,900 lost.
Founder Maryanne Garon said the project was known as Gregg Garon Scholarship Fund, in honor of her late son, when she started working with HIH in spring 2010. That was before CEO Maggie Lane-Baker arrived.
“The first year,” she says, “we selected our scholarship winners, contacted Bill Mack (HIH founder), and he sent us the check.”
The following year, when Garon notified HIH of the scholarship winners, Lane-Baker was in charge. Garon in an email told how the project-sponsor relationship started to go sour: “She told us we could not give checks directly to the scholarship winners; it was against ‘IRS rules’ (of course, they never gave us any guidance of this before, so I checked regulations, and that is not true).”
Garon said she attempted to comply.
“So we contacted our young men, got their student IDs, got the addresses of the Financial Aid offices of the college/university, and sent them to Maggie (forwarded with emails from the Financial Aid people).
“Then, that wasn’t enough. She then wanted official letters on college letterheads sent to her.
“At this point, we realized she had no intention of turning over the scholarship money, and our attorney sent her a letter with a notice that we wanted accounting of our funds, and we were separating.
“We were never given any accounting from her,” Garon says, “though we asked nearly every month.”
Since leaving HIH, Garon’s foundation changed its name to Gregg’s Goals and June 6 obtained its own 501(c)3 status, two months after applying to the IRS. She used an attorney, had a track record of fundraising, and had she known the process was so quick and straightforward, she said, she would have applied from the beginning.
Though Lane-Baker cites violations of the HIH Standard Operating Manual as justification for seizing projects’ funds, Garon says, “The Standard Operating Manual was not provided to us when we signed up. It was something Maggie cooked up later, and she kept changing it to try to ‘get us.’ ”
Garon says HIH has kept around $7,900 of the money raised for the foundation she and her husband, Dennis, set up.
“We realize we won’t ever see our money back (in all probability), and it makes me both sad and angry,” Garon says. “Maggie did not take ‘Maryanne Garon’s money.’ … She took from our donors and our scholarship winners. She risked making us lose our good name, and that of our deceased son, Gregg Garon, in whose name we created this scholarship.
“We only wanted to do some good for young people, in his memory, and now we spend hours that could be spent elsewhere fighting HIH.”
Posted Sept. 7, 2012
Other stories in this series about Help Is Here
Arizona fiscal sponsor accused of taking $300,000 — Part 1
Help Is Here CEO Responds — Part 2
Judges Are Listening to Abused Projects — Part 3