Some drama erupted this past week over a deal, seemingly backed by a broad swath of city leaders, to hand over operational control of a beloved Fillmore neighborhood community center to a nonprofit without seeking community consensus.

A lease was ready to be signed last week with a respected local nonprofit to oversee management and programing at Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in the Fillmore, with the mayor and multiple city supervisors in support. That nonprofit is Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, which is based nearby in Lower Pac Heights, and which already has multiple contracts with the city.

Ella Hill Hutch Community Center is a 30-year-old community hub that provides youth services, healthy food assistance programs, and summer and afterschool programs for neighborhood children. Last year it became a casualty of a scandal involving the former leader of the city's Dream Keeper initiative, Sheryl Davis, and her romantic partner/housemate James Spingola, who were both criminally charged in March for a raft of alleged felonies including self-dealing and the personal use of nonprofit funds — and Spingola was the head of a nonprofit, previously run by Davis, called Collective Impact, which had a contract with the city to operate Ella Hill Hutch.

The fallout from the scandal appears to have created rifts in the Fillmore neighborhood, which has historically been a center of Black cultural life for San Francisco, and has accumulated a growing set of grievances over the city's inhumane redevelopment efforts five and six decades ago, the trauma of which has been compounded in recent years by benign neglect. The most recent grievance: the closure of the neighborhood's only supermarket, a Safeway that was built with redevelopment funds over 40 years back, and which is now slated for demolition and another redevelopment as mostly market-rate housing.

The Chronicle reported last week on pushback from community leaders over the management contract for Ella Hill Hutch Community Center, which included a quote from longtime neighborhood elder statement, the Reverend Doctor Amos C. Brown. Speaking for others in the community, Brown pointed to the director of Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, former Davis ally and former Human Rights Commissioner Shakirah Simley, saying, "She aspires to this position in the community, but she is not connected with it. She has not communicated with people nor demonstrated a sense of the history of this community or any knowledge of the collective values that truly make for strong minority communities."

So, now, just days after that Chronicle report, the city has reversed course, per the Chronicle, and that no-bid lease with Booker T has been scrapped. The Recreation and Parks Department is going to be temporarily taking over Ella Hill Hutch while community stakeholders have a chance to give input on a future operator to the city.

A spokesperson for Mayor Daniel Lurie tells the paper that while Booker T remains a "valued partner to the city," they will be pursuing a more competitive process with "thoughtful community engagement" for the next lease.

"We are ensuring our kids remain safe and no family or child is left without access to services and support this summer," the spokesperson said, regarding the temporary Rec & Parks takeover.

The board of Booker T. Washington Community Service Center also issued a statement saying, "We share a deep commitment to the Fillmore community and to ensuring that every family, senior and child in this neighborhood has access to the services and support they deserve... We believe the path forward requires a broader, more deliberate process that includes additional community input."

The neighborhood remains upset by the now seven-year vacancy at the Fillmore Heritage Center, a product of redevelopment that was completed in the mid aughts and promised to revitalize a long dormant corridor in the Fillmore — and to bring jazz music back to the neighborhood as well via a San Francisco branch of Yoshi's, the famed Oakland jazz venue and sushi restaurant. A decade later, both Yoshi's and the other restaurant in the center, 1600 on Fillmore, had closed, and the process to find new tenants for the spaces has now dragged on for nearly another decade after that.

The scandal involving Davis, who also formerly led the Human Rights Commission during the London Breed administration, cast a pall over the Dream Keeper initiative at large, which had been a racial equity effort in 2020 and 2021 to redirect city funds from law enforcement to Black-led nonprofits. It came to light in 2024 that Davis, in addition to allegedly misusing funds, had directed $1.5 million in city grants to Collective Impact in an apparentconflict of interest, given that it was run by her live-in partner, Spingola.

A city audit later found that the total amount of questionable and/or frivolous spending by Davis, via the Human Rights Commission, was around $4.6 million.

Previously: Fillmore Residents Say They Feel Ignored By City Over Deal to Keep Community Center Open

The former Human Rights Commission executive director and leader of the Dream Keeper initiative, Sheryl Davis, who has been facing an array of city ethics charges over the alleged misuse of funds, is now officially facing criminal charges.

The San Francisco District Attorney's Office appears to be preparing charges against Sheryl Davis, whom former Mayor London Breed tapped to lead the city's Human Rights Commission and, later, her Dream Keeper initiative. And as the Chronicle was first to report, Davis was arrested Monday morning alongside James Spingola, the former CEO of the nonprofit Collective Impact, and Davis's live-in romantic partner.

Davis was reportedly booked on "a raft of felony charges" that include misappropriation of public funds and perjury.

As SFist reported in September, following the release of a city audit report on Davis's activities, the City Services Auditor found a host of questionable expenses in the record that suggested self-dealing and misappropriation of funds to the tune of $4.6 million.

These expenses included $353,000 on "likely ineligible" food expenses, including restaurant buyouts and catering expenses; $19,000 in tuition expenses for Davis's son, a graduate student at UCLA; and a total of $1.1 million in professional services expenses and purchases made by HRC for things like tickets to gala events and various "consulting" services.

Spingola, who took over Collective Impact, the non-profit that Davis founded, when she left to work for the city, allegedly came to receive $1.5 million in grants to the organization from HRC while Davis was in charge — a clear conflict of interest given that the two lived together. And Collective Impact received $27 million in city grants overall during his tenure.

The auditor noted that Davis signed a conflict of interest form only about her past association with the non-profit, but not about her relationship with Spingola.

The city Ethics Commission hit Davis with a host of charges in November, outlined in a 31-page document, to which she responded by saying she was simply a "failed bureaucrat,"who was "too focused on the people, but not on the rules."

After being named executive director of the city's Human Rights Commission by Breed, Davis was tapped to lead the Dream Keeper Initiative in 2021, which was the city's response to the racial injustice protests surrounding the death of George Floyd. Breed envisioned the initiative as being able to redirect city funds to help the local Black community, with $60 million per year redirected from law enforcement expenses.

The scandal regarding Davis's alleged misuse of city funds first broke in September 2024, after it came to light that Davis was trying to conceal an expense for a $10,000 Martha's Vineyard rental house — dividing it into two invoices that fell in each of two fiscal years, before and after July 1. The issue of Davis signing off on $1.5 million in contracts for the nonprofit led by her romantic partner also came to light at that time as well, and Davis swiftly resigned from her official positions.

