Charity Bowl Draws Criticism Over Extent of Organizers’ Fees : Fund Raising: A Torrance child abuse center will get about $50,000 from Saturday’s game. Ticket and ad sales have grossed more than five times that much.

Every spring in the South Bay, police and firefighters from around the area square off against each other in the Charity Bowl, a football game to raise money for the Torrance-based Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse.

This year, however, supporters of the center and bowl game, set for El Camino College on Saturday, have squared off against one another amid questions over how much of the game proceeds will actually go to the child abuse center.

Organizers of the bowl, which has been played for the past five years, say the center will get about $50,000 from the game, even though ticket sales and program ads have grossed more than five times that amount.

Most of the money, an estimated $190,000, may go to World Wide Communications, a Culver City firm hired to sell tickets and program ads through telephone solicitation. And some are questioning why more is not going directly to the charity.

“Good people in Los Angeles County have contributed to a worthwhile cause,” said Tonya Gipson, a member of the center’s board of directors, “and it’s a shame that the bulk of the contributions has gone to a professional promoter.”

Wayne Orkin, World Wide’s president, said there is nothing unusual about his financial agreement with the Charity Bowl. He said that representatives of the center were invited to Charity Bowl board meetings when his contract was discussed, soon after last year’s bowl.

Cheryl Chapman, Charity Bowl board president, gsaid three people from the center’s board of directors also sit on the Charity Bowl board. She also said that the bowl has always had an outside firm conduct ticket and ad sales and that officials had searched out Orkin. The board of directors looked at “three or four and he gave us the best deal and made minimum demands,” she said of Orkin.

But Gipson, past president of the nonprofit Inglewood Exchange Club, one of four Exchange groups that support the 5-year-old center, said that Charity Bowl backers won’t “accept the fact that they are not making a significant contribution to dysfunctional families of the South Bay, but are in fact spending a great deal of time in simply promoting a fun event.”

Gipson’s decision to make her frustration public sparked outrage on the boards of directors of the center and the Charity Bowl, who see the event as worthwhile.

“I’ve seen that press release that Tonya put out,” said Inglewood Police Lt. Jack Frazier, a founding member and treasurer of the Charity Bowl. “I can’t believe that she would do such a thing.”

The bowl, he said, has always used outside firms to raise the most money possible for the center.

“I understand the sentiment (against) using professionals, but I don’t think we could raise this kind of money on our own,” he said.

According to Frazier, the Charity Bowl board receives 35% of the first $100,000 raised and 25% of everything after that. Out of its share, the bowl has to pay about $12,000 to $15,000 in expenses for such things as insurance and stadium rental. The promoter must pay his own expenses.

Saturday’s game will raise more money than ever for the center, Frazier noted. Last year, before Orkin was hired, the event did not do well, he said, and the center received only $15,000.

People on both boards are troubled by the controversy, said Charles S. Marshall of Rancho Palos Verdes, president of the center’s board of directors. Five months ago, he said, the center had so little money it came within $78 of having to close its doors, and it desperately needs the support of fire and police groups.

Marshall expressed dismay over how much money is going to a promoter when, he said, the center’s budget is less than $95,000 a year.

“We have people on the waiting list that we can’t provide services for,” he said. “That’s an arrow through the heart when you know your program is good, but you have a waiting list.”

Marshall also said that for two years he has been increasingly frustrated by the Charity Bowl organizers’ refusal to provide him with an accounting of the money.

“I get crazy because I can’t get the Charity Bowl people to listen,” Marshall said.

Frazier insisted, however, that he has never been asked to give the center an accounting.

Once the bowl is over, Marshall said, he wants to sit down with members of both boards and discuss the situation. With scandal rocking the United Way, he said, charities must be as open as possible about raising money.

“You do public work, you do it in the daylight,” he said. “You show everybody what you’re doing. That’s what validates your program.”

Frazier said the bowl would not be successful without professional help. However, in neighboring Orange County a similar charity police football game does not use promoters to sell tickets and raises $60,000 to $70,000 for half a dozen youth service groups. According to Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Bill Bechtel, chairman of that event, the only professional used is someone who sells ads for the program.

Orkin said his company is a “promoter of events,” not a professional fund-raising firm. That is why World Wide, he said, does not file papers with the state Registry of Charitable Trusts, where professional fund-raisers must register.

Orkin explained that World Wide does not “actually collect the monies or control the funds” as many professional fund-raising organizations do. Instead, he said, ticket and ad money goes to the post office box of the Inglewood Exchange Club.