Evan Vitale Consulting: Issues could be toxic to Feed the Children's success, consultant warns

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Issues could be toxic to Feed the Children's success, consultant warns – NewsOK.com

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The Oklahoma City-based organization once was one of the nation’s best known charities. That has not been the case, though, for years.

“Feed the Children is an organization that has experienced a significant amount of change in a relatively short amount of time,” the consulting company, BDO USA, wrote in the report. “Changes in management, leadership style, personnel and brand image have created an environment that poses significant risk for the financial and operational well-being of the organization moving forward.”

The consulting company identified five high risk issues, including financial stability, that together could become “toxic” and pose long-term challenges to the charity’s success.

The charity’s internal memo said management will concentrate for now on the most immediate risks in part because of “a need for increased cash flow.”

The charity’s annual reports to the Internal Revenue Service show contributions are down significantly. For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014, the charity only had $396 million in gifts, grants, contributions and membership fees, its lowest in years.

The charity hired BDO USA to do the risk assessment report. It would not disclose Friday how much the consulting company was paid.

BDO USA examined the charity’s financial, operational, systems and strategic documents and conducted interviews, primarily in December and January. Since then, Kevin Hagan, the charity’s president and chief executive officer for the past three years, has left for another job. Hagan has not been replaced.

Mike Hogan, a director on the charity’s board and chairman of the audit committee, said Friday, “Great organizations need to look ahead and they need to look for problems before they become problems. So this was our attempt to be forward looking and to be proactive.”

Hogan lives in Dallas and is executive vice president of strategy and development at GameStop. He said GameStop regularly does similar risk assessments to identify potential problems.

“We don’t want to not do anything. We don’t want to not prepare,” Hogan said of Feed the Children. “I don’t think that my boat’s going to have a fire but I keep a fire extinguisher on it, right?. I don’t think that my house is going to get broken into but I do have a burglar alarm.”

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