The Martha's Vineyard rental, the city auditor later learned, was for interns who were supposed to accompany Davis to a "philanthropic conference" on the island in August 2024, and they apparently never ended up using the house even though it had already been paid for.

The District Attorney's Office launched an investigation into Davis's spending last year, and it appears charges have not been officially filed but likely will be soon.

This is a developing story.

Previously: Former Dream Keeper Chief and Human Rights Commission Director Sheryl Davis Hit With Array of Ethics Charges

Criminal charges just came down on a former SF homelessness nonprofit CEO accused of buying a Tesla with public money, among a slew of other financial improprieties, and she's facing nine felony charges.

We know that San Francisco has had a number of nonprofit spending scandals over the last several years and it is quite difficult to keep track of them all. But one involving the former CEO of a Bayview homelessness nonprofit called United Council of Human Services (UCHS) goes absolutely beyond the pale. That CEO is the now-ousted Gwendolyn Westbrook, who was fired in 2023 after the Chronicle reported on a lawsuit that alleged Westbrook had doubled her own salary, and that "current and former employees were aware of her buying a new Tesla, giving her Infiniti sport utility vehicle to her niece, buying vehicles for a close family friend and her cousins and vacationing in Aruba."

For good measure, per the Chron, the same lawsuit alleged that Westbrook "was paying for relatives’ weddings and flaunting a trunk full of high-priced jewelry," while submitting financial statements that vaguely described hundreds of thousands in spending simply as "other expenses."

None of those allegations have been specifically proven or disproven, but it sure seems like something untoward was happening with UCHS's bookkeeping under Gwendolyn Westbrook. Today, the Chronicle reports that SF District Attorney Brooke Jenkins's office has charged Westbook with nine felonies, largely around the misuse of public funds. A statement from Jenkins's office does not specifically detail the improprieties, just that they add up to about $1.2 million.

"According to court documents, Ms. Westbrook misappropriated more than $1.2 million in public funds from UCHS accounts to herself through a combination of undocumented cash withdrawals and self-issued payments, and that additional large sums withdrawn from UCHS accounts remain unaccounted for," Jenkins's office announced Monday. "Prosecutors allege that between 2019 and 2023, Ms. Westbrook engaged in unauthorized self-payments, improper cash withdrawals, and fraudulent reimbursement practices that diverted public funds for personal use."

UCHS was originally a mobile soup kitchen known as Mother Brown’s Dining Room, and transitioned into becoming a larger homeless shelter organization. According the the Chronicle, Westbrook "led the nonprofit for nearly two decades before her dismissal in 2023."

Westbrook was reportedly booked into SF County Jail on Friday, but has since been released. She's scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.

Related: SF’s 10 Wildest Nonprofit Spending Scandals of the Last Five Years, Ranked [SFist]

Image: SF Bay View Newspaper via Youtube

Friends of the San Bruno Public Library discovered that GoFundMe created a donation page for it to “claim” without notifying its office. The site made 1.4 million such placeholder pages, which need to be manually unpublished if nonprofits wish to opt out.

Update: GoFundMe announced in a LinkedIn post it's updated its policy regarding Nonprofit Pages to opt-in rather than opt-out. The company says it will be removing any unclaimed or unverified pages.

Nonprofit Pages are now opt-in only: Moving forward, only nonprofits that opt-in to their Nonprofit  Page and complete the verification process will have a public Nonprofit  Page that is searchable on GoFundMe - making these Nonprofit Pages a  completely opt-in experience. Nonprofit Pages for organizations that  have not been claimed and verified will be removed. SEO will also be  turned off by default.

As KGO’s 7 On Your Side reports, Dave Dornlas, who’s treasurer of the Friends of the San Bruno Public Library and president of the San Bruno Amateur Radio Club, first became aware of the nonprofits’ phantom GoFundMe pages when a patron wanting to make a donation contacted him to make sure the page was legitimate.

Dornlas told 7 On Your Side he was nonplussed that GoFundMe neglected to get the nonprofit’s permission prior to creating the pages. He also said he had a challenging time getting in touch with the company, which only responded once 7 On Your Side got involved.

“The fact that they would just on their own build pages for nonprofits that they’ve never spoken to is a problem,” Dornlas told 7 on Your Side. “I’m a believer in opt-in, not opt-out.”

Per 7 on Your Side, GoFundMe mined the public IRS data of 1.4 million 501C-3 organizations, along with information collected from “trusted partners,” which it turned into charity pages. Krista Lamp, Senior Director of Non-Profit Communications at GoFundMe, told the outlet that when nonprofits claim the page, they gain “full visibility over donor data, donor stewardship branding, and how they choose to leverage their page.”

According to the company, per 7 on Your Side, “this allows individuals across GoFundMe’s 200 million-strong global community to easily discover and donate to nonprofit organizations, helping them support causes and charitable missions they care about, even if the organization hasn't actively created a GoFundMe campaign.”

Dornlas was also unhappy about the fact that GoFundMe includes a suggested tip for each donation, which is set at 16.5% but can be adjusted by the donor. Although 7 on Your Side says that the company also charges a 2.2% transaction fee for nonprofits (and 2.9% for individuals), plus $0.30 per donation on top of the suggested tip, that didn’t appear to be the case when SFist looked at one of GoFundMe’s charity pages.

7 on Your Side reports that nonprofits wishing to opt out of their GoFundMe pages can “unpublish” them through the site.

According to a 2019 TechCrunch article, GoFundMe announced it would be launching its Charity Pages in November of that year.

Image: GoFundMe

We have a new Hall of Fame entry in the annals of chutzpah, with the former director of an SFPD-affiliated nonprofit who’s under indictment for embezzling $100 grand suing the nonprofit for $26,000 in back pay she claims they still owe her.

It is difficult to keep track of all of the nonprofit spending scandals that have rocked SF City Hall over the last five years, but one stands out in particular because the director of the nonprofit allegedly embezzled $100,000 in taxpayer money from the SFPD. We refer to SF SAFE, an SFPD-funded “crime prevention education services” nonprofit that got caught up in scandal in early 2024 when a City Controller report found they were gouging the SFPD for $10,000 a month on limo rides, plus Vegas and Tahoe trips, and $162 gift boxes for their events.

A mere six days later, that scandal exploded into millions of dollars missing from their bank account, and allegations of check forgery lodged at SF SAFE’s executive director Kyra Worthy. By July 2024, DA Brooke Jenkins’s office charged Worthy with 34 felony counts of misusing public money, bank fraud, wage theft, and passing bad checks. Through DA Jenkins recused herself from the case, perhaps because she has attended so many of SF SAFE’s fancy taxpayer-funded parties.

