In the wake of a scandal involving a fake charity, officials at Snapdragon Stadium and Petco Park continue to shake up the management of their two venues.
Snapdragon officials have said they will temporarily stop accepting new charities and also conduct a review of their verification process.
Officials for Delaware North – a global hospitality company that manages concessions at Petco – have said Chula Vista Fast Pitch, the phantom charity, will no longer be able to operate in the stadium. (Snapdragon had already barred the group.)
Earlier this week, Voice of San Diego revealed that Chula Vista Fast Pitch had been operating in both Petco Park and Snapdragon – despite the fact that it didn’t really exist.
In sporting venues across the country, nonprofits operate and staff many concession stands. In return, they get a cut of the concession stand’s revenue. That cut is typically around 10 percent. At Snapdragon, it’s 12 percent.
When Chula Vista Fast Pitch began operating in Snapdragon, the group’s managers simply signed a statement attesting that their group was a real nonprofit, according to a spokeswoman for San Diego State University.
Officials are now “examining adding additional measures for verifying current and continuing non-profit status,” wrote Cory Marshall, an SDSU spokeswoman, in an email. Marshall said the statement should be attributed to Aztec Shops.
In the meantime, no new nonprofits will be allowed to operate in Snapdragon, Marshall wrote.
It’s unclear exactly how much money Chula Vista Fast Pitch raked in while operating in the two venues.
The group had been operating in Petco Park for nine years – earning potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a five-month period, according to receipts obtained by Voice.
Snapdragon has only been open a little more than a year. Chula Vista Fast Pitch worked its last game at Snapdragon on Aug. 5, according to Marshall.
Officials tried to verify the group’s charitable status after receiving questions from Voice. They could not and barred Chula Vista Fast Pitch from working events last Friday.
People familiar with the group’s operations at Petco say the group is run by two men: Noly Ilarde and Martin Rebollo.
I spoke to Ilarde and Rebollo briefly and both confirmed being managers for the group, but claimed they weren’t in charge.
Rebollo said he couldn’t remember the head person’s name. Ilarde said Rebollo was in charge.
The Padres next home game is on Thursday. Not having Chula Vista Fast Pitch in the park could put a dent in concession stand operations. The group runs more stands than any other nonprofit in the park, according to people familiar with the situation.
Chula Vista Fast Pitch has run an average of 12 stands per night during its nine years in the stadium, Delaware North officials said.
Delaware North has not confirmed whether it will change its procedures for verifying nonprofits operating in Petco moving forward.
I find it difficult to understand that for several years, the Democrats have promoted solar, wind energy, and now that it is starting to take off they want to punish those that went forward with the purchasing of Solar for their homes. I feel betrayed and lied to if there’s no advantage to having Solar why do it? In addition, SDG&E and said that they may have rolling blackouts or brown outs with the excessive use of air conditioning’s in the hot weather and a cut back our energy use which includes air-conditioning. How can I double back now and punish those that put in the Solar units to save energy??
Great work on busting open the Fast Pitch charity scam. Thanks Will Huntsberry and VOSD, you make San Diego better.
Determining whether an entity is a non-profit isn’t rocket science. At a minimum, Delaware North and SDSU should have asked for a copy of the IRS letter that verifies the non-profit’s Tax ID number. One can then use that Tax ID # for a simple search on the IRS website: https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/
And it’s a shame that Snapdragon Stadium and Delaware North are creating moratoriums for new, legitimate charities to operate at these venues when there is such an easy way to verify legitimate charity status. These true non-profit charities should be allowed to take over the concessions opportunities formerly run by Chula Vista Fast Pitch and any other fake charities that have been allowed to operate.