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From 28-30 October, charity regulators from eight nations gathered in the UK for a three-day meeting.

From: The Charity Commission

Published 4 November 2024

Representatives and Heads of Regulators from Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Singapore, in addition to an observing invitee from the United States, met to discuss matters of mutual interest and concern.

Regulators recognised the world is currently dealing with substantial challenges including evolving social environments with changing patterns of volunteering, climate change and more natural disasters, cost of living pressures driving higher demand for services and costs of running organisations, and the need to support populations through conflict not seen for a generation. 

Regulators affirmed that given this current global context, the work of charities and not-for-profit organisations has never been more important. Charities and not-for-profit organisations have a long history of enabling society to adapt, improving the lives of millions globally, and supporting and enabling cohesion where there has been division. Working across sectors to find solutions to the world’s most challenging problems, they are fundamental to world class research, scientific endeavour and policy change that enables health, environmental and animal welfare issues to be advanced.  

Regulators shared examples of how effective, expert regulation plays a fundamental part in allowing charities to thrive and allows the public to have trust and confidence in the work of charities. Our organisations each contribute to supporting and ensuring strong governance in charities, so that they deliver their charitable purpose for the benefit of all. Regulators have been delighted to advance our shared objectives at this meeting through the exchange of knowledge and best practice. 

The meeting covered four key themes: 

Charity registration and charitable status

Registration is the start of the journey for new charities and trustees, and at the core of each of our roles is making efficient, effective decisions to ensure genuine applicants can begin delivering their charitable purpose.  

Regulators: 

• shared improvements to our respective processes for registration, acknowledging the constraints inherent in applying a legal test.  
• gained valuable insights from other jurisdictions approaches to improve the quality of applications from prospective charities 
• shared plans to digitise and improve registration services within jurisdictions 
• shared trends and case studies on those seeking to abuse charity status but were prevented from doing so 
• agreed, subject to national jurisdictions laws and restrictions, to improve data sharing to prevent cross border abuse of charity status via the registration process 
• agreed to explore how to enable simpler but robust registration services for those who work across borders 

Digital, technology and data

Regulators are at different stages in their journeys of delivering new digital technologies, with a particular focus across each jurisdiction on using online services to enhance relationships with charity trustees, ensuring we provide charities with the best guidance and tools, as well as driving regulatory efficiency. Regulators discussed experiences in delivering recent innovations, and how charities in their jurisdiction responded, to inform each of our future plans. 

Regulators: 

• agreed to share digital and technology plans to enable better cross jurisdiction co-operation and experience for charities and the public 
• agreed, subject to national laws and regulations, to share emerging trends, issues, impacts of technology on charities, charity regulation and policies to enable the benefits of technology to be exploited whilst mitigating risks and unintended consequences. 

Communication, education and public trust

Regulators identified many commonalities in our approaches to using social media, events and guidance to secure greater engagement with charities, particularly those who are traditionally harder to reach or might have less knowledge.  

Regulators:

• identified several approaches that have been successfully applied in individual nations and have taken away from the meeting ideas as to how these could potentially be translated into new national initiatives.  
• welcomed the contribution such work programmes make in delivering our core remit to build public trust and confidence in charity, and in our own effectiveness. 

Compliance

Regulators reviewed global trends in charity non-compliance, and how these have been addressed through use of regulatory powers. Discussion of recent domestic cases with international significance, allowed identification of issues in common, that might damage the vast majority of genuine, compliant charities.  

With many charities and voluntary organisations working extensively across international borders, Regulators:  

• affirmed that, subject to national laws and regulations, we will continually share appropriate insight so we can each effectively tackle such risks, acting within our legislative frameworks. 
• affirmed, we each have a central role to play in supporting compliance with The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards, to ensure the substantial amount of money that flows across borders to facilitate the vital work of the sector is safe and secure and charities may continue to deliver vital services to the world’s most vulnerable. 

The group will be hosted by a different member when they next reconvene in the spring of 2026. Until then, Regulators will continue their online quarterly meetings to build on these positive discussions to ensure lessons continue to be shared and the international community of charity Regulators remains united. 

