The Tartan

By Cole Skuse

A group called the American Children’s Cancer Benevolence Fund (ACCBF) has been setting up a table on the corner of Forbes Avenue and Morewood Avenue and soliciting donations to help pay medical debt for children who have cancer. After some investigation into the organization’s history, it is unclear if donations are actually used for this purpose.

ACCBF is not the actual nonprofit organization (NPO) that the donated funds go to. ACCBF is a separate group that is part of a nonprofit called A Warrior’s Mission. A Warrior’s Mission was granted nonprofit tax-exempt status by the IRS in 2020. Their initial filing indicates that they are based in Brandon, Fla. under the name “A Warrior’s Mission, Inc.,” though all their official websites and documents use the name “A Warriors Mission,” which is inconsistent.

A Warrior’s Mission filed as a charitable organization with the state of Florida, having received their license in August 2020 under a religious exemption. It is listed as active in the state, but their license expired in August 2022 and there is no sign that they have renewed it.

ACCBF and A Warrior’s Mission do not identify who is a part of the organization. The “Who We Are” tab on ACCBF’s website doesn’t list a single name. A Warrior’s Mission website only names “Pastor Jacs/Jax.” When people donate to ACCBF, there is a signature from a “Bryan L.” but there is no record of a Bryan L. being affiliated with ACCBF or A Warrior’s Mission anywhere else.

The ACCBF website also states that ACCBF “Team Members” will be “wearing a polo shirt or T-shirt with [the ACCBF] logo printed in the front, wear an ID badge with name, ID number, and photo, ask for a one-time gift.” Of the times that The Tartan observed people soliciting for funds for ACCBF, they were not properly identifiable and asked for both one-time gifts and repeated monthly donations.

While nonprofits like Carnegie Mellon have to file a Form 990 that discloses their finances, A Warrior’s Mission is classified as a church-affiliated nonprofit. This means that the organization does not have to file a Form 990 or disclose its finances. On the ACCBF website, A Warrior’s Mission released a “2022 Impact Report” that includes a breakdown of their finances for the year.

Though it’s important they are disclosing their finances here, there is no way to confirm that this is the total amount of donations that ACCBF received, and the line items are vague about what the expenditures are. For instance, there’s no explanation for what the difference between “Raising Awareness” and “Fundraising” is. The website also spends more time explaining why there are administrative costs and what that includes than disclosing where some of the other funds were going.

The address on the “2022 Impact report” leads to a place called “LEADERSHIP FAMILY CHURCH,” which is marked “Temporarily Closed” on Google. There is no website for this church, and the only information that The Tartan could find on it was that it was marked as a “non-profit organization” rather than a church by an online business finder.

However, on Guidestar, a nonprofit search tool, A Warrior’s Mission is registered at a different address that appears to be a house. A Warrior’s Mission’s initial filing also points to another address that also appears to be a house. Another address on the ACCBF website points to a P.O. box. According to the Florida Fictitious

Name Registrations directory, this is the address registered to just ACCBF. While it’s not unusual for organizations to use one of their member’s houses as the base address, it’s unusual to have four different addresses associated with the same nonprofit.

Speaking of operating without a license, to solicit funds on Pittsburgh public property — like the intersection of Forbes Avenue and Morewood Avenue — solicitors must have a Tag Day soliciting license. The Tartan contacted the City of Pittsburgh’s Permits, Licenses and Inspections office to see if any organization under the name of ACCBF or A Warrior’s Mission had applied for the license, but found that no organization affiliated with ACCBF or A Warrior’s Mission had applied for that license in the past year, indicating the organization did not have the legal ability to solicit funds there. Even if ACCBF was licensed to fundraise there, the license only lasts one day. The Tartan asked one of the ACCBF solicitors if they had a license to solicit funds there, and they said they did not and did not know that they needed one.

According to their donor wall on the platform ACCBF uses to process online donations, ACCBF has also solicited donations in Philadelphia, New York, Miami, Washington D.C., and Fort Lauderdale. This donor wall only included the donations given online through the portal, not those solicited in person. As such, it is unclear how many people have donated and how much ACCBF has taken in this year.

Part of the draw to donate to ACCBF might be that it runs a sweepstakes where someone can win a $5,000 prize each month if they donate. The more someone donates, the more entries into the sweepstakes they get. However, due to the way that sweepstakes are regulated, you have to be able to enter the sweepstakes without any purchase or donation. According to the sweepstakes’ rules, sending in an entry by mail earns you 250 entries, or the equivalent of making a $500 donation.

However, it’s unclear if those who donated in-person are entered into the sweepstakes. The rules state that one must complete the registration form on the fundraiser’s tablet, a form that was not shown to The Tartan, though the sweepstakes were mentioned. The link the organization lists on its official rules is broken. The other way to enter is through an online donation portal that The Tartan could only find in the official rules; it is not the one listed on ACCBF’s website.

This sweepstakes is managed by a company called Personal Fundraiser Services, which operates across the United States. Due to regulations in California, though, professional fundraisers like Personal Funding Services must disclose how much they raise for nonprofits and how much in funds the professional fundraisers keep. In 2022, Personal Fundraiser Services raised funds for three organizations in the State of California. For “MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES U.S.A., INC,” Personal Fundraising Services took in $670,000, but charged the nonprofit more than $3 million. It was a similar story for the other two organizations.

The history of A Warrior’s Mission executive director Jacqueline Lauritsen, or “Pastor Jax,” is also shaky. Her LinkedIn lists her as the founder of ACCBF and A Warrior’s Mission, though these are the same organizations. She is also listed as co-founder of “AMERICAN CHILDRENS SOCIETY INC,” (ACS) a New Jersey-based nonprofit that closed in 2019. ACS supposedly served a similar mission to what ACCBF supposedly serves.

ProPublica’s nonprofit explorer shows that ACS brought in more than $2 million, similar to what ACCBF claims to have brought in during 2022. ProPublica has data for ACS dating back from 2002. (The IRS only has them dating back to 2016 and does not have the initial ruling on the nonprofit.) Laurisen’s name does not appear on the list of officers for any of the Form 990s that ACS filed during their existence.

ACS’s 2002 filing shows a pretty standard set of expenditures, stating that its expenses go toward emergency assistance and a toy and food program. ACS’s 2014 filing illustrates a very different organization. ACS raised and spent $2 million in 2014, and only $4,734 went toward direct financial assistance to “families with children suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses.” The rest of the money went toward a “Special Transportation Assistance Program” and “Public Awareness Campaigns.”

One of the last pages of the filing shows what all the money was going towards: ACS purchased and towed vehicles that they then supposedly fixed and gave to families who needed them. It is unclear as to where they were purchasing cars, as ACS’ website advertised they were looking for car donations. This cost $1.5 million and was done through Marlboro Motors, Inc., whose president was the mother of the ACS treasurer. A snapshot of ACS’s website from 2020 appears to show that ACS gave 13 people vehicles over the 20 years of ACS’s existence.