Further Update to Recent Media Events, September 15, 2024
CCAF remains deeply disturbed and saddened by the website/document. As we previously stated, there are a number of verifiably false statements in the website content and Google document that were widely circulated on social media. One particularly egregious example of a false statement is the assertion that a part-time accountant is our Chief Financial Officer. Our “CFO” is our “VP of Finance,” who is an unpaid, parent volunteer board member. This organizational fact is verifiable by consulting our governing documents. The “Transparency” authors either failed to consult the governing documents — or failed to understand them. Whatever the reason, their false statements wrongly accuse the foundation of breaking federal law in our tax filing.
We, as adults, have to set an example for our children. Read, analyze, question, and investigate – especially when the information you are evaluating is something someone has posted on social media and the Internet. Reporters should be held to the same standards.
We feel that the members of our CCA community have all the information and resources available to sufficiently answer any questions they may have. We have addressed the allegations made against us with a level of specificity and detail that is appropriate in this forum. Additional details and answers can be obtained simply by contacting us. We invite any and all CCA students, staff, and parents and CCAF donors to reach out to our CCAF President or VP of Finance if they have questions. We have received some inquiries and are doing our best to respond in a timely manner, taking into account all that has transpired this past week. They can also review the full content of our response here.
Once again: If parents, students, donors, or reporters would like to meet with us, they are welcome to call us and schedule an appointment. That includes the individuals behind the Ravens for Transparency website. If those individuals choose to continue to refuse to accept our invitations, we will be left with more questions than answers as to the motivations behind this attack on CCAF.
We remain committed to educating our CCA community about what we do and how CCAF operates. But please keep in mind, we are current and former CCA parents. We have regular jobs, we have elderly/ailing parents who need our attention, we have pets who need to be walked, we have spouses and children who deserve our time and attention. The same goes for the CCAF staff. We are human beings. The time, effort, and stress expanded since this senseless and wholly unnecessary attack was launched has been enormous. Those resources could have been spent, instead, on focusing on our mission to make the lives of EVERY STUDENT at CCA better EVERY DAY.
We are proud of CCAF, of its strong governance and oversight policies in place, and especially of the financial support that CCAF and its donors provide to our student programming. But we must be most concerned with ensuring CCA students do not suffer a loss of opportunity. Please know that:
- Our annual financials have been independently audited by an outside, professional CPA firm since 2016. Those audits are on our website. External audits are not legally required, but engaging with an audit firm every year as policy was put in place by our former Executive Director. If it will help rebuild trust we may have lost from last week’s events, we are open to having another independent audit performed this year by a different auditing firm. This, of course, will incur additional expense that would be better spent on CCA students.
- CCAF will form an audit committee to review and share results.
- CCAF will host financial open houses this fall to further engage with the CCA community, provide education, and answer questions in depth.
- CCAF continues to encourage the students involved in the Website/Document to do the right thing and meet with us instead of continuing to damage the reputation of CCAF with statements that are untrue and misleading. We deeply regret that those students, while they were working on this project, never approached anyone at the CCAF this summer with their questions and concerns. The CCAF staff and members of our Board would have been more than happy to take the time to meet with them.