And lavish parties these were! While Worthy is accused of embezzling around $100,000, the overall total of allegedly misused funds is $700,000. That includes the event below with now-state Assemblymember Catherine Stefani and former SFPD Chief Bill Scott, for which, according to Worthy’s indictment, she “spent $6,000 on an event planner and nearly $50,000 on catering." And, "The event featured a champagne greeting, open bar, and prime rib carving station.”

As Mission Local also noted, “She spent more than $24,000 at Marshall’s,” all on taxpayers' dime, according to the charging document.

Worthy is seen in the middle of the photo above (next to Mahammed Nuru!). Her embezzlement case is now making its way through the courts.

But the Chronicle now reports that Worthy is suing the defunct nonprofit SF SAFE for $26,000 — an amount she says includes her final paycheck and accrued vacation time she claims to be owed. (Mind you, she left the organization with negative $16 in their bank account.)

The Chron dug through filings to find that Worthy was being paid $157,000 per year in the executive director position. They also spoke to an anonymous former employee, who was furious at Worthy’s nerve for submitting the lawsuit, considering that her employees did not get their final paychecks either (reportedly an aggregate sum of $80,000) because the nonprofit dissolved.

And amidst all this, SF SAFE had, just two months prior, spent $98,000 on an event called Halloween Candy Explosion, which per Worthy’s indictment, spent “$20,000 for desserts and ice cream; $15,000 for a taco truck; $19,000 for a petting zoo, face painting, bouncy houses, carnival games, and a climbing wall; $20,000 for event planners; and $7,000 for ‘mobile luxury restrooms.’”

Worthy's new lawsuit is separate from her criminal embezzlement trial, in which she’s pleaded not guilty, and is being represented by court-appointed attorney Jeremy Blank. Her suing for back pay is a civil trial in SF Superior Court, and the Chronicle reports she’s representing herself as her own attorney on this one.

Related: Scandal-Plagued SFPD Partner Nonprofit SF SAFE Now Accused of Stiffing Local Florist Out of $17k [SFist]

Image: @MrCleanSF via Twitter

The local nonprofit Urban Alchemy, which took on favored-contractor status at San Francisco's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing in recent years, is increasingly coming under the microscope of city leaders amid signs of contract violations.

Urban Alchemy, the organization that employs formerly incarcerated people to work as street ambassadors and to staff supportive housing facilities in SF under multiple city contracts, is making the news again this week. At issue is a contract renewal for their management of a homeless shelter at 711 Post Street — the Ansonia Hotel, which served as a youth hostel in the last decade before becoming a shelter in 2022.

While the nonprofit continues to have favorable status at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), the SF Board of Supervisors has been asking more questions about its contracts — and Urban Alchemy has already seen BART cancel a contract with them, and they appear to be losing a contract in Austin, Texas as well over a misreporting issue at local shelters.

Since launching in San Francisco in 2018 as a project of the nonprofit Hunters Point Family, Urban Alchemy has grown to operate in seven cities, including Los Angeles, Austin, Portland, and Oakland.

The Chronicle reported two weeks ago that Urban Alchemy was put on notice and relegated to "tier 2" status for city contracts, following a warning letter sent by San Francisco Controller Greg Wagner in August. The letter said that the nonprofit was now on a watch list over "serious fiscal or programmatic concerns," due to imadequate and noncompliant tracking of employee hours. And unless the issue is resolved, Urban Alchemy stands to risk seeing its contracts renewed with the city.

Urban Alchemy is a key piece of what critics have referred to as the "homeless industrial complex" in San Francisco, receiving upwards of $50 million across multiple contracts in recent years. The contract for 711 Post Street alone is worth $22.7 million, and HSH is seeking to increase that to $27.6 million, and have the current contract extended through March, while Urban Alchemy addresses an issue with overspending.

The main issue, as the Chronicle reports, has to do with employee pay bumps that were not authorized under the contract — which led to overspending of $800,000. Urban Alchemy countered that they had requested $800,000, but that their overspending actually only amounted to $336,000, including salary increases and other expenses.

"We often are in a situation where we’re asked to do work and we don’t always have budgets in place for that work," said Melek Totah, CFO of Urban Alchemy, at a hearing this week with the supervisors' Budget & Finance Committee, per the Chron. “We have to be a lot better about saying no when we’re asked to do things where they’re not budgets already approved."

The organization issued an official statement on the issue, saying, "We take the stewardship of our finances and the responsibility to meet all government standards seriously."

How much Urban Alchemy currently gets per year in revenue from San Francisco city contracts is kind of opaque. That $53M figure was from 2022, and the current HSH budget mentions nothing specific about HSH — just an overall $610 million in "grants" and $106 million in "programmatic projects." In total, 24% of the department's $846M budget for FY24-25, around $200 million, was earmarked for "shelter and crisis interventions."

And Nicolas Menard, a financial analyst with the Board of Supervisors, said during the hearing that Urban Alchemy had "knowingly overspent" its contract for 711 Post, and that issues like this are fairly rare among contractors. "We look at a lot of nonprofit contracts," Menard said, per the Chronicle, saying this example was "extreme."

Supervisor Connie Chan, who chairs the Budget & Finance Committee, says that Urban Alchemy's issues are not just with this one contract but are "overall," and she called for an audit of their contracts last year that still could be coming.

So far, though, Urban Alchemy has managed to remain in the city's good graces, and  the Chronicle notes that the 711 Post Street contract likely will be extended. But we could hear more about this story come springtime.

Related: Street Ambassador Nonprofit Urban Alchemy Seen as Force of Good, Mostly

The San Francisco public already knew about the not-all-above-board spending practices of disgraced former Human Rights Commission chief and Dream Keeper program head Sheryl Davis, but a new city audit puts an eye-popping pricetag on it: $4.6 million.

It's been over a year now since Sheryl Davis resigned as executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission (HRC), amid a bombshell report about her apparent use of taxpayer dollars for frivolous expenses like a $10,000 house rental on Martha's Vineyard. Davis, who was also appointed by former Mayor London Breed to lead the mayor's Dream Keeper initiative — which was intended to direct more city funds to the city's historically underserved Black population — now may face more scrutiny after the release of a city audit report detailing the full extent of that unethical spending.

