The battle for equality, fairness and rights, aka Prop. 8 is an extremely close fight.  So, it is with pleasure that I pass along this story about the California Family Council (CFC).  They have been raising millions to pass Prop. 8, but instead of spending most of the money on GOTV efforts, the leaders have been lining their own pockets.  Justin McClachlan, a freelance journalist in SoCal broke the story on his blog.

Since 2003, the public has given the Riverside, Calif.-based California Family Council (CFC) nearly $3 million to support charitable work that the organizations says “protects and fosters judeo-Christian principles in California’s laws.” But, according to its federal tax returns, little more than $500,000 of that money has gone to “program services,” or expenses directly related to that charitable work.

In contrast, the CFC’s top two employees, including its founder and executive director, Ron Prentice, were paid a total of $1.1 million over four years. The CFC’s other employees earned a total of $900,000 in compensation — bringing the total spent on employees at the Council to about $2 million since it began in 2003.

McClachlan has a pretty chart to go with his article, but more interestingly makes the case that CFC is in danger of losing their tax exempt status based on this overspending on salaries.

Gene Takagi, an attorney who specializes in nonprofit organizations and who writes the Nonprofit Law Blog, said the legal intricacies of nonprofit finances are complex. He pointed to an article he wrote in the American Bar Association’s The Practical Lawyer on nonprofit governance.

In the article, he warns that “(a)n organization that engages in an inurement transaction (such as paying an unreasonable compensation to an insider) may face revocation of its exempt status” and that nonprofits have to show that they are working to benefit public interests, not private ones.

While seeing their tax exempt status revoked would be great, right now I am just thrilled that they are a) busy dealing with this rather than trying to pass Prop. 8 b) not spending those dollars on trying to pass Prop. 8.

In general, the other side has been pretty inefficient in their activities, focusing on visibility events, which do not do a great job of persuading voters, or descending en mass into neighborhoods without walk lists.  They are having huge rallies instead of talking to voters.  They think they can fire up their base enough to win in California.  It is up to all of you to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Make sure all of your friends and family know to vote No on Prop. 8.  Vow to vote no.  Contribute to the campaign via ActBlue.