by Jonathan D. Silver, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A South Side company has completed background checks on its employees who solicit donations on behalf of charities and fired 18 with criminal records because their employment violates state law. Outreach Associates vetted its 150-member staff — more than 135 of whom work as fundraisers – after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found that more than two dozen who had been employed there since 2006 had either felony records or convictions for misdemeanors involving crimes of dishonesty.
Pennsylvania law prohibits anyone with such a criminal background from working as a professional solicitor. Fundraisers at Outreach Associates, which contacts potential donors on behalf of nonprofit groups, have access to people’s home addresses and donation information — as well as their credit card numbers if donors charge contributions.
Several charitable organizations have stopped using Outreach Associates following the revelations about its employment of felons. Those groups include Habitat for Humanity International and Earthjustice.
“There have been clients who have suspended their relationship with Outreach Associates,” said Daryl F. Clemmens, a spokeswoman for the company. “Some of them, as I understand it, have suggested that suspension will be permanent. Others have said, ‘Come back to me when your house is in order and you can prove to me that everything is copacetic, and we’ll reconsider.’ “
Copilevitz & Canter LLC, a Missouri-based law firm that is representing Outreach Associates, has been in contact with regulators at the Pennsylvania Secretary of State’s office, which oversees professional solicitors. “The state has requested a timeline regarding when Outreach Associates learned of the situation, what their actions were and what were the practices then and now,” Ms. Clemmens said.
The secretary of state’s office declined comment.
About 90 professional solicitors are registered in Pennsylvania. It is unknown how many others, if any, have similarly employed people with criminal backgrounds. Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Charitable Organizations does not have the resources to be proactive in researching the backgrounds of professional solicitors who call residents in the state, said its director, Tracy McCurdy.
“We are complaint-driven, so if somebody has a complaint on the operation of a solicitor, we certainly will look into that,” she said. Outreach Associates hired a company to handle background checks following the newspaper’s March 21 report. Company President Dennis McCarthy said Outreach Associates had gotten bad information from its previous law firm that wrongly indicated that people whose crimes were not work-related or whose crimes took place more than seven years ago could be employed.
Background checks primarily had been confined to Allegheny County before Mr. McCarthy joined the company about a year ago. He changed the parameters to a nationwide search and then checked all of the information anew. Registration forms for the company filed with both Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the home state of Outreach Associates’ parent company, Integrated Fundraising and Marketing Solutions Inc., did not disclose the presence of any felons.
The forms were signed by a felon, former Chief Compliance Officer Howard B. Cloth. Mr. Cloth pleaded guilty in Massachusetts in 1993 of 11 counts of larceny for stealing $393,000 from a corporate client while he was still a practicing attorney. Ms. Clemmens said Mr. Cloth remains with the company in an administrative capacity but no longer holds the same title and has not — and will not — sign any more registration papers.
