Per the California Attorney General Vanguard is operating illegally as a non profit

[IllianaLancerContra]

13 hours ago, Richard Lesher said:

 

In response to the question about the requirement of Independent Audits.

1)      The audits have always been required. I am the Board Member in 2006 that reestablished new CPA relationships that executed those audits.

2)      At the end of my time on the Board of Directors the CPA firm would send a representative to the Board Meeting (around the end of the calendar year), and the representative would give a presentation and discuss the Independent Audited findings, and explain the financial report of the audited financial statements. Those meetings were open to anyone that wanted to attend in person. 

 

 

8 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:

In the January Q&A with alumni, alumni association, some board members, CFO and then-CEO present... JVW stated that they do conduct yearly third-party audits, but they aren't made public.

OK - it seems from this that:

1.  Annual third-party Audits were done in the past, at least through Mr Lesher's tenure, and available, in some form, to the public (via attendance at meeting if nothing else).

2.  Most recent SCV leadership says that third-part audits were done but are not made public (& State of California claims they were not submitted as required).

So, why did SCV stop submitting them as required?  Is it some form of incompetence (yes, there has been a revolving door, but this boggles the mind)?  Or is there something SCV is trying to hide?  Not a good look either way.

This is an excellent example of why you never hold back with bad news.  It NEVER gets better with age.

Edited April 17, 2023 by IllianaLancerContra
further pontification

[JimF-LowBari]

9 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:

In the January Q&A with alumni, alumni association, some board members, CFO and then-CEO present... JVW stated that they do conduct yearly third-party audits, but they aren't made public.

Apparently not made public to CA officials for what I can tell. 
Does SCV alumni group have any connection in running the corps? Asking as some FB comments basically saying “if you don’t trust SCV board enough to donate then give your money to the alumni group”. 🤷🏻

[Keith Hall]

Goodbye SCV

[Terri Schehr]

10 hours ago, DudleytheWest said:

I thought this from the day they announced they were not fielding a corps in 2023. Whether they make it back on the field or not, they will not pick back up right where they left off. Who in their right mind would audition for this corps after how they handled 2023? If they are back in 2024 (or whenever) they are going to have an extremely difficult time attracting top talent and perhaps even a full corps.

I've been involved with this activity since the early 80s and this is by far the most devastating thing that has happened, to me.

I blame DCI and their policies - policies that have eliminated any type of fair playing field amongst member corps and increased the costs to field a corps exponentially. I know the corps are DCI and it's the corps that did this to themselves. This is the beginning of the end of the end. The beginning of the end was decades ago when all of us saw this activity declining and the powers-that-be did nothing to stop it.

My late father in law said decades ago that this tour model wasn’t sustainable.   It’s good that they’ve pared down the schedule and it seems to be a bit more regional.  Some groups are taking it upon themselves, like Jersey Surf, to do the fiscally responsible thing and cut way back.   It’s like a top spinning out of control.

I once asked a board member of a corps who was complaining about being bullied by staff to spend more and more money why he just didn’t say no? He just looked at me in a confused way.  You can just say no. Treat them like spoiled children. 

One of the most misguided things they did was raise membership to 165.  That is a real head scratcher.  I asked Jim “Is this what smart people do?”

[Tenoris4Jazz]

9 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:

In the January Q&A with alumni, alumni association, some board members, CFO and then-CEO present... JVW stated that they do conduct yearly third-party audits, but they aren't made public.

Not being public is one thing... not submitting them to the state as a requirement of your non-profit regulatory oversight???

I said this before in another thread:  I have been working for 25 years as an accountant for publicly traded companies and I have worked directly with auditors over a dozen times.  If you are not submitting independently audited financial statements to the proper authorities, there are only 3 reasons:  1) you are hiding something you found  2) you are avoiding an audit because you don't want to find something  3) you are incredibly stupid and negligent.

[IllianaLancerContra]

3 minutes ago, Tenoris4Jazz said:

Not being public is one thing... not submitting them to the state as a requirement of your non-profit regulatory oversight???

I said this before in another thread:  I have been working for 25 years as an accountant for publicly traded companies and I have worked directly with auditors over a dozen times.  If you are not submitting independently audited financial statements to the proper authorities, there are only 3 reasons:  1) you are hiding something you found  2) you are avoiding an audit because you don't want to find something  3) you are incredibly stupid and negligent.

Could be a combination of the three; they are not mutually exclusive.

[Tenoris4Jazz]

Just now, IllianaLancerContra said:

Could be a combination of the three; they are not mutually exclusive.

True.  I should have pointed that out.  Thanks for catching that.

Even Enron published their audited results.  It just took some people with a lot of working knowledge of the operating model to find the fraud, and it had been covered up by at least two levels of Enron management AND Arthur Anderson.

[scheherazadesghost]

Until I'm given evidence to the contrary, I will continue to believe that this was an administrative oversight that occurred due to the loss of institutional knowledge from high staff turnover.

Couple high turnover with few leadership roles filled by people who have robust experience successfully running nonprofits and you might get into this type of situation.

Pair all that with a broken whistleblower system and enough outright denial that it's broken despite qualified alum (who have navigated the established wb process) trying to point that out.

Again, the state provides so much guidance about how to climb out of delinquency status. That's the relatively easy fix here, assuming it was a simple, but massive oversight.

Restoring transparency, trustworthiness and accountability that primary stakeholders can rely on is another thing.

[Slingerland]

The fix here isn't difficult, and most states give multiple opportunities for businesses that have failed diligence to right their ways before shutting them down. But the current BOD leadership should get in front of this and go public with acknowledging the problem and telling the community what they've done/are doing to fix it. 

They have made attempts at transparency the last few months (some more successful than others), but this is a core competency issue that they should address, publicly, and get in front of the concerns. Stonewalling isn't going to help, and there's no reason to protect anyone/anything or throw anyone under a bus - just say "we f__d up, and this is how we're fixing it" and they buy themselves some trust from the people they're going to need to help them get back on the road next summer.

 

[OldSnareDrummer]

Man, miss a weekend around here and you miss a lot. 

It's like the Day the Music Died.