Delegate List 

• David Holdsworth – Chief Executive, England & Wales
• Orlando Fraser KC – Chair, England & Wales
• Paul Latham – Director of Communications & Policy, England & Wales
• Sue Woodward AM – Commissioner, Australia
• Natasha Sekulic – Assistant Commissioner – General Counsel, Australia
• Sharmila Khare – Director General, Charities Directorate, Canada
• Madeleine Delaney – Chief Executive, Ireland
• Geraldine McCarthy – Head of Communications, Ireland
• Frances McCandless – Chief Executive, Northern Ireland
• Punam McGookin – Head of Charity Services, Northern Ireland
• Martin Tyson – Head of Regulation and Improvement, Scotland
• Desmond Chin – Commissioner of Charities, Singapore
• Izyana Baharom – Assistant Director, Singapore
• Observer: Beth Short – President of the National Association of State Charity Officials, United States

Joint communique from International Charity Regulator leaders – GOV.UK

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Nov 13 2024

The Noble Foundation founder Ophelia Noble must sell and pay proceeds from house and car she purchased with charities’ money

VANCOUVER — A Clark County Superior Court judge has approved a judgment of more than $1.4 million against former directors of three Vancouver-area charities as a result of Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s lawsuit. Founder Ophelia Noble and the former directors of The Noble Foundation misused charitable funds that were meant to serve communities of color and low-income individuals in southwest Washington.

The foundation and its charities almost exclusively raised money from state grants and major philanthropic organizations.

Noble failed to account for more than $1 million of the foundation’s charitable funds in violation of Washington’s Nonprofit Corporation Act. Examples of Noble’s misuse of charitable funds include paying herself hundreds of thousands of dollars, using charity money to buy a vehicle for her personal use, and directing The Noble Foundation to buy her father’s house and reselling it to her at a deep discount. The other directors — Douglas Noble (Noble’s father), Alice Prejean (Noble’s mother), Joann Hampton and Alyce Noble (Noble’s daughter) — violated their own responsibilities to the organization by enabling Noble’s misconduct, approving and at times financially benefiting from it.

The order requires Noble and the other directors to jointly pay $25,000 for misusing the charitable funds. Noble must sell the house and car she unlawfully purchased with the charitable funds and repay the proceeds — a combined value of approximately $400,000. Those resources will cover part of the cost of the Attorney General’s investigation and lawsuit. They will be used toward future enforcement of laws protecting charitable assets.

Noble is also banned for life from operating or managing a charity in Washington. The other directors are banned from charity management in Washington for the next 10 years. The remaining $1 million in civil penalties are suspended as long as Noble and the other directors follow the law and comply with the terms of the judgment. If they do not, they will be required to pay the $1 million, plus interest.

“Ophelia Noble and the charities’ directors failed the communities they were supposed to serve,” Ferguson said. “My office will continue to be a watchdog ensuring that charities follow the law.”

Assistant Attorneys General Rose Duffy, Robby Staley and Joshua Studor; Paralegals Savannah Krug, Kristina Winfield, Lauretta Dunn, Mary Barber and Ashley Totten; Legal Assistants Nathan Pinard and Avery Gault; and Investigators Bau Vang, Michelle Bigos-Taylor and Rebecca Hartsock handled the case for Washington.

Ophelia Noble, family benefited from nearly $1 million in misused funds

Ophelia Noble started The Noble Foundation in 2012 to serve communities of color in Vancouver, Kelso and Longview.

In 2019, the charity expanded rapidly, securing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Washington State Office of Financial Management as part of a state effort to encourage members of undercounted Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities to register for the 2020 Census.

The foundation continued to grow when the pandemic hit. Its directors created and managed a second charity, Our Place/Nuestra Casa Multicultural Center. Our Place established community centers and provided emergency rent assistance, vaccine outreach and other pandemic relief services.

With increased attention around racial justice and policing issues, the charities’ directors created a third charity, Southwest Washington Communities United for Change. Southwest purportedly focused on organizing protests and trying to increase participation and political representation for BIPOC communities in Clark and Cowlitz counties. It brought in several hundred thousand dollars from grantors interested in establishing a BIPOC-led political organization serving southwest Washington.

The charities received approximately $1.5 million from major philanthropic foundations, including the Northwest Health Foundation, Social Justice Fund Northwest, the Satterberg Foundation, the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington, Group Health/Inatai Foundation and the Seattle Foundation.

Beginning in 2019, Noble used her position as executive director to misappropriate large sums of donated charitable funds from the charities’ accounts.