According to the report, prepared by the City Services Auditor within the Office of the Controller, the HRC under Davis's leadership "demonstrated a pattern and practice of evading existing controls and avoiding scrutiny from city oversight agencies, raising serious concerns about transparency, accountability, and financial integrity."

"This created a workplace where misconduct went unchallenged and ethical norms were disregarded, even as the department worked to improve oversight," auditor Mark de la Rosa writes.

Among the questionable and demonstrably frivolous expenses found in the audit, totaling around $4.6 million, are:

• $1.1 million in professional services and purchases made by HRC outside of standard city purchasing practices, using so-called "Prop Q" rules for purchases under $10,000. This includes almost $200,000 on sponsorships, tickets to gala events, and other ineligible purchases; and $151,000 paid to a former employee for ineligible consulting services.
• $8,000 paid in 2023 for a local non-profit, Total Women Empowerment Inc., to have a "Queen's Weekend Retreat" including spa services, to "take time to exclusively serve themselves to continue to service their community."
• $353,000 on likely ineligible food expenses, including catering, full restaurant buyouts, and food deliveries for staff
• $19,000 in tuition expenses for Davis's son, a graduate student at UCLA
• $6,800 to cover a four-week stay by guest lecturer and former fashion executive Antoine Phillips at the Intercontinental Hotel, for his stint speaking at the HRC's Black 2 San Francisco initiative last summer
• $9,995 — an amount flagged for being just under the $10K thresshold — to sponsor a "Senior Prom" for people over age 50 at The Village Project, paid as a donation through a different nonprofit. Incidentally, Davis was an honoree at the event.
• $92,000 in "Prop Q" expenses with bare-bones invoices that make the purposes of the expenses unclear — including $4,000 paid to UPS for shipping clothing and books to Davis at two hotels in New Orleans during the Essence Festival last year.
• $75,000 in expenses the audit determined to be "self-dealing" for Davis's own personal use, including expenses associated with a podcast she hosted
• $50,000 in invoices billed to "Health, Wellness & Community Engagement," all with little documentation or explanation, all priced at or around $9,000

The aforementioned Martha's Vineyard house rental was allegedly intended for some HRC interns who never ended up using it in August 2024 — perhaps because of the scrutiny the agency was beginning to face at the time. The story behind this seems to relate to a "philanthropic conference" Davis herself was attending. But the $9,000 amount for the interns' house, which was paid by the nonprofit Westside Community Services, was nonetheless reimbursed to that nonprofit, even though a receipt proving that the nonprofit had made the expenditure was never provided.

Additionally, as we learned last year, Western Addition-based nonprofit Collective Impact received $27 million in city grants since 2021 ($1.5 million from HRC), the year when Davis took charge of the Dream Keeper Initiative. It was later reported that this was a clear conflict of interest, as Davis has lived with the nonprofit's director, James Spingola, since 2015, and she was previously the director of the organization. (Davis signed a conflict of interest form only about her past association with the group, not about her relationship with Spingola.)

In a release, City Attorney David Chiu says that Davis created "an unethical culture at HRC," and "By taking these resources away from the community and spending them on herself and her friends, Davis harmed the community that was counting on her."

Davis said in a recent interview with Mission Local that she was a "failed bureaucrat," that the allegations against her were "mostly false," and that she was simply guilty of unknowingly ignoring arcane city rules.

"I was too focused on the people, but not on the rules," Davis said.

Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the City Attorney's Office, tells Mission Local, "She was well aware of her ethical and legal obligations."

Davis further told Mission Local that she now regrets resigning, though she did it in part for her friend, London Breed, whose re-election was on the line. "I thought if I resigned, then they would just move on, and the program would move forward. Instead, they used my resignation to dismantle everything." Davis was referring to the gutting of funding for the Dream Keeper Initiative in her wake.

Davis remains under a criminal investigation by the SF District Attorney's Office.

Related: Fired City Hall Director Back In Hot Water Over $19K In City Funds Used for Her Son’s UCLA Tuition

Numerous nonprofits are saying Oakland-based donation processing platform, Flipcause, mishandled their funds, costing them thousands of dollars. The company currently has 81 unresolved Better Business Bureau complaints.

In an exclusive report, KGO’s Dan Noyes spoke with various nonprofits across the country, which say that although Flipcause promises delivery of funds to clients’ accounts within 7 to 10 days, the company has significantly delayed its distributions — or failed to send them altogether — over the past year and a half. Clients’ ongoing attempts to recover their funds are usually met with no response.

According to a recent Reddit thread, "tens of thousands" of nonprofits have been impacted by Flipcause’s mishandling of their funds. Users whose nonprofits have been with Flipcause for a decade previously boasted about the company’s top-notch platform — until it began delaying distributions and removed its dedicated customer service phone line in favor of a chatbot.

Morgan Schauffler of Marin County’s Youth in Arts told KGO that Flipcause stopped paying them in March, and it currently owes the nonprofit $22,000, per KGO.

Julia Wyson of the Shakespeare Youth Festival in Los Angeles told KGO, "I have to tell my staff, I'm sorry, guys, you're gonna have to wait for your paycheck, because we're waiting for Flipcause to pay us our money."

Some have even considered closing their nonprofits due to the delayed or missing funds. Tammy Clark of Homeless Hands in Zanesville, Ohio told KGO that although she ended up receiving all of her funds, she still lost dozens of donors due to the delay.

McKenna Sellars of Montana Renewable Energy Association told the station, "We don't have a lot of staff. And so, trying to dedicate a person to go and manage what's going on with Flipcause on a daily basis is just taking away from the mission."

A Redditor said in addition to still owing their nonprofit $180,000, Flipcause won’t let them transfer their recurring donors to a new platform, which is typically a complimentary service on other platforms. “We would be very happy to join a class action lawsuit!” they concluded.

Other Redditors said they received partial payments after constantly hounding the staff, including the company's sales team.

"I am going to quit over this issue. The way it is being handled is horrendous," a disgruntled salesperson at Flipcause told KGO. "Not even we as employees are getting any real answers or timelines on what the (expletive) is going on."  

"... I genuinely believe they mean no harm, but I can no longer sell this product in good faith," the employee continued.

The Better Business Bureau said it first became aware of Flipcause in 2015, but the majority of the complaints and reviews appear to be from the past year and a half. The page states that Flipcause has received 89 complaints in the past three years, 81 of which have gone unresolved.

Image: Donald Gruener/Getty Images

The more than 30-year-old Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in the Western Addition may close permanently, as City Attorney David Chiu is vowing to cut off its parent nonprofit from receiving any more city grants after an alleged bribery scandal.

