After electing to reject Morrison County United Way’s (MCUW) severance for silence I agreement I wondered how long it would take MCUW to unleash attorneys to try as stifle me and it seems I now have my answer. Their most recent action makes my blog title “Live Untied” even more apt due to the amount of organizational resources MCUW’s leadership is putting into their attempt to gag me.
While the letter identifies my activity as “defamatory” this term is only applicable if the information is false. In this case my assertions are not only supported by the documents filed by MCUW with the IRS and the Attorney General but the MCUW’s own auditor admitted to leaving material weaknesses off the organizations 2006 audit report and to “softening” the language from that of his preliminary report for 2007. He admitted to acting out of concern for the reputation of his friend and he admitted to discussing the material weaknesses that were left off of the 2006 report with the past executive director and individual/s identified as “key board members.” His admission during the August MCUW board meeting as well as other conversations, demonstrated that organization leaders were aware and they proceeded to approve not only last years audit but to see to it that the organization hired the same auditor this year.
The auditors board meeting admission also indicated that MCUW failed to hire an “independent” auditor and failed to conduct an independent audit.
If knowingly filing such documents with state and federal officials isn’t deceptive and fraudulent perhaps Susan Fitzke can provide a more apt legal definition since honest and ethical clearly do not apply. While the letter demands that I issue a retraction, I am under no obligation to retract anything that is true.
The question I have is this, is Susan Fitzke insinuating that the MCUW Board is denying my allegations? Thus far Teresa Schmitz and Steve Reger have opted to not comment and so far none of the MCUW Board have come out and issued a statement of denial. Yet this letter clearly states that my accusations are false. Either they don’t deem the audit maneuvering as deceptive and fraudulent or they are denying that the auditors admissions during the August board meeting took place. Since Fitzke calls my allegations “unsupported” I assume they must be denying the auditors admission because his admissions did indeed support my allegations and were also corroborated by the discrepancies in material weaknesses reported on the 2006 990 and 2007 990. while the very same material weaknesses existed both years, they were only noted on one audit. Their inclusion took place after I raised questioned, but not before.
Click images to view.
Susan Fitzke and I do agree on one point and that is that MCUW “relies upon its reputation and community good will to raise the funds necessary to run the organization.” Except there is one fundamental difference, I believe an organizations reputation is built on solid ethics and the effective implementation sound policies and practices…not merely making the appearance of conducting reputably or by paying auditors and lawyers to assist in upholding a community profile that hasn’t been earned.
Disclosure and transparency is paramount to public trust within all non profit organization and yet MCUW refuses to provide board documents, refuses to account of its own procedures and as of August 22nd, refused to fully comply with even the most basic of conflict of interest policies. Shedding light on disreputable conduct isn’t the down fall of MCUW, having acted disreputably is.
The letter outlines a number of other allegations which I will address in later posts. Here’s an interesting note, during my job interview executive committee members asked me if I had ever been asked to do anything unethical by a previous employer. I truthfully said yes. They then asked what I did and I again answered truthfully by stating that I resigned.
The last time I faced such issues I quietly resigned and provided information to the Attorney General and the legislative auditor even though I did my job and committed no wrong doing…I left myself with a job by quietly and conveniently going away… that won’t happen again.
8 Comments
September 23, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I have to laugh at the MCUW and their attorney. They are claiming that the design of their web site/blog is copyrighted material. They DO realize that it is a WordPress template called Fjords designed by Peterandrej and is available for free use, being used by hundreds, if not thousands, of other blog sites don’t they?
September 23, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Sort of like that, they’re saying I cloned MCUW site…obviously you know as well as I do that its a template owned by WordPress. It’s just more of the same bully-like tactics…throw out a bunch of legal jargon and hope no one notices its crap.
If MCUW wants me to swing they’re just going to have to pitch it across the plate.
September 24, 2008 at 12:06 am
Oh, they also requested that I remove all MCUW material from thist site…but there aren’t any. Except for the link to their 990 but that link leads to the Guidestar website. Almost all non profits upload financials to Guidestar to make data available to potential donors.. Ted uploaded MCUW’s 2006 990 to Guidestar last year to make it available to the public …now they’re acting like I’ve improperly retained documents when in fact they’ve published the documents on the internet themselves . Sort of staggering.
September 24, 2008 at 1:11 am
I wonder how the creator of the Fjords template feels about MCUW laying copyright claims to his/her material. Seems a bit presumptuous for MCUW to assert that they own something that was created by someone else and has been offered for free to THE ENTIRE WORLD.
September 24, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Not to mention the “typo-squatting” accusation… typo-squatting actually requires that a typo lead the web surfer to your website. Since my url has a hyphen there is no way for an innocentmisspelling to lead of liveunited.org to wind up on my website. You’d have to misspell united and accidentally type a hyphen in exactly the right place to arrive here.
Also, MCUW’s attorney overlooked the fact that United Way of America already owns over 200 url’s covering every possible misspelling to prevent typo-squatting. The reason they don’t own my url is because there is no way to mistype United Way of America’s url and accidentally end up on my site…which is the basis for a typo-squatting claim.
September 24, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I went ahead and added toggle over notes in big letters so when you mouse-over any of the links it tells you the website you’ll be taken to if you click. Seems silly to have to spell that out since links and blog roll’s on any website almost always lead to a different website. It falls in line with trying to legislate stupidity but whatever.
September 25, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Your assertion about typo-squatting is laughable. You mis-typed it YOURSELF in the 9/25 posting:
Fitzke’s letter states, “I understand that you have removed much, but not all of the MCUW content,” which is amusing because there is no MCUW content on the Live-United site therefore nothing has been removed…at all, so saying that I’ve removed content is a complete fabrication.
September 26, 2008 at 3:17 am
I thought about Cliff’s assertion that “Your assertion about typo-squatting is laughable.” I attempted to just type “liveuntied.com” and got nothin’. I attempted it again but put a “-” in the mix and I got to the this site. There is no way anyone with more than a second grade education could get confused by the two urls. One has to intentionally, with some effort, put a “-” in. It cannot happen by accident.