I said that I would address the remaining allegations made by Morrison County United Way’s attorney Susan Fitzke. For those who have yet to read the initial post or would like to view the cease and desist letter sent by Morrison County United Way’s attorney click here —-> MCUW’s Attorney Issues a Cease and Desist Letter
The opening of Fitzke’s letter states, “as you are further well aware, your employment with Morrison County United Way (MCUW) was terminated.” Fitzke is incorrect, what I know is that MCUW asked me to voluntarily resign which I refused to do. Since the dismissal of a director typically requires a board vote I asked board President Teresa Schmitz for the board minutes that such a vote took place, a request that was denied. Also, days before the request for my resignation Teresa Schmitz announced during the August board meeting that a quorum was suddenly 5 as opposed to the long standing body of 8. Schmitz stated during that meeting that a quorum was previous 5 but was apparently unused…she decided to put it back into practice…without a board vote. This would mean that a majority vote could be carried exclusively by the executive committee. It is yet another procedural disaster. Plus, I’m pretty sure Farm to School went a board vote which was later rejected because there wasn’t a quorum of eight…there was certainly at least 5 voting members that day. Issues like these are very reason you don’t run a board in this manner.
The letter goes on to that “you essentially cloned the official MCUW website.” MCUW’s website is currently set up on a WordPress blog. When I took over the office their old website information was outdated and the organization paid a third party for updates. Since there wasn’t time to build a new site, I did the next best thing. Their site is a free WordPress blog which I set up to function like a website, to deliver updates and content quickly until a more permanent site could be developed. The design is not owned by me or the MCUW, it is a template owned by WordPress and available to anyone world wide for free.
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. Perhaps they are confused, MCUW’s 990 is linked to this website but it was uploaded to GuideStar by Ted Pfohl last year…in case the MCUW board is once again completely in the dark..most nonprofits upload financials to GuideStar to make them available to potential donors…and often mandated by funders. Which is precisely why Ted uploaded the document. MCUW’s financial records are public documents because they’re a non profit, not a corporation. This typically means that they don’t pay taxes but in exchange must operate with financial transparency. Often this means voluntarily making board activities and minutes available upon request along with their financial statements.
Fitzke refers to the use of the url www.live-untied.com as a “clear instance of typo-squatting, and an obvious effort to mislead members of the public and potential donors…”
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “typo-squatting,” it refers to companies or individual who purchase url’s similar to a major website in hopes of picking up traffic generated by typing mistakes. Had I purchased the url liveuntied.com, Fitzke would have a point my site would indeed pick up traffic intended for United Way of America if someone misspelled united but under the circumstance there is no way for anyone typing liveunited.org to end up at this website. The only way this could happen would be if the web surfer formed both an exactly matched misspelling coupled with an accidentally placed hyphen…anyone who can accidentally hit the hyphen key will without a doubt find themselves in many, many unexpected places on the internet. It should also be noted that the United Way of America already owns over 200 url’s in every misspelled combination to prevent typo-squatting, if my url was of legitimate concern UWA would have purchased it themselves along with the long list they are already in possession of.
The letter demands that copyrighted material be taken down but there is nothing on this site that is owned by the MCUW or any other United Way. It says my site displays the United Way logo…but it doesn’t. They are obviously clicking links listed under the ”Links” heading. Just for the record, “Links” or a ”Blog Roll” always lead to websites belonging to other individuals. I have posted links to the MCUW Board page and the MCUW website. Obviously, Board President and her attorney are clicking links that lead to pages on MCUW’s site. To aid them in understanding that anything listed under “Links” leads to someone elses website, I have added large “mouse-over” notes so readers understand that clicking those particular links will bring the reader a different website. Of course this is also obvious if you take the time to look at the url or even better, look at the web page header…does it say Morrison County United Way? Or does it say Live Untied A Blog by Jody Scott-Olson. These are typically the best indicators.
I’ve already posted ny reply to the whole ”…unsupported allegation.” Really, if an admission by their own auditor doesn’t qualify I’m not certain what benchmark I’ll have to clear to satisfy this law firm.
Next question, how much money is Morrison County United Way wasting on paying a Civil Rights lawyer to send letters pertaining primarily to Intellectual Property Rights? Or did they think that I would be so daunted by the legal jargon that I might not notice the lack of content? MCUW continues to bash around behaving as though they are the writer of rules and required to follow none. While they have demonstrated that they have the local media too intimidate to do anything short of kiss up we will see how much influence they have over the Attorney Generals office…which will more than likely be off my desk by the end of today. I’ll have it posted here by Friday.
1 Comment
October 2, 2008 at 6:27 pm
“I’ll have it posted here by Friday”
I’m literally at the edge of my seat in anticipation.