Of the many nonprofit spending scandals of the London Breed era, one that stands out is that of the SF Human Rights Commission, a City Hall commission whose former director Sheryl Davis was accused of lavishly spending on a $10,000 Martha’s Vineyard cottage rental paid for with your tax dollars, and with some fishy “split the invoice” accounting methods seemingly designed to hide that spending from oversight review.

Davis hastily resigned when that story broke, but that did not stop the flow of more revelations involving Davis and a nonprofit called Collective Impact. Local reporters found that Davis was living with that nonprofit’s executive director James Spingola, and they owned a car together, though she directed $6 million to that nonprofit during her tenure. More alarmingly, Collective Impact gave Davis’s son a $19,000 UCLA scholarship with that money, plus first-class airfare for Davis to promote her book and podcast, and another $5,000 for Oakland soul singer Goapele to perform at Davis’s book launch party.

SF City Attorney David Chiu canceled all of Collective Impact’s city contracts with the city in December, and moved to debar them from receiving any city contracts for the next five years. Those debarment hearings are set to begin this Monday.

Now today the Chronicle reports that Collective Impact says it will shut down permanently without those city funds, or in the words of their legal filing, the nonprofit “anticipates a complete shutdown of its programs by October” if stripped of city money. That would mean the closure of the Western Addition’s thirty-plus-year-old Ella Hill Hutch Community Center, and the discontinuation of the nonprofit’s summer and afterschool programs, healthy food assistance programs, and other programs that help people pay their bills.

“The disproportionate effect of poverty will once again come to Western Addition,” Collective Impact attorneys said in their legal filings opposing the debarment. “Put plainly, without Collective Impact, the community will suffer in ways that the city is simply not prepared to handle.”

Collective Impact received $27 million in city grants between 2021 and 2024, or about $8 million a year. Months after these scandals broke, City Attorney Chiu says the nonprofit still should not be trusted with public money.

“Collective Impact received city grant funding to provide services to vulnerable San Francisco kids, not to be a personal PR firm and travel agency for Dr. Davis,” Chiu said in a Tuesday statement to the Chronicle. His legal filings added, “Whether Collective Impact’s payments benefitting Davis are characterized as illegal gifts, kickbacks, or bribes, Spingola knew that he was living with Davis, never disclosed their relationship and continued to direct City funds for Davis’ benefit.”

Davis still has not spoken to the press since the day she resigned. Though the Collective Impact director Spingola did.

“How do you bribe somebody?” he said when the Chronicle reached him. “I don’t know what bribing is.”

You can judge for yourself whether that sounds innocent or guilty. But it seems the obvious play here would have been for Spingola to resign as Collective Impact director, and present some sort of “new page” or “fresh face” to convince the city to keep funding them. That didn’t happen, and now the future of the nonprofit is highly in doubt.

Related: SF’s 10 Wildest Nonprofit Spending Scandals of the Last Five Years, Ranked [SFist]

Image: Porsche C via Yelp

The very uncomfortable-looking man below is SF Parks Alliance CEO Drew Becher, who had to squirm Thursday as angry SF supervisors' committee grilled him over how $4 million was misspent, and he claimed he just didn’t know it was happening.

There are no free movies in SF Parks this summer, because the SF Parks Alliance that organized those events has completely collapsed in a financial scandal. The Parks Alliance is not the same thing as the SF Rec and Parks Department, and instead is a private nonprofit that raised money for park projects. And they acted as sort of a bank for small neighborhood and park groups, who could park their money with the Parks Alliance and withdraw it upon request — except that the Chronicle reported in mid-March that the Parks Alliance had blown $3.8 million in other groups’ money on their own operating expenses, and was unable to reimburse those groups for expenses as small as $100.  

Since then, the SF District Attorney and City Attorney have both launched investigations into the misuse of those funds, Mayor Lurie pulled all the Parks Alliance's city funding, and the nonprofit went belly-up and closed entirely in June. Meanwhile, jilted neighborhood groups are wondering where all their money went, and Supervisor Shamann Walton vowed to drag in the Parks Alliance's leaders and put them under oath in hearings.

The Chronicle reports that the first of those hearings happened Thursday afternoon at the SF Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee. And they put former SF Parks Alliance CEO Drew Becher, who resigned before this scandal hit the fan in February, under oath about how he could have spent so much of smaller neighborhood groups’ money without telling them.

“This just seems like a bit of a Ponzi scheme,” Supervisor Stephen Sherrill said, before asking the multi-million dollar question “Where is the money now?” Becher’s answer did not seem to satisfy anyone.

“Where is the money now?" Becher answered. "I mean, it’s with other community partners, community projects that were covered that were running deficits, it’s with, you know it’s, it’s — I don’t exactly know where all of it is, but it was spent on operations and park public space-related projects.”

Sherrill pushed on how shortchanged organizations could get their money back from the Park Alliance, and Becher’s answer was pretty unfulfilling on that too. “I don’t know what the process is now that the organization is not viable,” he told the supervisors.  

Those who remained at the Park Alliance after Becher stepped down seemed to want to peg him as the fall guy on this. But Becher seemed to place blame on the Parks Alliance’s former Chief Financial Officer Justin Probert, who left his position in February 2024 (and was not present at Thursday's meeting).

“I had no idea that restricted funds were being misapplied to cover operating expenses," Becher claimed. "I relied on our financial team, and particularly our CFO, to prepare financial reports for review.”

The supervisors were not buying Becher’s answers at all, and peppered him with tough questions, until Becker’s attorney stepped in to stop the questioning. “No more speeches,” that lawyer David Callaway declared. “He’s done.”

Supervisor Jackie Fielder continued to make her point that Rec and Park general manager Phil Ginsburg may have known more about these improprieties than he has led on publicly. “Mr. Ginsburg did not tell anyone until April 2025,” Fielder alleged. And some from community groups who lost money insisted that these financial issues were an open secret for a long time.

“I could have told you years ago that quite obviously they were using restricted funds for other reasons, because we could never get our money released to us,” Tompkins Stairway Garden founder Vicky Rideout told the supervisors. “We made the decision in October of 2024 to terminate our fiscal sponsorship agreement with them. I requested a contract terminating it and the release of our funds. That contract was signed by Drew Becher at that time, and we have never received any of our funds. We were terminated as fiscal sponsors, and they kept the money that we had raised to beautify our community.”

