Orange County Register

So there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that the head of an Orange County “hall of shame” charity - The Association for Firefighters & Paramedics in Santa Ana - earns less ($117,000) than the average non-profit CEO ($148,972). Whew!

The bad news, according to nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator’s new CEO salary report: “It is hard to justify a six-figure salary for someone who runs a charity that spends only 2 percent of its  budget on programs and services.”

Cold, hard numbers from the charity’s most recent tax returns:

• The charity raised a hardy $3.97 million “to support the work of crucial burn centers, fund patient care,” yada yada yada.
• The charity spent a paltry $80,530 “to support the work of crucial burn centers, fund patient care,” yada yada yada.

(As Charity Navigator points out, that’s just two cents of every donated dollar going to support burn victims. Ideally, this number would be about 75 percent.)

That’s not all:

• The charity spent three times as much on administration ($239,081) as it spent supporting burn victims et al ($80,530).
• The staggering majority of the money raised - $3.92 million, or 92 percent - was spent, well, raising money.  

Bah, humbug! The Association for Firefighters & Paramedics was even branded a “Scrooge” by the South Carolina secretary of state, who called it one of the state’s worst charities in 2006. Check out the chart from Charity Navigator’s analysis:

Charity president Michael F. Gamboa - the guy who earns that $117,000 a  year - did not return The Watchdog’s calls seeking comment on all this by deadline.

Gamboa worked for Mitch Gold (king of Orange County telemarketing) in the late 1990s, and founded this charity in 2001. In July 2002, a federal judge sentenced Gold to eight years in prison for fraud. My colleague Ronald Campbell investigated how Gold’s associates have carried the torch forward while he was imprisoned in Network of Deception.

In 2005, Gamboa told the Associated Press that his charity used a commercial fund-raiser because it was new and had little name recognition. “In order to get money to come in we have to pay out a bunch,” he said. “The cost of fund-raising is enormous.”

He had plans to sign up with an Internet fund-raiser that, ahem, would take just 50 percent of the fund-raising profits. Jolly.

So how do you spend $3.92 million on fundraising? By contracting with expensive telemarketers who take something like 90 percent off the top. Here are the charity’s top five independent contractors:

• Courtesy Call, Las Vegas, $635,594
• Community Support, Milwaukee, $642,307
• Public Awareness LLC, Riverside, $537,552
• New Age Services, Brooklyn, $511,253
• Safety Publications, Elk Grove Village, IL, $304,558

And here is some heart-rending copy from the organization’s web site, which will surely move you to tears:

“AFP’s purpose is to support the work of the crucial centers, fund patient care, provide burn medical education and support injury prevention initiatives and community burn awareness programs.

“Unfortunately, it is the vulnerable in our society who are the most frequent victims of catastrophic fires. Seniors over 70 and children under 5 are at greatest risk for death and injury due to fire. In fact, they are twice as likely to die from fire than the population at large. Sadly, it is children under 10 that comprise 17% of all deaths from fire.

“AFP believes it is our community duty to protect those who are most vulnerable and most at risk. AFP’s board directs much needed funds to help the survivors of catastrophic fires.”

Protecting the most vulnerable. Indeed.

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