Steakhouses, liquor, first-class flights: Nonprofit expenses 'difficult to defend'

A nonprofit tied to an evolving City Hall scandal failed to inform state officials about its close ties to a former San Francisco department head and sponsored a separate organization that spent money on steakhouse dinners, liquor, and first-class flights, The Standard has learned.

James Spingola’s Collective Impact, an organization that has received $7.5 million from Mayor London Breed’s flagship Dream Keeper Initiative, has said since 2021 in nonprofit renewal forms required by the California attorney general’s office that it had no conflicts of interest.

However, records show that Spingola shared a home with the Dream Keeper Initiative’s key decision-maker, Sheryl Davis, since at least 2021. Davis, who resigned last week as head of the city’s Human Rights Commission and personally signed off on $1.5 million in contracts to Spingola’s organization, also did not disclose her relationship with the nonprofit executive to City Hall officials, a Standard investigation found.

“It’s a very big deal,” said Joan Harrington, a nonprofit ethics expert at Santa Clara University, of Collective Impact’s filings with the state. “I don’t think there is a way to answer ‘no’ with what was going on. … That is significant that the staff answered that question in a way that appears to be untruthful.”


https://sfstandard.com/2024/09/25/san-francisco-nonprofit-dream-keeper-initiative-collective-impact/