The following Sportico story describes a board that has had to manage a problematic director and chose to call-in legal counsel to conduct an investigation that in the end resulted with no punishment for the exec and a fired whistleblower. What this case should remind all is that what the board had to address was a human resource, organization culture, governance and mis-management set of problems. And yes, there may have also been legal issues but that's not what the case is really about. I would pose that firms like mine, built on understanding organizational development, human resources and nonprofit culture and management are far more equipped to address these type of challenges facing a board than a legal firm. Essentially, while there could be legal issues, that's not the foundational starting point. I can assure you that based only on the descriptions offered by the Sportico article, the outcomes of an investigation would have likely been different. Nonprofit Boards, start by understanding what is the nature of your challenges and don't believe everything is a legal solve. Fiduciary is not defined by the word legal.
From Sportico:
A recent outside investigation into a whistleblower’s complaints against the head of the Giving Back Fund, the fiscal sponsor for Damar Hamlin’s and other pro athlete charities, resulted in no punishment for the executive. The employee who spoke up, however, was dismissed.
In late May, the organization’s board of directors retained the Boston-based law firm, Rubin and Rudman, to probe a number of claims made about founder and CEO Marc Pollick. The investigation followed a Sportico story published earlier that month that brought to light numerous controversies within the 26-year-old nonprofit, which has handled tens of millions of dollars in charitable contributions over the years and plays host to a high-profile annual fundraising event at the Super Bowl’s host city.
While the story’s reporting encapsulated issues and anecdotes dating back many years, and was based on the accounts of dozens of sources, GBF’s recent investigation focused exclusively on allegations made by a single complainant, Pollick’s one-time executive assistant.
Earlier this year, that employee sent whistleblower letters to board members detailing examples of what they claimed was Pollick’s “erratic and unprofessional behavior” in his dealings with employees, clients and vendors.
The upshot of the investigation appears to maintain the status quo, with Pollick having weathered it without so much as a slap on the wrist.
On June 30, the whistleblower was fired, with the whole GBF staff called into an emergency meeting to be informed of the termination. According to multiple sources, the staffer had been put on paid leave for the five weeks the investigation took place.
“The leadership of The Giving Back Fund has always operated ethically, appropriately, and legally, and any allegations to the contrary are simply not true,” Pollick said in a statement. He went on to criticize the airing of GBF’s internal dynamics.
“We find it deplorable that Sportico feels it appropriate to publicize private personnel issues,” Pollick said. “We would not comment about an employee’s termination but feel forced to do so given the false conclusions that will be drawn if we fail to answer Sportico questions and the gross falsehoods and inaccuracies in the first story.”
Pollick did not specifically identify any perceived errors in the May 1 article, and neither he nor any GBF representative have requested factual corrections since its publication.
In light of the investigation’s conclusion, GBF’s board chair Prashanth Palakurthi reiterated his faith in Pollick’s leadership.
“Marc has had to make tough, unpopular decisions,” Palakurthi said in an email. “Bearing the angst of terminated employees and contractors, sometimes malicious, is the price of leadership.”
Alfred Gray, the attorney at Rubin and Rudman who led the board’s investigation into Pollick, said in an accompanying statement that after reviewing “dozens of documents” and conducting interviews with GBF staff, his findings did not substantiate the allegations the whistleblower raised.
“Many of the issues set forth in the letter consisted of only a portion of the referenced situations,” Gray said. “Looking at the issues in their entirety, a conclusion was reached that there was no illegal, unethical or improper action with regard to the issues raised.”
Gray added that while he believed the whistleblower initiated the complaint to the board “in good faith,” other behavior of theirs warranted disciplinary action. Pollick, however, said the complaints raised in the letters were “baseless” and that the whistleblower had previously committed “egregious and unlawful actions and fireable offenses.”
Neither Gray nor Pollick elaborated, but multiple sources told Sportico it was their understanding that the firing had to do with the whistleblower sending a heads-up message about the investigation to their co-workers’ personal email accounts.
When asked about this, Pollick would only say the termination was “for legitimate reasons.”
The whistleblower declined repeated requests for comment. Sportico is not naming the individual because they are understood to have signed a nondisclosure agreement that would inhibit their ability to speak publicly about the situation.
The investigation and firing raise further questions about the governance of an organization that has been criticized by numerous insiders for its lack of board oversight and rigor. Previously, in the mid-2010s, multiple GBF staffers had leveled complaints against Pollick to the board at the time with the expectation that there would be a change in leadership.
Pollick remained, but within a year, most of those board members had quit, one of many exoduses of staff or directors at GBF. Pollick chalks up the internal criticism of his leadership as the unfortunate byproduct of having to make “tough decisions in pursuit of what is best for our clients.”
He added, “I can be very frugal, and hold strong convictions for doing it right, perhaps to a fault, but always in pursuit of service to these amazing charitable organizations making the world a better place.”
Lisa Greer, the author and philanthropist who, at Pollick’s behest, became the Giving Back Fund’s board chair in 2021, quit three months into the role, later telling Sportico she felt repeatedly stymied by Pollick in her efforts to procure “any kind of quantifiable information” about GBF.
In the wake of the whistleblower’s complaint, one board member, Joanne Pasternack, resigned from her seat on March 23, writing in her resignation letter that the “organization is broken.”
Up until then, Pasternack had been an active board member who worked closely with Pollick, and was a key point of contact with the Hamlin’s. She wrote that her experience had provided an “insider’s view” that “opened my eyes to serious issues with the Giving Back Fund.”
