By Staff
Athletic Management, 18.5, August/September 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1805/wucalendarmoney.htm
It usually begins the same way: Area businesses receive phone calls asking them to buy ad space on a sports calendar to raise funds for a local high school team. Some merchants agree to participate, and ads are sold until all the spaces are filled and the calendar is printed. It sounds like a win-win situation for everyone, but there’s one problem—the company selling the ads and making the calendars isn’t always affiliated with the school or its athletic program, and almost none of the money benefits local sports.
Now, in Indiana, state Attorney General Steve Carter is taking steps to change this recurring story. In December 2005, after receiving multiple grievances from Indiana residents, Carter issued a formal request for information and documents from Liberty Publishing, Inc., a Pekin, Ill.-based company, regarding its business practices. For years, complaints have been lodged with Better Business Bureaus and chambers of commerce and aired in local media against Liberty and its subsidiary, Booster Club Productions, and many school officials are convinced the company is running a scam.
Liberty refused to comply with the information request, so Carter went to court in June and forced company managers to turn over certain materials, including lists of schools that received calendars and businesses that purchased ads. Carter’s office will use the information in the coming months to investigate whether Liberty violated Indiana laws against deceptive sales practices, and he may eventually decide to file charges.
Brendan Kearns, Risk Manager for Vigo County (Ind.) Schools, had a run-in with Liberty last year. “They called businesses in our area and said they were putting together calendars for Terre Haute South Vigo athletic teams, and people said, ‘Sure, let’s do it. I’ll help out the program,’” he explains. “But we have no idea where all the money went—we had no arrangement with this company, and the only thing we ever received from them was a check for $25, with the message that it was a donation.”
Twenty-five dollars may not seem significant, but it’s a key to Liberty’s business model. The company has sent similar donations—usually $25 or $50—to other athletic departments and booster clubs in communities where it has produced calendars, allowing its sales reps to say that the ad sales benefit local high school sports teams.
Liberty Publishing refused to answer specific questions for this article, but the company’s attorney, Kurt Webber, says his client is a good corporate citizen and does not deceive business owners when selling ads. “Liberty does not claim to be acting for the benefit of the schools whose schedules are on the calendars,” he says. “Do people sometimes draw their own conclusion? I think so. However, my client does not mislead anyone about who they are, and they do contribute to the schools in areas where they advertise.”
But school officials say that whether or not Liberty Publishing and companies like it are breaking the law, they’re depriving athletic programs of badly needed local support. “These people are simply taking advantage of business owners’ good intentions,” says Dan Shelton, President of the Watauga High School Booster Club in Boone, N.C., where Liberty attempted to produce a calendar earlier this year.
“They take in a lot of money and the school never sees most of it,” continues Shelton. “Then when the real athletic fundraisers come around, people have to say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve already written a check for something like this.’ The pockets of small business owners only have so much money in them for advertising and supporting local sports, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.”
So how can you keep your program from being affected? Shelton says a major step is informing the public about how your athletic department, its teams, and its booster clubs conduct their fundraisers, and teaching business owners to be wary of any other solicitations.
“We went to our local newspaper, radio station, and chamber of commerce to get the word out about what this company was doing, and folks in this area now have their radar up,” Shelton says. “Since then, we’ve fielded several calls from people wanting to know if something they’d been approached about was legitimate, and that’s exactly what we want.”
At Vigo County Schools, Kearns has gone a step further, using a vendor approval process to recognize companies that have a legitimate partnership with the school. “We conduct a basic background check on the company, and we give them a card that says they are working for the school during a given time period,” he says. “Then, they can go out into the community and say, ‘Look, we’re raising money for the school, and this is a bona fide way you can support a program.’”
Kearns believes these preventative measures are a must for school districts. “We’ve seen a decrease in overall donations because of companies like Liberty Publishing,” he says. “After a business has been scammed and ended up burning a few hundred dollars, they may be reluctant to donate again, and that keeps money that we really need from coming in.”