Nearly 20 nonprofits that were earmarked millions of dollars in D.C.’s 2009 budget still have not received their money either because they haven’t paid their taxes, or because the District’s tax office has been unable to identify the organizations.
The D.C. Council last year granted $56 million to more than 130 nonprofit groups, with the caveat that each recipient turns over specific financial and planning documents and provides evidence that it has paid its taxes.
As of Wednesday, 19 organizations still had not received their grant money — 14 that the Office of Tax and Revenue has struggled to identify through tax records or whose paperwork is not in order, and five that have been deemed noncompliant with tax payments.
The “unable to identify” group includes several big names, like THEARC and Unifest. THEARC, an arts and culture center in Southeast, was earmarked $2 million, the largest grant to a nonprofit not tied to a capital project. Unifest, D.C.’s annual African-American cultural festival and parade, received $100,000 through the budget process.
“To the best of THEARC’s knowledge there has been no problem with receiving the funds,” THEARC spokesman Robert Udowitz said. “We have been contacted by the council and told we will be receiving the funds shortly.”
The Friends of Book Hill Park in Georgetown was to receive $50,000 for an irrigation system, said Ed Thomson, its former president. But because the organization is so small, doesn’t file with the Internal Revenue Service and hasn’t had its books professionally audited, it can’t receive the money. The council offered such groups the option of partnering with a fiscal agent to act as a pass-through, but Friends of Book Hill couldn’t find one willing to participate.
“Ergo, we don’t qualify,” Thomson said Wednesday. “It’s a bureaucratic wrinkle as it were. We’ve tried everything that we can. I guess we just feel that we’ve been stymied. I really don’t know what to do.”
The nonprofits declared by the tax office to be noncompliant are the National Conservancy for Dramatic Arts, Northeast Performing Arts Group, Concerned Citizens on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Inc., My Buddy Notes, and Positive Choices. Their earmarks total $325,000.
“We were unaware that there were issues,” said Carrington Lassiter, program assistant at the Northeast Performing Arts Group. “No one called us.”