Dozens of groups say they’re in the same boat, and lost money that they had raised because of this scandal. The Chronicle reports that those who’ve lost money can file a form before December 1, 2025 to seek repayment, though we'll see if anyone actually gets reimbursed, and where from.

Related: Jilted Neighborhood Groups Vent Over How Much of Their Money the SF Parks Alliance Made Disappear [SFist]

Image: SFGovTV

Following the implosion of the SF Parks Alliance last month, the Port of San Francisco is now on the hook for $1.9 million in construction costs at Dogpatch's Crane Cove Park that were supposed to be covered by money in the nonprofit's coffers.

We learned back in May that one of the big projects underway that was dependent on funds from the SF Parks Alliance was Crane Cove Park in Dogpatch, where two playgrounds were still yet to be built in addition to a dog park. A private donation from the Baker Street Foundation, which was created by late Oracle co-founder Bob Miner, had been held by the Parks Alliance and was intended to cover these improvement costs at the park.

But, that approximately $1.9 million sum disappeared amidst the Parks Alliance's early June collapse, allegedly used to cover the nonprofit's operating expenses.

The Port of San Francisco is still pledging to get Crane Cove Park completed as planned, but as the Chronicle reports today, this will come at the expense of other "beautification" efforts on the city's southern waterfront.

Port Executive Director Elaine Forbes reportedly told the Port Commission that, after reducing some construction costs, they were still short about $1.54 million, which will have to come from the Southern Waterfront Beautification Fund, which is funded through rents that that Port collects on its properties. This will mean fewer plants, benches, and other improvements that were planned for areas along the Bay, and it will also mean taking away funds intended for the removal of some old container cranes at Pier 96.

A spokesperson for the Port told the Chronicle that they will still plan on making these improvements at a later date, and may look for "potential grant funding and other public-private partnerships" to cover the costs.

As reported previously, the SF Parks Alliance served as a catch-all repository for funds raised by various "friends of" neighborhood parks groups, relieving them of the hassle of seeking their own nonprofit status. The Alliance also worked in tandem with the Rec & Parks and Public Works departments to fill in funding gaps for various projects around the city, and the group used to host summertime screenings  of popular movies in Dolores Park and Alamo Square Park.

Parks Alliance leadership remain under investigation for the alleged misuse of some $3.8 million that rightfully belonged to a host of smaller organizations, which it used to cover its own expenses as its own donation revenue dropped.

Another example of a group that has lost its funds is Sutro Stewards, a group that maintains trails and leads conservations efforts around Mount Sutro, which says it had $187,000 in donations being held in the Alliance's accounts. The organization temporarily shut down in early June and laid off its staff following the dissolution of the Parks Alliance, but thanks in part to fiscal sponsor Liveable City and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and other donors, they were able to re-raise enough money to reopen within weeks.

"More than anything, we are deeply moved by the support from our community," the group said in its newsletter. "We are committed to continue to care for the Mountain that we all depend on for so much."

Previously: SF Parks Alliance Shutting Down, As Millions of Dollars In Other Groups’ Money They Were Holding Has Disappeared

Top image: Photo by Luke Stewart

Across California, advocates are supporting immigrants at risk of detention by attending court, monitoring ICE activity, helping with legal paperwork, and assisting families with online hearing requests.

As KQED reports, court accompaniment is one of the most immediate and effective tools for supporting immigrants. Volunteers attend hearings, offer administrative support, and stay alert of ICE activity. If someone is detained, the volunteer will contact a legal team or a rapid response network — often quickly enough to intervene. In one recent case, a volunteer observed ICE agents detaining someone outside a Sacramento courtroom and was able to identify the individual and contact support. A pro bono lawyer arrived, and the man was released later that day.

Organizations like NorCal Resist and La Raza Centro Legal train volunteers on how to safely and effectively participate in accompaniment work. No legal experience is needed, just a willingness to learn, listen, and be present. In some cases, accompaniment can also help court staff and judges feel more accountable when proceedings are under observation.

Lawyers are also working to reduce the need for in-person court appearances by filing motions to move hearings online using the WebEx platform. Any applicant can request this by submitting a "Motion to Change Hearing Format" to their court. While not guaranteed, these requests are more likely to be granted if they include a reason — such as difficulty with transportation or caregiving responsibilities. Here's a PDF guide. Local nonprofits often assist with the process, and bilingual volunteers are especially helpful.

Counties throughout the Bay Area have rapid-response, 24-hour hotlines, with volunteers verifying reports of ICE activity, dispatching legal help, and working with families if someone is detained. San Francisco’s hotline is 415-200-1548 and Alameda 510-241-4011. The full list is here.

If a loved one has been detained by ICE, KQED has a guide on how to search the federal detainee database, contact field offices, or call detention facilities. Advocacy groups like Freedom for Immigrants also help families navigate the system.

Additionally, as Broke-Ass Stuart writes, businesses can post “No ICE Access” signs in nonpublic areas, helping workers understand their rights and signaling that warrantless enforcement is not allowed inside. They don’t guarantee safety, but they do make it more challenging for ICE to operate unnoticed. The signs were adapted by a Redditor from the original United Farm Workers version.

Printable Sign Posted by Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo, link to Google Drive PDF in comment
byu/orangelover95003 insantacruz

As Teen Vogue reports, some groups are also focusing on spreading the ACLU's Know Your Rights materials — flyers, posters, and videos that explain how to respond during an ICE encounter, in multiple languages — aimed at helping counter misinformation, ease panic, and empower community members.

Finally, digital projects like The ICE List and the BlockICE app enable volunteers to contribute from their computers or phones by researching agents, translating reports, and organizing data. These tools help track enforcement patterns, document abuses, and share critical information with those affected. Anyone can submit photos, documents, or tips — and all contributions are reviewed before being published.

Image: Google Maps

Related: New App Lets Users Crowdsource ICE Agent Sightings, Trump Administration Goes Apoplectic

San Francisco's season of nonprofit upheavals continues as the longtime head of the San Francisco Zoo announces her plan to retire next month. The announcement comes a month after a report of dysfunction on the zoo's board, and an attempted coup by board members.

Tanya Peterson, the longtime executive director and CEO of the SF Zoological Society, which manages the city-owned San Francisco Zoo, has announced plans to retire in August, as the SF Standard was first to report. Peterson put out a statement late Tuesday afternoon through PR rep Sam Singer, saying, "Leading this zoo has been one of the great honors of my life," and "I have been committed to leading the SF Zoo through some of its most transformative and, unfortunately, some of its most challenging moments."