The Attorney General’s investigation revealed that Noble and her family received direct, documented payments or benefits of nearly $1 million. Some examples:

• In July 2021, Noble caused the charities to pay her $355,000 in “back pay” for “contract services” purportedly provided between 2015 and 2021. There is no documentation that any lawful contracts existed, any money was owed, or that these payments were approved by the entities’ boards.
• The charities paid Noble’s consulting company $310,000 for unspecified “executive director services” that were never approved by the entities’ boards.
• $200,000 was either withdrawn from the various charities’ bank accounts without explanation or issued to unknown individuals in the form of cashier’s checks. Only Noble and the directors were authorized signers on these accounts.
• In 2020, Noble directed The Noble Foundation to purchase her father’s house for approximately $200,000, but she put her name on the deed as well as the charity’s. The following year, she paid the charity $100,000 for its interest in the home. When the charity transferred title to Noble in 2022, the house was worth at least $324,000, meaning Noble gained $224,000 in equity. There is no evidence the charity’s board appropriately reviewed and approved these transactions, which were clearly a conflict of interest for Noble.
• In 2020, Noble used The Noble Foundation’s money to purchase a 2019 Nissan Armada, which she used as her personal vehicle. She used the charity’s funds to make upgrades to the vehicle and cover maintenance and gas.
• Noble, her family and other directors used the charities’ money to fund over $65,000 in additional purchases that lack a clear connection to the entities’ charitable purposes, including for gift cards, meals, groceries, gas, travel, cellphones and personal clothing.

Other charity lawsuits

The Legislature identified the Attorney General’s Office as the agency tasked with enforcing the Nonprofit Corporation, Charitable Solicitations and Charitable Trust Acts. These laws ensure that nonprofits and entities that solicit charitable donations or manage charitable assets follow the laws adopted by the Legislature. These laws ensure that funds intended for charity are not misused.

The Attorney General’s Office’s Charitable Assets Protection Team specifically focuses on charity cases involving the misuse or misappropriation of funds solicited for a charitable purpose.

Other enforcement actions include:

• A $300,000 judgment against a family that operated a group of sham charities purporting to help cancer patients and vulnerable children but used the donations to enrich themselves.
• A $1 million judgment against charities that claimed to help veterans over what a judge ruled was “deceptive” and “abusive” conduct.
• A million dollars recovered for a veterans’ nonprofit after its leadership failed to pay wages to its veteran employees. The director used charity funds for her own personal expenses, including gambling at casinos. As a result of the Attorney General’s case, the executive director and board members were removed from the nonprofit and barred from working for any Washington nonprofits in the future.
• A $495,000 judgment against two companies that made more than one million robocalls in Washington state for scam charities. The $495,000 payment went to legitimate charities.

Visit ftc.gov/charities for more information on how to avoid charity scams. Consumers who believe they have been affected by a charity’s deceptive conduct may file a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office at https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint.

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Washington’s Attorney General serves the people and the state of Washington. As the state’s largest law firm, the Attorney General’s Office provides legal representation to every state agency, board, and commission in Washington. Additionally, the Office serves the people directly by enforcing consumer protection, civil rights, and environmental protection laws. The Office also prosecutes elder abuse, Medicaid fraud, and handles sexually violent predator cases in 38 of Washington’s 39 counties. Visit www.atg.wa.gov to learn more.

Media Contact:

Brionna Aho, Communications Director, (360) 753-2727; Brionna.aho@atg.wa.gov

General contacts: Click here

NASCO released its annual report on October 8th, 2024, at the NASCO conference in Baltimore.

The NASCO Board of Directors is pleased to announce the creation of the Karin Kunstler-Goldman Award for Excellence in the field of charity oversight and regulation. The inaugural “KKG Award” was presented to its namesake, Karin Kunstler-Goldman, on October 8, 2024, at the NAAG/NASCO Annual Charity Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

About Karin Kunstler-Goldman

Karin Kunstler Goldman is the Deputy Bureau Chief in the New York State Attorney General’s Charities Bureau.  Karin was the 2001-2002 president of the National Association of State Charity Officials and is a founding member of the Governance Matters. 

She has served on the advisory board of New York University’s National Center on Philanthropy and the Internal Revenue Service’s Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt Entities. As a volunteer, Karin participated in training programs conducted for charity regulators throughout the country by the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia University Law School. 

