By: Diane Benjamin
McLean County Board member Paul Segobiano has a charity organization called Great Plains Life Foundation Inc.
See the website here: http://www.greatplainslifefoundation.org/
It looks like a noble effort to help kids stay in school.
Check out the Board of Directors page: http://www.greatplainslifefoundation.org/Board_of_Directors.html
The page lists names you might know like Bloomington Police Chief Brendan Heffner and Regional School Superintendent Gene Jontry.
It also lists Elizabeth Skinner as Director of Public Relations and Paul Segobiano as Director of Development.
Since this organization is a 501C3 organization, they are required to file public tax returns. If people give money to a charity, they must be able to see where their money goes.
See this website: http://nccsweb.urban.org/communityplatform/nccs/organization/profile/id/320111094/popup/1#programs
Tax returns filed since the charities inception in 2004 are listed under the 990 tab.
The 2014 return shows total Revenue of $168,440 with salaries and benefits of $103,448. $45,262 was paid to Skinner and Segobiano, Skinner received benefits of an additional $6000.
2013 shows revenues of $197,886 with salaries and benefits of $103,487.
2012 shows revenues of $142,947 with salaries and benefits of $96,826.
2011 shows revenues of $137,072 with salaries and benefits of $48,724 (only Skinner)
You can easily see the other years yourself.
This charity has fundraising events listed for May 30th, June 6th and July 7th. (See the bottom of the main page of their website)
Would you donate to the Red Cross is more than half of the contributions went to salaries?
Does the Board of Directors do any directing?
Whether to contribute or not is up to donors. At least now contributors know where their money goes.
Reviewing 2014 taxes, Skinner averages $985 weekly and Sego averages $870 a week. Must be nice.
Check out Great plains. Matejka is involved in that.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone
This is the only one that came up under that name. Got a different name?
To your comment about the Red Cross; in 2010, the executive director of Red Cross made $561,210, EVP for biomedical services made $621,779, and biomedical services president made $573,933 that year. Any charity program has to pay some form of salary to its workers. So, before you start making comparisons, start checking your numbers. Now, I’ll go sip some tea.
What percent of total contributions is that? What’s the total budget? BIG difference!