The Zoological Society board added its own statement, thanking Peterson for her "extraordinary contributions, leadership, and unwavering dedication." And, the board said, "During her tenure, she greatly expanded the zoo’s wildlife conservation efforts and enhanced visitors’ access to endangered, exotic, and rescued animals — fostering an environment of exploration and education for guests from near and far."

Peterson has led the zoo since 2008, and was earning a $339,500 annual salary as of 2022.

The writing was pretty clearly on the wall early last month that a shakeup was likely at the zoo's board, following the abrupt resignations of several board members who had reportedly attempted to oust Peterson, only to be outvoted.

This attempted coup came after months of reported back-and-forth with the city's budget analyst's office, which had been requesting a series of documents from the zoo in order to conduct a thorough financial audit. Not receiving these documents, Supervisor Myrna Melgar threatened to freeze the $4 million in annual funding that the city provides to the zoo, decrying the "dysfunction" on the board.

Mayor Daniel Lurie followed that with a direct call for Peterson to resign last week.

Lurie put out a statement following Peterson's announcement, per the Chronicle, saying, "Under new, stable leadership, the San Francisco Zoo has the opportunity to reach new heights. I want to thank Tanya Peterson for her service to the zoo and our city. I look forward to working with the board and the new leadership to improve our zoo and fulfill the rare and exciting opportunity to bring pandas to our city."

Allegations of mismanagement have dogged the zoo for over a year, following an investigative report by the Chronicle that found multiple safety concerns for zookeepers, and animal welfare concerns — and it unearthed an accusation of nepotism against Peterson, including the hiring of her daughter as a paid intern, and paying her fiance, Gregory Dayton, to perform concerts at the zoo.

Unionized workers at the zoo cast a 97% vote of no confidence in Peterson in April 2024. The SF Zoological Society then announced an internal investigation last May, which concluded in September with the board expressing its full "continued confidence" in Peterson's leadership.

That confidence had clearly frayed for at least a few board members by this past spring, with a vote taken to remove Peterson, which failed, leading to those members resigning. The Rec & Park Commission's zoo advisory committee's co-chair Larry Mazzola Jr. called the situation "a complete embarrassment" last month in comments to the Chronicle, adding, "It’s apparent that the SF Zoological Society is inept."

The City Attorney's Office became involved, claiming that it was still missing 25 documents it and the budget analyst's office had requested from the zoo. Dan Goncher, principal at the budget analyst’s office, told the Chronicle that Peterson had "outright refused" to participate in the city's audit during a meeting in January.

Singer put out a statement in response saying, "The zoo believes it’s in compliance or substantial compliance, and if for some reason there are documents the city still requires, the zoo will gladly provide them."

Melgar, meanwhile, said things like, "I’ve tried to help the zoo, and I have been treated with nothing but disrespect."

The Zoological Society will now undertake a process to select a new CEO, and it sounds like their city funding is safe, for now.

The SF Zoo is, as far as we know, still trying to broker a deal with the Chinese government to bring two giant pandas to the city next year. Melgar had earlier implied that some board members at the Zoological Society believed that Peterson's relationships with Chinese officials were essential to cutting such a deal.

The shakeup at the zoo's board follows on the heels of the complete implosion of the nonprofit SF Parks Alliance amid what some have called gross financial mismanagement.

Related: SF’s 10 Wildest Nonprofit Spending Scandals of the Last Five Years, Ranked

Photo by David Yao

A group of nonprofits are rallying at City Hall Wednesday because Mayor Lurie’s budget slashes programs addressing homelessness, and they say that under Lurie’s budget, the problem in San Francisco will just get worse.

What with the City and County of San Francisco looking down the barrel of an $800 million budget deficit ($245 million for fiscal year 2025 and $554 million for fiscal year 2026), Mayor Daniel Lurie is going to have to slash some jobs and programs. And there’s already been plenty of pushback over potential layoffs and the possible elimination of free-meal programs. And now NBC Bay Area reports that nonprofits and advocates for the homeless community were planning a City Hall rally on Wednesday over Lurie’s proposed cuts to homelessness programs, cuts which they say will lead to even more San Franciscans living on the streets.

One of those groups rallying is Open Door Legal, a nonprofit providing legal services to people at risk of losing their homes and falling into homelessness. And KQED reports that organization’s founder and director Adrian Tirtanadi has gone so far as to go on a hunger strike in protest of Lurie’s budget cuts.

“My overall reaction is extreme disappointment,” Tirtanadi told NBC Bay Area.“The budget will make homelessness worse, not better.”

Open Door Legal partially relies on funding from the San Francisco Civil Legal Services program, a $4 million-a-year City Hall program that Lurie has decided to eliminate entirely. That means Open Door Legal is losing the $2.2 million it gets every year from the city.

“I want to be very clear, this is a painful budget,” Lurie said last month when he introduced his budget. “I am hopeful and I am optimistic about our economic future here in San Francisco because we are prioritizing clean and safe streets.”

Open Door Legal would continue to exist without city funding, but with its current caseload of 3,000 clients each year, the organization would have to serve 900 fewer clients annually. And that’s 900 more people a year who could fall into homelessness if Lurie’s budget cuts go through, according to Tirtanadi.

But will Lurie’s thoroughly slashed budget pass? That’s up to the SF Board of Supervisors. NBC Bay Area asked all of them about it, and the only ones who responded were Supervisors Joel Engardio, Bilal Mahmood, Danny Sauter, and Stephen Sherrill. All four said they felt Open Door Legal should still be funded.

But those four moderate, three of who are brand new to city government, have so far been reliably loyal votes for Lurie, and have yet to cross him on a substantial level. And simply voicing support for funding Open Door Legal is a far cry from actually defying Lurie and voting against the overall budget.

Related: Mayor Daniel Lurie Promises 'New Era of Accountability' In New Homelessness Plan [SFist]

Image: @TheCoalitionSF via Twitter

This week’s blow-up of the SF Parks Alliance only underscores the staggering number of SF nonprofits with improper spending scandals, and other riches-to-rags financial improprieties that have happened here over the last five years.  

Many San Francisco nonprofits do wonderful work, feeding those in need, helping the homeless, and beautifying our city. But the myriad of nonprofit scandals that have broken out these past five years shows that some nonprofits have been enjoying the use of your tax dollars for half-million-dollar concert trips to Dubai, $10,000 cottage rentals at Martha’s Vineyard, or $19,000 worth of tuition money to send some city official’s kid to UCLA.

