Veteran Group Denied Fund-Raising License

The Los Angeles Social Service Commission on Monday denied a Glendale veterans organization a license to seek donations by phone, contending that the group has misled donors and failed to obtain federal tax-exempt status.

As a result, the Glendale American Veterans Committee cannot seek donations by phone in the city of Los Angeles, but it can continue to call other Southern California cities that do not require a permit for such campaigns.

The Los Angeles Social Service Department staff alleged that the Glendale group misled donors by using the names of fictitious organizations that purport to help battered women and abused and blind children.

The committee also has used tactics that are frowned upon by charity watchdogs groups, including the hiring of “runners” to pick up checks at homes immediately after a donation is promised.

The group’s expenses far exceed the average for Los Angeles fund-raisers and the voluntary standards set by national watchdog associations. The California attorney general’s office recently revoked the American Veterans Committee’s state tax exemption, saying that the group failed to file the required financial statements for the past three years.

Glendale police also are investigating complaints about the committee’s telephone pitches.

“It certainly seems to me that this Glendale American Veterans Committee is falsely representing itself as a tax-exempt organization,” said Commissioner Michael W. O’Donnell. “I would regard it as being as close to deception and fraud as I’ve ever known.”

The Glendale organization also has been criticized for giving less than 10% of its revenue to charitable causes and for using the name and logo of two national veterans organizations.

Ben Neufeld, a board member of the Washington-based American Veterans Committee, founded in 1943, told the commission that his organization ordered the Glendale group last month to stop using that name and to provide an accounting of all money it has raised. Neufeld said the committee has not complied.

The Glendale organization sent no representative to the city hearing. Its president, accountant Frank E. Burford, last week sent the commission a letter stating that newspaper reports about the city of Los Angeles investigation “have caused irreversible damage to our organization.”

Burford wrote that he is suffering “such emotional distress and depression as a result of the Social Service Department’s libelous attack on American Veterans Committee that I am no longer able to participate in the appeal.”

In his letter, Burford said he was turning the matter over to the committee’s attorney. He could not be reached for comment Monday.

One of the committee’s main beneficiaries, the Veterans Administration Medical Center in West Los Angeles, stopped accepting donations from the Glendale group last week because of the concerns raised by the city staff, hospital spokesman Ed Spohr said Monday.