Every year the group Crawl for Cancer holds a pub crawl in Westport and a dozen other cities around the country. Teams of 10-12 people pay $500 to party for the day, all ostensibly in the name of raising money for charity. But Crawl for Cancer is not listed as a non-profit business and as Fat City reported last week, recently the St. Louis and Kansas City Better Business Bureaus stripped it of accreditation, saying the business refused to disclose its financials to them.
In a series of e-mails, Crawl for Cancer spokesperson Darren Green told Fat City why the group did not turn over any records to the BBB: "Despite having bureau in their name, they aren't governmental. They're a corporation, like PETA or the ACLU. They are paid to obtain information." Besides, Green said, "Nobody even mentions the first reason why we're not a [non-profit] 501(c)(3): ... a 501(c)(3) cannot purchase alcohol. The profits are our donations."
Kansas City BBB president Dave Buckley says his organization was just following protocol when it stripped Crawl for Cancer of its accreditation. "They did not register as a 501(c)(3) but they do represent themselves as being a charitable organization and so we asked for some information and were flat-out denied. We have received nothing from them ... the limit of my authority is to suspend them."
Green said there weren't any nefarious reasons for not releasing the records. He said Crawl for Cancer is a small company run by two people in their spare time, one of whom just had a baby, and that the St. Louis BBB asked for "pretty much every appreciable figure from every crawl every year the crawl has been around." Green called that request "audacious."
Because of the publicity surrounding the issue, Green said that Crawl for Cancer is talking with its attorneys about hiring a third party to verify the donations. "I'd have the numbers out tomorrow if I could. I imagine we're talking weeks, but I'd like to make it happen quickly ... The pleasing surprise after all the negative press is going to be how substantial our donations really are."
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