As we’re in another busy week for nonprofit scandals, let’s relive the dizzying array of SF nonprofit embarrassments that have broken out in the wake of Mohammed Nuru figuring out how to use SF nonprofits as a million-dollar slush fund.

10. SF SAFE
The SFPD’s own affiliated nonprofit SF SAFE certainly enjoyed their lavish parties. Just look at those prominent SF city officials above, enjoying themselves at a party with lovely floral arrangements and a generous buffet. Yeah, turns out those floral arrangements were never paid for and the vendor got stiffed out of $17,000 total.  

That’s just the tip of the iceberg with SF SAFE, whose now-fired director Kyra Worthy (seen above with Nuru) was accused in a January 2024 audit of having have spent excessive taxpayer money on $162 luxury gift boxes, limo rides, and trips to Tahoe and Vegas. The following week we found out the organization was facing allegations of check forgery, and their vendors were owed millions of unpaid dollars. At the time, SF SAFE’s bank account balance was at negative-$16, and Kyra Worthy stands accused of misusing $700,000 in public money on this “crime prevention” nonprofit.

Status: The organization technically still exists, though SFPD canceled their contracts with them, and ex-director facing 34 felony charges

9. SF Parks Alliance
We don’t know how much money the SF Parks Alliance spent on the above video for an October 2024 party that raised a reported $630,000. But the video describes “over 80 community groups” the Park Alliance represents, and those groups are suddenly missing all the money they’d deposited with the Parks Alliance.

Mohammed Nuru also had his hands in the Parks Alliance till, but recently, the agency is better known for how they’ve made neighborhood groups’ deposit money disappear (while giving executives raises), and how they’ll be facing a number of audits and investigations. The SF Parks Alliance was reportedly dissolved this week.

Status: Just folded, SF DA has launched a criminal investigation

8. San Francisco Zoo
This nonprofit is more accurately described as the San Francisco Zoological Society, which runs the city-owned zoo. And they’ve been busy in this week of SF nonprofit implosions, as several of their board members resigned after an unsuccessful attempt to oust CEO executive director Tanya Peterson. This comes after a blistering October 2024 audit described the zoo as “unsafe for visitors and animals,” “dilapidated,” and “extremely outdated,” and Tuesday’s Chronicle report that the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office says the zoo is withholding documents related to their current audit.

Status: Intact, still trying to get a couple pandas from China.  

7. Aquarium of the Bay
Another case here where the well-known institution is run by a nonprofit with another name, as Fisherman’s Wharf’s Aquarium of the Bay is operated by a nonprofit called the Bay Institute. The scandal exploded in May 2024 when nearly the whole staff there resigned over some obscure spat about peer-review of academic work. But this scandal went to 20,000 leagues when the CEO resigned amidst reports of profligate spending like $460,000 to go see Stewart Copeland in Dubai, then the aquarium lost its accreditation, though it still operates.  

Status: Still operating, angry fired CEO suing them claiming they were secretly selling shark blood to Disney

6. Urban Alchemy
The “street ambassador” nonprofit Urban Alchemy was founded in SF, though does plenty of work in other cities, and now pulls in an estimated $60 million nationwide. But they’ve managed a few significant scandals during their tenure in SF, like that time in 2022 when an employee allegedly shot someone while on duty, or accusations that ambassadors were carrying weapons on duty or dealing drugs on the job. And they are the group that was charging the city for services that caused a single tent in a sanctioned tent encampment during the pandemic to cost $5,000 per month, or $60,000 per year, or the equivalent of renting a regular two-bedroom apartment. The Nation has pointed out that Urban Alchemy was charging $34,000 per tent per year at a similar sanctioned camping site in Portland, and management of a tiny-home cabin complex in SF costs $80,000 per cabin per year.

Status: Still under contract with SF, but likely facing layoffs

5.  Human Rights Commission/Collective Impact
The name of the nonprofit is Collective Impact, and the Human Rights Commission is the SF City Hall Department department which paid collective Impact $1.5 million while the commission’s executive director Sherly Davis was living with and sharing a car with Collective Impact’s executive director James Spingola. Davis resigned when that hit the fan, though still has matters to be litigated like a  $10,000 Martha’s Vineyard cottage rental and getting $19,000 in city money for her son’s UCLA tuition.  

Status: Merged with the scandal-plagued Department on the Status of Women, described below

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4. Department on the Status of Women/She the People
Again, we’re describing a City Hall department called the Department on the Status of Women, while the nonproit is called She the People, who made the fine video above for Mayor London Breed. But Department on the Status of Women director Kimberly Ellis was placed on leave for $10,000 worth of off-the-book moonlighting work with She the People and other political action committees, as well as some conspicuously pricey conferences, activities that Mayor Lurie has even called "unlawful activities."  

Status: Merged with the scandal-plagued Human Rights Commission, described above

3. Baker Places
In the summer of 2022, the city gave an addiction treatment nonprofit called Baker Places $1.2 million to help keep them afloat as the city contracted more work to them. But by last year, Baker Places was ordered to repay the city $7.6 million of costs where their operating expenses well exceeded what the city had budgeted for them.

Status: Still operating, on a payment plan for debts

2. HomeRise
An April 2024 city audit found that homeless services provider HomeRise had given staff raises and paid enormous bonuses while their housing units sat empty. That same audit concluded that the money could have paid for SRO improvements or tenant services, as HomeRise operates nearly a third of the city-funded SROs for the formerly homeless.

Status: Still operating, under new executive leadership from when this happened

1. The Whole Mohammed Nuru Enchilada
While the whole Mohammed Nuru Enchilada is not about a nonprofit, Nuru did use the nonprofit system to his advantage. Nuru was able to utilize the SF Parks Alliance as sort of a $1 million "slush fund" into which city contractors like Recology would deposit tax-deductible donations, and that money would be spent on lavish parties and swag for the Department of Public Works, which Nuru ran like a personal fiefdom. Also, how can we forget Lefty O'Doul's Foundation for Kids, which seemed to be another nonprofit slush fund at Nuru's disposal. And even after Nuru was long gone, city auditors still found a suspicious trail of $3.5 million in anonymous donations in the Parks Alliance's coffers, coffers which are somehow now empty.

Status: Nuru is serving seven years in prison for fraud and bribery, and see above about the Parks Alliance dissolving.

Related: Exposé Finds San Francisco Doled Out $90M Last Year to Nonprofits That Are Not In Good Standing With the State [SFist]

Image: (Right) @MrCleanSF via Twitter, (Left) Parker Brothers