Pasternack was the first board member to receive the whistleblower’s complaint on Feb. 19 and subsequently pushed for the organization to conduct an anonymous employee survey. However, this effort was scuttled after Pollick had secretly listened into an all-staff meeting Pasternack joined on March 9 to discuss their interest in doing the survey. It was only afterward that many of the staffers learned that Pollick—who was traveling overseas at the time—was on the call. In a subsequent meeting Pollick did not attend, multiple staffers complained to GBF leadership about what they perceived to be an effort to try to catch them saying critical things about him.
Eventually, the staff was instructed to stop talking openly about the issue in meetings, according to internal minutes, and the survey was permanently shelved.
Pollick told Sportico the survey had not received proper board approval, and blamed Pasternack for causing “strife in our organization.”
In early March, two weeks after the whistleblower went to Pasternack, Pollick circulated copies of nondisclosure agreements for his employees to sign. Pollick says their timing owed to “a minor glitch in our typical onboarding protocol,” suggesting that this was not done in reaction to any specific concerns about information leakage. The whistleblower was among those who signed an NDA, according to several sources familiar with the situation.
On March 20, the whistleblower addressed their concerns directly to Palakurthi, the board chair, who in 2020 sold his workforce software company, Reflexis Technologies, for $575 million.
“Thank you for reading my concerns,” the whistleblower wrote in an email, “and although I expect to experience backlash from Marc should he be informed of my concerns, I feel it is my ethical duty to report what I have seen and heard.”
Despite Pollick’s and Gray’s characterizations, several sources who worked with the whistleblower described them as a hard worker who was well thought of in the organization—at least prior to their raising concerns. Internal emails show they were lauded with “shoutouts” in the weekly roundup emails leadership sent to staff.
During the investigation, Gray sent email messages to a list of current and former GBF staffers that the whistleblower said could substantiate their claims about Pollick.
The emails, copies of which were obtained by Sportico, asked the potential respondents to provide a “statement setting forth your knowledge and information regarding the issues being investigated.” Gray also solicited their recommendations for what actions, if any, should be taken against Pollick.
“I will review your response and if need be schedule a follow-up communication which may include a virtual interview,” Gray wrote, adding that it was his “goal” to maintain their anonymity.
One source who received Gray’s email told Sportico they declined to provide input for fear that their anonymity would not be preserved and because they didn’t trust the investigation’s impartiality.
Another person who was contacted said they provided Rubin and Rudman a substantive response, confirming several of the whistleblower’s claims, but to their surprise received no follow-up communication from Gray. The lawyer declined to comment about this, citing attorney-client privilege.
Pasternack, for her part, confirmed last week that she was not contacted as part of the investigation, although multiple sources said the whistleblower had provided her name to the law firm.
“I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the statements from the whistleblower,” Pasternack told Sportico. “They included corroborating evidence to support it.”
In her resignation letter, she had recommended that GBF’s board do a 12-point, top-down review of the organization, from its finances to various critical postings that had been made over the years on employment websites like Glassdoor and Indeed. Additionally she urged the board to “create structure and process” for an annual review of Pollick, and a succession planning strategy. (Pollick turned 70 earlier this year.)
Asked about Pasternack, Gray said in an email: “I will acknowledge that I was aware of who the board members are or were. However for purposes of confidentiality and integrity of the investigation I am not at liberty to identify who I communicated with.”
On May 1, the day Sportico‘s story published, Pollick messaged his staff decrying the piece’s revelations as being “completely false or based on false information.”
“It is the first time in 26 years anyone has written a negative story about us,” he wrote. “We are a strong and resilient organization and we will survive the unwarranted and unfortunate attack…”
A week later, Damar Hamlin appeared to publicly distance himself from the fiscal sponsor while announcing an update in the plans to establish his own 501(c)(3). Hamlin’s family had partnered with GBF following his on-field collapse, which spawned an overnight multimillion-dollar bonanza for a dormant GoFundMe campaign the player had established two years earlier.
“My charity is not connected to the challenges being faced by the leadership of the Giving Back Fund,” Hamlin said in a statement to the Associated Press on May 9. The next day, Pollick sent a letter to most of GBF’s current clients addressing the media fallout, saying that the organization had been “victimized” by a “false and unfair story.”
The Hamlin’s continue to work with GBF, though the current extent of the relationship is unclear.
“We are grateful to the Giving Back Fund team for their work,” Damar Hamlin’s father, Mario, said in a statement on Friday. “Since January, they have been important partners of ours as we have moved to launch and transition to our own nonprofit, The Chasing M’s Foundation.”
Neither Mario Hamlin nor a family spokesperson responded to questions about what their partnership with GBF currently entails.
Meanwhile, the Giving Back Fund’s revolving door has continued to spin. In late March, it retained its most recent accounting firm, Jitasa Group, after parting with the Golden Group—the latest in a trend of firings and resignations of CPAs. According to its public tax filings, GBF used different accountants for each of its last three returns.
Pollick, in his statement, blamed that turnover on the inability of the outside accountants to keep up with his organization’s increasing demands.
“We have liked working with smaller firms because of the personal touch,” he said. “But they haven’t had the bandwidth to handle our growing needs. Instead, we are investing in in-house staff to manage our accounting needs and working with a larger firm to oversee this important function.”
In early June, GBF advertised for a new position of finance director, which would be responsible for helping to facilitate its consolidation of responsibilities.
The job posting invited applicants to come and work at a place with a “sterling reputation” for “integrity-led philanthropy.”