As an Eisenhower Exchange Fellow in Hungary, Karin worked with nonprofit organizations, government officials and legislative drafters in developing the law and regulations affecting Hungary’s nonprofit sector.  She has consulted with government officials in Ukraine and China on the development of statutory regulation of charitable organizations in those countries.  Karin was a guest of the People’s Republic of China at its 2007 International Symposium on Charity Legislation in China at which she was a speaker, and in 2015 she participated in workshops in China on the developing nonprofit law. 

Prior to joining the New York Attorney General’s office, Karin was a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow and a staff attorney at South Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation. 

Karin attended Tougaloo Southern Christian College in Mississippi during the fall semester of the 1962 – 1963 academic year and participated Freedom Summer, the 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi. Karin and her husband, Neal, spent two years as Peace Corps volunteers in Senegal, West Africa.  Karin has a law degree from Rutgers University Law School, a BA from Connecticut College and an MA from Columbia University.

In 2024, Karin received the Vanguard Award for distinguished lifetime achievement in the nonprofit sector from the Nonprofit Organizations Committee of the American Bar Association, Business Law Section.

About the Karin Kunstler Goldman Award for Excellence

The Karin Kunstler Goldman Award, created in 2024, recognizes excellence in the field of state charity regulation and oversight. The award, made periodically and at the discretion of the NASCO board of directors, honors select charity regulators who demonstrate many of the qualities and achievements of the award’s namesake including, but not limited to:

• Long-term professional commitment to charity regulation
• Success and innovation in charity regulatory practice
• Significant contribution to the education and training of state charity regulators and the nonprofit sector, in the U.S. and internationally
• National recognition as a leader among state charity regulators
• Generosity of spirit and enthusiasm for the work of charity regulation and oversight

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 14, 2024 MEDIA CONTACT: Steve Irwin: 614-728-5417 Former Columbus Zoo CEO Sentenced to Prison (DELAWARE, Ohio) — The former chief executive officer of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium was sentenced to 7 years in prison today for his role in a scheme that defrauded the zoo of at least $2.3 million, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced. Tom Stalf had pleaded guilty on July 23 to 15 felonies, including aggravated theft, conspiracy, telecommunications fraud and tampering with records. “The zoo has long been a crown jewel of Central Ohio, but this pretender stole the jewels right out of that crown,” Yost said. “Cages can hold more than zoo animals.” As the zoo’s CEO, Stalf took advantage of his position to enrich himself, his family and his friends by scheming to defraud the zoo through a pattern of corrupt activity and lying through financial forms to cover up the wrongdoing. He and two other former zoo executives – Marketing Director Pete Fingerhut and Chief Financial Officer Greg Bell – were named in a Sept. 18, 2023, indictment, accused of manipulating credit-card and check-authorization forms for more than a decade and using the nonprofit’s public funds for personal use. Since their indictment, two additional former zoo employees were also charged. The stolen money was spent on lavish times unrelated to the zoo, including suites and tickets to concerts and sporting events; golf memberships; trips to multiple states and foreign countries; meals, beverages and alcohol; and motor vehicles. In a sentencing memorandum filed with the court, prosecutors suggested that Stalf and his co-conspirators had failed in their fiduciary obligations to the zoo and taxpayers. “Leaders of charities and nonprofits in Ohio undertake the responsibility to support the charitable missions of the organizations they lead and set an example to the employees they oversee to be stewards of the organization and its assets,” the memo said. As part of the sentencing, Stalf will be required to pay $315,572.65 in criminal restitution to the Columbus Zoo, state of Ohio and Internal Revenue Service. The amount is in addition to $400,000 in restitution that was already been paid on his behalf. Of the four others charged in the scheme, all but Fingerhut have been sentenced: Greg Bell was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $583,697.44 in criminal restitution. Former purchasing agent Tracy Murnane was sentenced to 60 days in jail and three years of probation. Murnane paid $101,000 in civil and criminal restitution. Grant Bell, a former purchasing assistant and the son of Greg Bell, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay $8,554.61 in criminal restitution. Fingerhut, who pleaded guilty on July 2, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 28. The Ohio Attorney General’s Special Prosecutions Section led the prosecution at the request of Delaware County Prosecutor Melissa Schiffel. The Ohio Auditor’s Office assisted with the investigation and prosecution.